LibGuides: Free, Open, and Affordable Resources: Adopt/Adapt

Adopting & Adapting

Phares, D. (2021, July 6). Adopt of Adapt. CC BY 4.0.

FIND resources by searching in the repositories listed on this guide or titles listed under subject-specific materials.

ASSESS potential course material by evaluating its accuracy, clarity, relative absence of errors, coverage of the subject matter, how well it meets learning outcomes, how accessible it is to all students, how diverse, equitable, and inclusive the material is, and what license is attached to the material.

ADOPT and distribute to your classes.

ADAPT existing materials by editing, reordering, combing, revising or remixing them--making sure you abide by the terms of their licenses.

Reasons to Adapt an Open Textbook

One of the benefits of using an openly licensed textbook or other education resource is that you are free to adapt it to fir your needs. In other words, you can adjust the educational resources to fit your course curriculum, not the other way around. Other reasons for revising an existing open work be to:

Address a particular teaching or learning style
Adjust for a different grade or course level
Adapt for a different discipline
Accommodate a different learning environment
Address diversity needs
Meet a cultural preference
Meet a regional of national preference
Address an institution’s curriculum
Make the material more accessible to all users
Add material contributed by students or material suggested by students
Translate material into another language
Correct errors, omissions, or inaccuracies
Update the material with more current information
Add more media or links to other resources
Use only a portion of the book for a course

Adapted from Aesoph, L. M. (2016), Reasons to Adapt an Open Textbook, In Adaptation Guide. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, with some material based on: WikiEducator. (2008). Adapt, In OER Handbook for Educators and Green-Hughes (n.d.). Why Remix Open Educational Resources? both under a CC-BY license..

Resources for Adopting & Adapting

Adopting Open Educational Resources in the Classroom (Lumen Learning)
This course provides faculty with an introduction to the laws that influence the use, re-use, and distribution of content they may want to use in a course. Activities include finding openly licensed content for use in a class and publishing openly licensed works created by faculty. At the end of the course, students will have openly licensed content that will be ready for use in a course.
BC Campus Open Education Adoption Guide - 2nd Edition (Lauri Aesoph)
The second edition is an updated and expanded version of the original adoption guide. The first sections address three distinct groups involved in open textbook adoption: instructors, post-secondary institutions, and students. The second--most comprehensive--section focuses on the operational aspects of adoption: surveying instructors about, tracking usage of, and reporting out about open textbooks (and other OER). The last "Learn More" part provides additional adoption information.
Localization and OER (OpenStax-CNX)
This module, “What is Localization?,” offers an overview of localization, which is about making content usable and adaptable to meet your local needs.
OER Adoption Impact Calculator (Lumen Learning)
The OER Adoption Impact Calculator helps you understand many of the potential impacts of adopting OER instead of traditionally copyrighted learning materials. The values in the Settings on the left are set to defaults based on the published research referenced below. Change the Settings on the left so that they match the situation at your institution in order to see how replacing traditionally copyrighted materials with OER might benefit your students and institution. The information below will update in real time as you make changes.
OER Handbook for Educators
A wiki-style handbook is designed to help educators find, use, develop and share OER to enhance their effectiveness online and in the classroom
Open Textbook Adoption Worksheet (CCOER)
Five steps to adopting an open textbook for your course
Open Attribution Builder (Open Washington)
This is a tool to help you build attributions. Click the About box to learn more. As you fill out the form, the app automatically generates the attribution for you.
Best Practices for Attribution (Creative Commons)
You can use CC-licensed materials as long as you follow the license conditions. One condition of all CC licenses is attribution. Here are some good (and not so good) examples of attribution. Note: If you want to learn how to mark your own material with a CC license go here.

Evaluating Quality

Affordable Learning Georgia OER Evaluation Criteria
iRubric: Evaluating OER rubric
RCampus is a suite of learning, assessment, and competency management solutions; iRubric outlines some questions to ask about the OER you are thinking of using.
Open Textbook Library Review Rubric
A list of OER review criteria from the University of Minnesota's Open Textbook Library.
Rubrics for Evaluating Open Education Resource (OER) Objects (Achieve)
Achieve is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit education reform organization dedicated to working with states to raise academic standards and graduation requirements, improve assessments, and strengthen accountability.