Creating Your Own Open Educational Resources: A Step-by-Step Guide

Every teacher has created lesson materials at some point – a handout, a slide deck, a worksheet. But what if those materials could be shared openly with educators worldwide, adapted freely, and improved continuously? That’s the core idea behind Open Educational Resources (OER). Creating your own OER isn’t just about writing content; it involves choosing the right format, applying the correct license, using the right tools, and maintaining quality over time. This guide walks you through the entire process.

What are open educational resources? 🔗

Before diving into creation, it helps to be clear about what OER actually means. According to UNESCO, OER are learning, teaching, and research materials in any format that reside in the public domain or are released under an open license. That open license is what makes them different from regular teaching materials – it allows anyone to access, reuse, adapt, and redistribute the content at no cost.

The 2019 UNESCO Recommendation on OER was the first international normative instrument to formally address openly licensed educational materials and technologies. It calls on member states to build capacity for creating, accessing, and redistributing OER across all education levels. This global recognition confirms that OER creation is not a niche activity – it’s a mainstream educational priority.

Developing OER: choosing the right format 🔗

OER can take many forms. The format you choose depends on your subject matter, your audience, and your own strengths as a content creator. Common formats include text-based resources (textbooks, handouts, study guides), audio recordings (lectures, podcasts), video content (tutorials, demonstrations), presentations (slide decks with embedded media), and images or infographics.

The key is to match format to purpose. A complex scientific process might work best as a video demonstration. A historical timeline could be more effective as an interactive infographic. A poetry analysis might be best delivered as a written guide with annotations.

Text-based OER 🔗

Written materials remain the most common type of OER. Open textbooks, course modules, lesson plans, and study notes all fall into this category. When creating text-based OER, use open file formats such as ODT (Open Document Text), HTML, or EPUB so that others can edit and adapt your work without needing proprietary software. This is a practical point that many new OER creators overlook – if your resource requires a specific paid application to edit, you’ve created a barrier to reuse.

Audio, video, and multimedia OER 🔗

Audio and video resources are increasingly popular. Screencasts, recorded lectures, and short explainer videos can be powerful teaching tools. Tools like OBS Studio (free and open-source) for screen recording, Audacity for audio editing, and OpenShot for video editing allow educators to produce quality multimedia without spending money on software. When creating multimedia OER, include transcripts and captions to ensure accessibility for all learners.

Presentations and images 🔗

Slide presentations are a staple in most classrooms. Tools like LibreOffice Impress or Google Slides produce files that are easy to share and modify. For images and graphics, platforms like Canva (which offers free tiers) or open-source tools like GIMP and Inkscape let you design diagrams, charts, and illustrations. Always save visual OER in widely supported formats like PNG or SVG.

Licensing your OER: understanding Creative Commons 🔗

Creating content is only half the job. To make your work a true OER, you need to apply an open license that clearly tells others what they can and cannot do with it. The most widely used licensing framework for OER is Creative Commons (CC).

Creative Commons licenses provide a standardised way for creators to grant the public permission to use their work while retaining certain rights. There are six main Creative Commons licenses, each combining different conditions. Understanding these conditions is essential before you choose a license.

The four license conditions 🔗

Attribution (BY): Others must give you credit when they use your work. This is included in all six CC licenses.

ShareAlike (SA): Anyone who adapts your work must release their new version under the same or a compatible license.

NonCommercial (NC): Others can use your work, but not for commercial purposes.

NoDerivatives (ND): Others can share your work as-is, but they cannot modify, remix, or adapt it.

The six CC licenses ranked by openness 🔗

From most to least permissive, the six licenses are: CC BY (attribution only – the most open), CC BY-SA (attribution plus share-alike), CC BY-NC (attribution plus non-commercial), CC BY-NC-SA (attribution, non-commercial, share-alike), CC BY-ND (attribution, no derivatives), and CC BY-NC-ND (the most restrictive). There is also CC0, a public domain dedication tool where the creator waives all rights entirely.

For OER, CC BY is often considered the default and most recommended choice because it requires only attribution, making it easy for others to adapt and build upon the material. However, if you’re concerned about commercial publishers repackaging your work, CC BY-NC-SA gives you more control, though it limits how others can remix and redistribute.

How to apply a CC license 🔗

Applying a license is straightforward. The Creative Commons License Chooser tool asks you a few questions about how you want others to use your work, then generates the appropriate license text and HTML code. You include this license statement with your resource – whether it’s at the bottom of a document, in the description of a video, or embedded in a web page. Remember that once applied, a CC license cannot be revoked. Anyone who received the material under that license can continue to rely on it.

Tools and platforms for OER creation 🔗

You don’t need to build everything from scratch. Several platforms are specifically designed to support the creation, hosting, and distribution of OER.

WikiEducator 🔗

WikiEducator is a global community-driven platform where educators collaboratively author open educational resources using wiki technology (built on MediaWiki, the same software that powers Wikipedia). It operates under the CC BY-SA license by default. WikiEducator’s Learning4Content project has trained thousands of teachers across more than 110 countries in wiki editing skills, making it one of the largest wiki training initiatives in education. The platform is particularly useful if you want to collaboratively develop course materials with peers from around the world.

OpenStax (formerly Connexions) 🔗

OpenStax, based at Rice University, is a nonprofit initiative that publishes high-quality, peer-reviewed, openly licensed college textbooks. It evolved from Connexions, which was founded in 1999 as one of the earliest OER repositories. OpenStax textbooks are available under the CC BY license, and the platform works with nearly 80 institutions to expand OER adoption. If you’re creating content in subjects like physics, biology, economics, or sociology, OpenStax can serve both as a model for quality and as a source of content you can adapt.

Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons 🔗

Wikipedia itself is an OER – its content is licensed under CC BY-SA, making it freely reusable and adaptable. Educators can contribute to Wikipedia as part of their teaching practice or use its content as a foundation for course materials. Wikimedia Commons is a related repository of freely licensed images, audio, and video files that can be incorporated into your OER.

Other useful platforms and tools 🔗

OER Commons offers tools like Open Author for creating and assembling different media types into structured resources. Pressbooks is widely used for creating open textbooks in multiple output formats (web, PDF, EPUB). For educators who want a simpler workflow, Google Docs combined with a clear CC license statement can work for collaborative text-based OER development – OpenStax itself transitioned to using Google Docs after retiring its original CNX platform.

Remixing and adapting existing OER 🔗

One of the greatest strengths of OER is that you don’t always need to start from zero. The concept of the “5Rs” – defined by open education scholar David Wiley – captures what makes OER truly open. These five permissions are: Retain (keep a copy), Revise (edit and adapt), Remix (combine with other materials), Reuse (use in any context), and Redistribute (share with others).

How to remix effectively 🔗

Remixing means taking existing OER and combining or modifying them to create something new. For example, you might take an open textbook chapter on climate science, add locally relevant data from a government source, integrate a CC-licensed video from another educator, and create a new module tailored to your specific curriculum.

When remixing, pay close attention to license compatibility. Not all CC licenses can be combined freely. Materials with a ShareAlike (SA) condition require that any derivative work carry the same license. Materials with a NoDerivatives (ND) condition cannot be modified at all. Before combining two CC-licensed works, check that their licenses are compatible. The Creative Commons website provides a compatibility chart to help you determine which combinations are permissible.

Providing proper attribution for remixed work 🔗

Whenever you adapt or remix CC-licensed content, you must give appropriate attribution to the original creator. A good attribution includes the title of the original work, the name of the creator, the license under which it was released, and a link to the original source. A typical attribution statement might look like: “This resource is adapted from [Original Title] by [Author Name], licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.” If your remixed resource incorporates content from multiple sources, each original work should be attributed individually.

Ensuring quality in your OER 🔗

Quality is one of the most frequently cited concerns around OER. Unlike commercially published textbooks, OER do not automatically go through a formal editorial process. That makes it the creator’s responsibility to ensure accuracy, clarity, and pedagogical effectiveness.

Peer review 🔗

Have other subject matter experts review your content before publishing. This can be formal (inviting colleagues to use a review rubric) or informal (asking a fellow teacher to read through your materials and provide feedback). Platforms like Open Textbook Library demonstrate this approach – they host openly licensed textbooks that have been reviewed by faculty, providing a model for community-based quality assurance.

Accuracy and currency 🔗

Ensure that your content is factually accurate, up to date, and based on reliable sources. This is especially important in fast-evolving fields like technology, medicine, or law. Build in a schedule for periodic review and updates. One advantage OER have over traditional textbooks is that they can be updated at any time without waiting for a new print edition.

Accessibility 🔗

Quality OER should be accessible to all learners, including those with disabilities. This means adding alt text to images, providing captions for videos, using clear heading structures in documents, and ensuring sufficient colour contrast. The BCcampus Accessibility Toolkit is a useful free guide for making open educational content fully accessible.

Alignment with learning objectives 🔗

Good OER are designed with clear learning outcomes in mind. Each section or module should map to specific objectives, and assessment activities should align with those outcomes. This pedagogical coherence is what separates a useful OER from a loosely organised collection of information.

Continuous improvement through feedback 🔗

Publish your OER with an invitation for feedback. Encourage other educators and students who use your resource to report errors, suggest improvements, or share how they’ve adapted it. This iterative process – create, share, receive feedback, revise – is at the heart of the OER philosophy. Over time, a resource that starts as a basic set of notes can evolve into a robust, community-refined educational tool.

Getting started: a practical checklist 🔗

If you’re ready to create your first OER, here’s a concise action plan. First, identify a gap – what teaching material do you wish existed, or what existing resource could be improved? Second, decide on the format that best serves the content and your learners. Third, create the resource using open tools and open file formats. Fourth, choose and apply the appropriate Creative Commons license. Fifth, publish your OER on a suitable platform where others can find and access it. Sixth, invite peer review and feedback. Seventh, commit to revising and updating the resource over time.

The process is iterative, not linear. Your first OER doesn’t need to be a comprehensive textbook. It could be a single lesson module, a set of practice problems, or a short explainer video. Start small, learn from the process, and build from there.

What do you think? What kind of teaching material would you most want to create and share as an OER – a text resource, a video, or something interactive? And how might collaborating with other educators improve the quality of that resource over time?

References

1. https://www.unesco.org/en/open-educational-resources
2. https://www.unesco.org/en/legal-affairs/recommendation-open-educational-resources-oer
3. https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/
4. https://iastate.pressbooks.pub/oerstarterkit/chapter/creative-commons/
5. https://creativecommons.org/choose/
6. https://wikieducator.org/
7. https://openstax.org/
8. https://commons.wikimedia.org/
9. https://www.oercommons.org/
10. https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-combine-material-under-different-creative-commons-licenses-in-my-work
11. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks
12. https://opentextbc.ca/accessibilitytoolkit/