Overview

CARLI’s OER Commons Hub: Open Illinois

CARLI’s OER Common Hub: Open Illinois facilitates the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) and supports training, advocacy, and coordination of cooperative efforts for the benefit of members of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI), and other Illinois stakeholders. This centralized repository provides materials helpful to academic and research institutions in developing OER and advocating for adoption of OER on their campuses to reduce students’ costs.

The Open Illinois Hub is a customized, branded resource on OER Commons where our network of users can create and share collections, have an institutional presence or work collaboratively (both called Groups), and share news and events associated with a project or organization.

CARLI’s vision is that the Open Illinois Hub becomes a resource for finding OER and the place for members to create and share their locally created open educational resources.

By combining resources from many CARLI member institutions into a seamless environment, faculty, staff, students, and the public are able to search across Illinois institutions and collections.

The following video is an overview of the Open Illinois Hub presented by Elizabeth Clarage and Nicole Swanson, CARLI, October 27, 2021.

What is OER Commons?

OER Commons is a digital public library and collaborative platform launched in 2007 by ISKME (an independent, education nonprofit). It provides comprehensive infrastructure to identify high-quality OER and provides the space for collaboration during the creation or the adaption of open educational resources.

OER Commons Institutional Contact

In order to coordinate use for CARLI's OER Common Hub: Open Illinois, each institution must designate a primary contact. This person is identified as "OER Commons Institutional Contact" on the forms below.

Using Resources Found on the Open Illinois Hub

Most resources found on the Open Illinois Hub and the larger OER Commons site have a license. The license allows the user to know how the resource can be used. Most licenses are from Creative Commons. You can learn more about Creative Commons on their website, and the CARLI OER Committee has created a page about using Creative Commons.

You can also integrate OER found on OER Commons into your campus Learning Management System.

Groups: CARLI Member Pages & Working Groups

OER Commons uses "Groups" as its structure for both institutional pages and collaborative working groups.

CARLI Member Pages on the Open Illinois Hub

Any CARLI Governing Member library may have an Institutional Page on the Open Illinois Hub. Members can highlight resources and share information about their local programs.

How to add your Institution to the CARLI OER Commons: Open Illinois Hub:

Your CARLI OER Commons Institutional Contact will be given administrator privileges for your Member Page. This person must have a profile on the OER Commons site.

1. Create an OER Commons profile; More information about creating a profile can be found in this short (2 minute) video.
2. Complete this form for CARLI staff to create your institutional page. Your OER Commons Institutional Contact will be the administrator for the page/group and will be the person that adds people to your institutional page.

To learn more about how to use and manage your institutional page/group, OER Commons has created this short (4 minute) video.

Working Groups on the Open Illinois Hub

To collaborate on OER Commons, CARLI members or their faculty may participate in a Working Group on the site and having it linked to our Open Illinois Hub.

How to add your Working Group to the CARLI OER Commons: Open Illinois Hub:

Both the CARLI OER Commons Institutional Contact and a Working Group OER Contact must be identified & will be given group administrator privileges. These contacts may be the same person. These person must have a profile on the OER Commons site.

1. Create OER Commons Profile(s); More information about creating a profile can be in this short (2 minute) video.
2. Complete this form for CARLI staff to create your Working Group. Both your OER Commons Institutional Contact and your Working Group Contact will be administrators for the group and will be able to add additional people to the group.

To learn more about how to use and manage your Working Group page, OER Commons has created this short (4 minutes) video.

Creating Resources on the Open Illinois Hub

Open Author is OER Commons' tool for OER creation, remixing, and publishing Open Educational Resources. The following video on the Open Author tool was presented by Megan Simmons on December 9, 2021.

Costs

There is no cost to CARLI Governing Members.

Technical Assistance

CARLI Support is the first point of contact for technical assistance.