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This approach is one of five suggested ways of applying open pedagogy in the learning environment and using OER from existing repositories. On this page we define the approach, emphasise its requirements and use examples to show practical evidence of applying the suggested approaches in the educational settings.
This approach suggests adopting existing OER in subject development to provide complete and comprehensive learning materials that address learning objectives. For example, using open textbooks as alternatives to publisher books. Open textbooks have recently become popular in tertiary education, as many universities started to realise the benefits of this approach in the educational ecosystem.
Requirements
The ‘Use as is’ approach to OER requires working through the following:
Finding OER repositories
Academics can find OER such as Open textbooks from a variety of resources. The available search engines have improved the search results and OER repositories are becoming more popular than before. Among the popular repositories is the peer-reviewed OpenStax collection: https://openstax.org/subjects. The collection is available free of charge and books are available for download in various digital formats. OERCommons is another popular public digital library of OER: https://www.oercommons.org/. OERCommons collection also provides a sustainable culture of sharing and continuous improvement among educators at all levels.
Many other resources are available on UTS library website: https://studyguides.lib.uts.edu.au/oers/bytype
Evaluating resources
When deciding on adopting an OER for a particular subject, ensure that the source aligns with the learning objectives and assessment requirements. Give yourself enough time to review an open textbook, which is something that you can do over a couple of semesters of the same subject. To speed up the process, you could ask other academics to help in the process of content evaluation.
Filling the knowledge gaps
Sometimes a resource that you wish to adopt may be missing some information. You can fill the gaps by referring students to journal articles or other library resources that students can view electronically.
Tools & Resources
RMIT & Deakin Universities
Academics from RMIT and Deakin have adopted open textbooks as alternatives for publishers textbooks. Both universities published on their websites the impacts of this approach on increasing access and cost saving. See https://emedia.rmit.edu.au/oer/textbook-hero/
Chippewa Valley Technical College
An international example for teaching health subjects is the Open RN project that has developed 5 Nursing open textbooks with H5P interactive scenarios. The books have been adopted widely by universities in several countries including Australia.