Review
Peer review
Peer review is important because it is one way to verify that open educational resources are high quality and have been vetted by others in the field. It is a way of showing that OER development is a valid scholarly pursuit.
COERLL doesn't have any specific process or criteria for a peer reviewer of language learning materials to follow. We recommend that creators come up with their own process and find their own peer reviewers among their community of language educator colleagues. You may also want to turn to professional networks to find peer reviewers.
Apurva Ashok and Zoe Wake Hyde of the REBUS Community have published an excellent Rebus Guide to Publishing Open Textbooks (So Far), with a chapter on the peer review process Links to an external site. (this guide is licensed under a CC BY license).
Examples
- COERLL has developed a rubric for OER for language learning (Google Docs) Links to an external site., which you may copy and reuse for your own projects
- The University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library list of peer review criteria Links to an external site., and a review based on that criteria Links to an external site.
- "OER Review Standards and Approval Rubric: United States Edition Links to an external site." compiled by Rebel Cummings-Sauls contains checklists for usage rights, publishing, accessibility, cultural considerations, costs and impact, subject alignment, and ethical use of data (the actual rubric begins on page 19)
For COERLL sponsored projects, please choose three potential peer reviewers at the beginning of the project and consider at what point in the process you want them to review your work.
Student feedback
It is essential that the materials you create are appropriate for your students. There are many ways to get students' feedback, including through surveys, focus groups, or informal teaching sessions.
Examples
- Arley Cruthers, author of "Business Writing for Everyone", gave her students the option to either audit her textbook or remix the class' final project. She describes the process in this series of tweets Links to an external site..
- Sonia Balasch, co-author of "Español y Cultura en Perspectiva", asks her students for suggestions of content to add to the course readings as part of the course evaluation.
- Ignacio Carvajal, co-author of "Chqe’tamaj le qach’ab’al K’iche’!" and Josefrayn Sanchez-Perry, co-author of Nahuatlahtolli, each taught with their materials in an informal class, before bringing them into the classroom.
Learn More about Review
Check Your Knowledge
Would you prefer to have your work peer reviewed before it has been published, so that reviews can be taken into account, or after it has been published, so that you can show people have looked at the finished product?
What criteria might you want your peer reviewers to evaluate?
Go to the next page to learn how to publish a print-on-demand textbook.