State Support for Open Educational Resources: Key Findings from Achieve's OER Institute
Author: Achieve, Inc.
Date: 2013-00-00
Type: Reports - Evaluative
Subjects: Resource Units,Shared Resources and Services,Technology Uses in Education,Cooperation,Program Effectiveness,Access to Computers,Educational Resources,Standards,Alignment (Education),Barriers,Knowledge Level,Measurement Techniques,Program Evaluation,Educational Technology,Educational Quality,Quality Assurance

Open Educational Resources (OER) offer unique new opportunities for educators to share quality learning resources, especially in an increasingly digital world. Forty-six states and the District of Columbia have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), providing them with the unprecedented advantage of being able to share resources that are aligned to this common set of standards. To leverage these parallel efforts and support states and districts that are implementing the CCSS, Achieve is working with a collaborative of seven states that participated in the Achieve OER Institute: California, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Washington and Wisconsin. This work builds off Achieve's previous efforts to create a series of eight rubrics that measure OER alignment to standards and other attributes of quality and to develop an online evaluation tool that allows educators to easily tag and rate resources. The goals of the OER Institute are to: (1) Encourage collaboration among states for the implementation of OER; (2) Increase awareness and use of OER in states to support successful implementation of the CCSS at the state, district, school and classroom levels; (3) Assist states in implementing high-quality, CCSS-aligned OER; (4) Increase the number of quality OER that are aligned to the CCSS and increase access to those OER for districts and teachers; and (5) Train state and district personnel to use the OER rubrics and the Achieve OER Evaluation Tool. To meet these goals, Achieve brought seven states together virtually and through an in-person meeting during the ongoing, year-long effort. Through these discussions, three areas for continued cross-state collaboration emerged: (1) Establishing commonalities in defining quality; (2) Sharing quality, standards-aligned resources; and (3) Sharing metadata about quality resources. Four key findings to date include: (1) States face a number of common challenges and barriers to implementation, including a lack of knowledge about OER and uncertainty about the quality of resources available online; (2) Experts from multiple sectors, including standards, curriculum and technology, must work together to use OER successfully in CCSS implementation; (3) States must develop a common understanding of processes for measuring quality and vetting resources; and (4) States must assess their technology and capacity needs to implement technology-based innovations. In total, Achieve developed eight rubrics with significant input and feedback from an advisory panel of OER experts. The eight rubrics are: (1) Degree of Alignment to Standards; (2) Quality of Explanation of the Subject Matter; (3) Utility of Materials Designed to Support Teaching; (4) Quality of Assessments; (5) Quality of Technological Interactivity; (6) Quality of Instructional and Practice Exercises; (7) Opportunities for Deeper Learning; and (8) Assurance of Accessibility. Challenges and barriers remain for states using OER in their CCSS implementation plans, but each state team is addressing the specific challenges in using OER as they implement the CCSS. A glossary of terms is provided.