Open Educational Resources (OER)
Application of OERs to support student learning and access to materials
Access to course materials is often an obstacle for many undergraduate and graduate students. As an instructor, I believe that access to texts and course materials should be made available through digital avenues for students to access not only during the course but during their professional time in the classroom.
In my Children's Literature course, I want not only access to picture and chapter books but a text book that can describe the unique genre components of children's literature. As such, I used my institution's library OER database to select Jennifer Schneider's text: "The Inside, Outside, and Upside Downs of Children's Literature: From Poets and Pop-ups to Princesses and Porridge". Published in 2016 with a Creative Commons license, this text includes material for preservice teachers to consider banned books, book selection for representation, and criteria for analyzing books.
I really appreciated being able to search and find tools to support my course instruction materials.
Challenges included having to read through materials to determine if they were appropriate for my class.
