Now that you have selected the OER for your course you will need to decide if supplementing or adapting the OER is necessary. Because you are no longer tied to a publisher textbook you have the freedom to bring together multiple resources and adjust them to meet the learning outcomes for your course. Curating course content ensures it aligns with your learning outcomes. Content can be text, video, media, podcasts, simulations, interactives, learning activities, etc. Course mapping is one tool that can help you step back and take a thousand foot view of your course, which can help you identify the gaps and the areas of overlap. It is also a way to assist in the process of keeping track of your content sources and references, making OER adoption a little easier. The value of keeping good notes cannot be overstated. A course map can be a valuable tool to organizing and tracking outcomes, the learning activities, and OER content with which they align, the sources and licensing of the content you select.

OER Course Map

When searching for commercial textbooks, many instructors evaluate the content covered, the supplemental instructional materials, and the ease for students of procuring the book. When searching for OER materials to adopt within a course, most instructors first evaluate the material for content coverage, often aligned with the materials with what had previously been covered by the commercial textbook.

As the focus of Module 2, we want to emphasize that OER adoption allows instructors to recenter student learning and how students show learning through assignments as the first step in their material adoption process. Instructors can and should then work backward from those assignment goals to determine what materials will facilitate learning. Because the materials are now free, faculty can:

• use a couple chapters from several books
• select shorter books, assigning a wider range and a higher number
• use journal articles, websites, and books to building foundational  and deep reading
• decolonize their materials including a breadth of voices and experiences

To do this work, start with building and/or identifying course objectives and learning outcomes. We, along with many others, recommend using excel for this work to keep the cells organized.

Second, identify the modules and submodules of the course. These will include the content covered, the ways of thinking covered (like critical thinking, research, etc.). Here is an example map, that outlines the structure using Module 1 from this book.

Third, identify the assignment and assessment measure. This allows instructors to consider what students need to learn and know to be successful in that assessment.

Fourth, identify the OER that will lead students to success with the assessment and/or assignment. For many OER adopters, this step will be most useful if it includes two (3) columns, one to identify the source (including URL and/or access path), and one to identify the portion of the source used.

We’re providing this sample course map to demonstrate the shift in adoption practices when moving to OER instead of commercial textbooks.

Resources

• There are amazing course mapping videos that walk through demonstrations of maps similar to what is provided above. We recommend “OER Course Mapping Video” posted by Quill West and/or “User-friendly OER Course Design for Remote & Face-to-Face” by Open Education Global.
• There are ample, free, OER course map templates available. We recommend the materials openly published by Olena Zhadko and Susan Ko, authors of Best Practices in Designing Courses with Open Educational Resources.

Navigate to the Modifying an Open Textbook