Chapter 3: Prep & Plan your Course for OER

Chapter 2 in Review

In the last chapter we tackled several topics: copyright, open licenses (specifically Creative Commons licenses), and attribution. It was a lot of ground to cover, and maybe a little confusing, but as with everything new we learn, it will get easier with practice.

Chapter 3 Objectives

1. Revisit course planning to identify content gaps that could be filled with OER. (LO4)
2. Create a project goal after looking at OER options. (LO4)

Course Planning

Before diving head first into an OER search, it is important to start your search with a clear idea of what you are looking for. Are you looking for a textbook replacement, or are you looking to replace or supplement portions of your current materials? Regardless of your goal, anytime you contemplate changing your instructional materials, it's a good time to take another look at your course planning. Although this may take some time, we believe you will find this time well spent. Proper course planning will ensure your course assessments, activities, and materials are aligned to the course/student learning outcomes. It will also help you identify the OER materials you want to search for.

Backward Design

We highly recommend using a framework called "Backward Design" for course planning. Backward Design was developed by Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe. It is based on the premise that you can’t plan your course or how you’re going to teach until you know exactly what you want your students to learn. There are full length courses on Backwards Design, but we'll just be focusing on the basics. Here are two videos to give you a better understanding.

📺  Introduction to Backward Design (2:33)

📺  Alignment & Backwards Design (2:53)

By planning your class using the Backward Design principles, you will select your content based on the outcomes and assessments. And, by letting go of the commercial textbook, you are freed to really tailor the content to meet your and your students' needs. Using free/open resources means you could select an entire textbook, you could use resources from multiple textbooks, and/or use any of the open/free resources already available on the internet. Excited? Let's get to the planning.

Planning Your Class

It's now time to plan out your class. You will use the basic principles of Backward Design, except that instead of starting with a completely clean slate, you'll start with the current course outcomes and the topics listed in your campus' official course outline (for e.g., "Course Outline of Record"). You'll then use the principles of Backward Design to identify the outcomes for each week (or modules, or units, or topics) then plan your assessments, and finally, look at what instructional content/resources/activities you'll need.

To help you through this creative process, we have provided several example worksheet templates that you can use. These worksheets will become the blueprint for your new class. As you work through the worksheets using the principles of Backward Design, you will probably find your course plan shifting from your current course plan, and maybe even being transformed. This is the freeing aspect that we spoke of before. Since you are not tied to your current textbook, you have a lot more control over what you teach, and how you teach it.

Worksheet templates:

1. Hawai‘i CC Course Planning Worksheets and Completed sample (PDF)
2. UH Maui College/Kapi‘olani CC Course Map Template

Setting Your OER Goals

Reevaluating your course design, you now have a sense of what resources you need to support your learning goals. Knowing this will help you with the next few chapters, which address Finding, Assessing, & Creating OER, Adapting and Sharing OER, and Next Steps. You may have found that you have small content gaps in your learning materials that you would like to fill with OER. Or, you may be interested in replacing all commercial content with OER to make your class Textbook Cost: $0 (TXT0). Either way, it will be very helpful to establish your OER goals.

Goal setting for TXT0 projects

Start by assessing where you are now. Calculate what the current cost of your textbook is and multiply it by the number of students you teach each year. This will give you a larger sense of how much you will be helping your students. You may be able to convert to TXT0 simply by asking the library to purchase an e-book or put a textbook on reserve if it will help your students. But if not, let's move forward with looking at OER as a solution.

OER can be adopted, modified, created, and shared at all levels. You could

• Adopt a textbook and the ancillaries it might have
• Develop a class session using open materials
• Modify a textbook (example)
• Develop a reader
• Use open pedagogy to work with your students to develop a book
• Create an online textbook
• Convert a course to OER
• Team-develop a textbook or course

Here are more examples.

Just as we benefit from OER created by other institutions, we encourage our instructors to share their work with the world. OER can be created, delivered, and shared in many ways using a variety of technology platforms. Depending on your needs and technology skills, MS Word or Google Drive might be sufficient. Many instructors use Laulima. Although the University of Hawaiʻi has no required technology platforms for OER, the UH OER community encourages the use of three OER development/publishing platforms. UH Pressbooks is a highly popular book publishing tool developed from WordPress. It is very easy to work with, especially if you have experience with online platforms. LibreTexts is a national platform that incorporates more interactive tools and has a more "modular" feel than Pressbooks. UH OER Commons is our newest shared platform, providing an easy-to-edit writing interface. You can even upload Word documents. Take a look at these sites and think about what would be best to work with. Your OER college advocate can help you decide.                                 

SMART Goals

One last thing to consider before you set your goals. Make your goals realistic and achievable by creating SMART goals (specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, time-specific). The SMART goal technique will make it easier for you to succeed in your project. It will help you define what steps you will need to take, how you will measure your progress, and how you will measure the achievement of your ultimate goal.

For example, if you wish to write a textbook, that is your ultimate goal. Use the SMART technique to write out your goal so that it is Specific (PSY 100), Measurable (published), Achievable (e.g., I have all my teaching notes and will use those), Relevant (e.g. this will improve class participation), and Time-specific (e.g. I want to teach with this book in three semesters).

Then, create SMART "sub-goals" or objectives that will get you to the ultimate goal (e.g. I will complete a draft outline of the textbook in three months.) In our experience, developing an OER class session may take up to two weeks to complete. Adopting a textbook may take three months. An original textbook may take 12 or more months.

📺  SMART Goals - Quick Overview (3:58)

📺  SMART Goals for OER Action Plan (5:35)

Chapter 3 Attributions

• Video: "Introduction to Backward Design" by Tracey Cole is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Video: "Alignment and Backward Design" by MaryAnne Nestor and Carl E. Nestor is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
• Original Content: "Sample Course Design Worksheets" by a former OCDP participant is used by permission.
• Video: "SMART Goals - Quick Overview by DecisionSkills is licensed under a Standard YouTube License.
• Video: "SMART Goals for OER Action Plan" by Open Education Network is licensed under CC BY 3.0