The "Guideline for Open Educational Resources Higher Education" is now available (ISBN 978-1-894975-42-1). The document was co-produced by Commonwealth of Learning located in British Columbia and UNESCO, two very influential organizations in the OER movement. We recommend reading the entire guide but if your time is limited read Appendix 1, “Useful knowledge, competences and skills for effective use of OER in higher education.” Below are some of the suggested items from the guide. The last item may make economic sense as to why stores should prepare for OER on campus.
· There should be clarity about the economic benefits of OER, in terms of marketing institutions and programmes, the cost-effectiveness of materials production, and policies, contracts and grants;
· Be competent to determine requirements for copyright clearance and privacy to release materials under open licenses;
· Be able to Reflect copyright and disclaimer statements accurately in materials of different kinds and multiple media;
· Be able to identify relevant content areas for programmes, courses and modules;
· Be able to negotiate with external individuals and/or organisations to issue or re-issue resources under open licenses;
· Understand whether it is permissible to modify the content when customizing materials and , if so, to what extent in can be done and how it should be handled;
· Understand that if work has been adapted for a specific purpose, how this should be indicated in the customized content;
· Reinforcing the need to credit the original author/source of the content that is being accessed for use through open licensing; and
· Implementing the necessary processes for producing print-on-demand texts.
