Spotlight on an OER

This week, we’ll take a look at an OER created by CityTech Professor Jeremy Seto, which he developed as part of the Faculty Fellows Program.
Most participants in the program convert their course to OER (Open Educational Resources) through a process of finding equivalent, openly-licensed materials, and building a site on the OpenLab. Seto instead chose to create original course content, and actually write a lab manual himself! This is an impressive departure from the typical model, but also a great way to show the potential of OER.

Part of the appeal of using OER is the ability to customize the content. With a traditional textbook, you would not be able to re-write the text – it’s under copyright by a publisher. However, when you teach with OER, it may be possible (depending on the license), to actually replicate the entire item, and change it to fit the needs of your classroom.
For example, it’s noted on the Biology OER homepage that – “in the spirit of remixing and redistribution, the entire WordPress site can be downloaded.”
The course site provides detailed instructions on how to use software, and replicate a series of results, via a series of colorful images –

This is an excellent use of images as an illustrative tool, and in the context of OER, demonstrates how to integrate openly-licensed materials. Some of the images were created by Prof. Seto, whereas others were freely available for use on the open web.
Feel free to explore the Biology OER – it may serve as inspiration for your future work with open resources!