Open Educational Resources: Evaluating OER

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The goal of the OER Accessibility Toolkit, from the University of British Columbia, is to provide the needed resources needed to each content creator, instructor, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open and accessible educational resource - one that is accessible for all students.

OER Accessibility Toolkit

• Comprehensiveness 
  • The text covers all areas and ideas of the subject appropriately and provide an effective index and/or glossary
• Content Accuracy
  • Content is accurate, error-free, and unbiased
• Relevance/Longevity 
  • Content is up-to-date, but not in a way that will quickly make the text obsolete within a short period of time. The text is written and/or arranged in such a way that necessary updates will be relatively easy and straightforward to implement. 
• Clarity
  • The text is written in lucid, accessible prose, and provides adequate context for any jargon/technical terminology used. 
• Consistency
  • ​​​​​​​The text is internally consistent in terms of terminology and framework. 
• Modularity
  • ​​​​​​​The text is easily and readily divisible into smaller reading sections that can be assigned at different points within the course (i.e., enormous blocks of text without subheadings should be avoided). The text should not be overly self-referential, and should be easily reorganized and realigned with various subunits of a course without presenting much disruption to the reader. 
• Organization/Structure/Flow
  • ​​​​​​​The topics in the text are presented in a logical, clear fashion. 
• Interface
  • ​​​​​​​The text is free of significant interface issues, including navigation problems, distortion of images/charts, and any other display features that may distract or confuse the reader. 
• Grammatical Errors
  • ​​​​​​​The text contains no grammatical errors. 
• Cultural Relevance 
  • ​​​​​​​The text is not culturally insensitive or offensive in any way. It should make use of examples that are inclusive of a variety of races, ethnicities, and backgrounds. 

This rubric was developed by BCcampus. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.

Source: Open Textbook Library, "Open Textbook Review Criteria"