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Open Educational Resources: Adapt

Adapting OER for Your Course

Sometimes a resource isn't perfect for your needs. In that case you may have to Adapt the material to fit your course. A cartoon of a video, several books, and an article being combined into a new book.

This page features some other sources of open materials that can be combined with existing OERs or used to supplement OERs with images, maps, illustrations, activities, case studies, additional readings, and more. 

The big thing to keep in mind is making sure that you're complying with the Creative Commons license applied to the works you're using. Not all CC licenses allow for derivatives, remixes, translations, format changes, and some have licenses that prevent them from being combined into a new object with other mateials that have contradictory licenses. Learn more about Creative Commons Licenses and about limitations on re-mixing materials

You can also ask for help and advice in adapting your OER. Contact the Faculty Resource Center (their Contact Us page linked here) for guidance on accessibility and instructional design. Contact the librarian, Susan Vandagriff (svandagr@uccs.edu) for advice on finding supplementary materials. For guidance and tools for publishing your adapted OER, visit the Create page.

Remember to Attribute!

CC Attribution logo (person in a circle)One thing all Creative Commons Licenses require is Attribution (BY). According to the Creative Commons wiki  "Best Practices for Attribution" (CC-BY), a basic attribution should include: 

Title - The name of the material being used

Author - The name of the creator(s) or editor(s)

Source - Provide a link or other means of locating the original material

License - Name the CC license and provide a link to the license description

Read more on the Creative Commons "Best Practices for Attribution."

How to Modify an Open Textbook

Other Open Material Sources

You can also use Google to search for images with a Creative Commons License. Learn how on our Searching Google with Usage Rights page. Remember, it's up to you to make sure you have the right to reuse, remix, or otherwise share an image. 

Below are some links to databases and search tools with open content. Remember, not all open content is licensed for every type of reuse or remix. It is your responsibility to check the license of materials you use and make sure you are using them appropriately. 

Open Scholarly Articles
Open Historic Newspapers

Below are some links to lists or collections of open data repositories. Some of these repositories or individual datasets may have restrictions on how the data can be used. Be sure to investigate the license of any material before you redistribute it. 

U.S. Government Data Sources

For more Government data sources visit our Government Information Libguide