Checklist of best practices for creating accessible resources.The Accessibility Checklist is adapted from BC Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit, CC-BY 4.0 International License.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
The goal of this accessibility toolkit, 2nd edition, is to provide resources for each content creator, instructional designer, educational technologist, librarian, administrator, and teaching assistant to create a truly open textbook—one that is free and accessible for all students. This is a collaboration between BCcampus, Camosun College, and CAPER-BC.
Material Type: Full Course
If you are new to accessibility, this resource is meant to be your entry point into the creation of accessible content with familiar tools such as Microsoft Office and Google Docs. You will learn about five practices (captured in the mnemonic SLIDE) that can have a significant impact on the learner experience for all students, especially those who rely on assistive technology for their access to the curriculum. Each of the practices is described in more detail in a playlist of closed-captioned videos with step-by-step directions you can follow at your own pace. Pause the videos, try things out, and reach out to staff at the National AEM Center at CAST if you have any questions. While the practices are explained in the context of creating an accessible document, with one exception (Styles) the techniques apply to slide decks as well.
Material Type: Reading
The UDL Guidelines are a tool used in the implementation of Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve and optimize teaching and learning for all people based on scientific insights into how humans learn. Learn more about the Universal Design for Learning framework from CAST. The UDL Guidelines can be used by educators, curriculum developers, researchers, parents, and anyone else who wants to implement the UDL framework in a learning environment. These guidelines offer a set of concrete suggestions that can be applied to any discipline or domain to ensure that all learners can access and participate in meaningful, challenging learning opportunities.
Material Type: Reading
Accessibility guidelines can be confusing. The POUR principles of Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust can help. Each principle represents standards and guidelines for ensuring accessibility in digital materials and technologies. If you're acquiring or procuring materials and technologies for your classroom, district, or state, there are questions you can ask to make sure all students can use the materials selected.
Material Type: Reading
This OER is a quick, hands-on lab that helps students explore the anatomy and function of angiosperm seeds. Topics such as seed anatomy and function, seed dormancy, and seed germination are addressed in this lab. This lab is intended to be used as instructional materials for biology teachers.Within this resource are instructions on required lab materials,an introduction to seed anatomy and function, an explanation of seed dormancy and germination, a seed diagram to label, and student exercises to assist in content mastery.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Homework/Assignment
This OER is a quick, hands-on lab that helps students explore the alternation of generations life cycle found in plants. Specifically, this lab explores the life cycle of bryophtyes. The plant strutures and the functions of those structures are discussed in the lab. This lab is intended to be used as instructional materials for biology teachers.Within this resource are required lab materials,an introduction to to mosses and their life cycle, an explanation of the life cyels, a moss life cycle diagram to label, and student exercises to assist in content mastery.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Diagram/Illustration, Homework/Assignment, Student Guide
Insert channels in a membrane and see what happens. See how different types of channels allow particles to move through the membrane.
Material Type: Simulation
The Teach the Earth Portal has hundreds of high school through higher ed geoscience educator shared content ranging from low stakes to high stakes undergraduate core level to graduate level resources. More recently, have also added virtual field experiences appropriate for core course to upper division field camp (in response to pandemic necessity for Summer 2020 Field Camp revisioning). Many of the contributions are from members or partners with the National Association for Geoscience Teachers. There is an ongoing review process by professional peers to vet content submitted / aggregated into this portal during the past several decades.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Case Study, Data Set, Diagram/Illustration, Full Course, Game, Homework/Assignment, Interactive, Lecture, Lecture Notes, Lesson, Module, Primary Source, Reading, Simulation, Student Guide, Syllabus, Teaching/Learning Strategy, Textbook, Unit of Study
This is a Botany Laboratory Manual.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Inanimate Life is an open textbook covering a very traditional biological topic, botany, in a non-traditional way. Rather than a phylogenetic approach, going group by group, the book considers what defines organisms and examines four general areas of their biology: structure (their composition and how it comes to be), reproduction (including sex), energy and material needs, and their interactions with conditions and with other organisms. Although much of the text is devoted to vascular plants, the book comparatively considers ‘EBA = everything but animals’ (hence the title): plants, photosynthetic organisms that are not plants (‘algae’, as well as some bacteria and archaebacteria), fungi, and ‘fungal-like’ organisms. The book includes brief ‘fact sheets’ of over fifty organisms/groups that biologists should be aware of, ranging from the very familiar (corn, yeast) to the unfamiliar (bracket fungi, late-blight of potato). These groups reflect the diversity of inanimate life.
Material Type: Textbook
The eBook “Applications of Plant Pathology in Genebank Collections” was developed in part by USDA-ARS and by grant 2020-70003-30930 from the USDA-NIFA-Higher Education Challenge Grant Program. Additional chapters will be added to this eBook when they are available. This eBook contains chapters that can be accessed in any order. Click on “Contents” in the upper left corner and then expand “Main Body” to access chapter titles; scrolling may be necessary to view all chapter titles. Chapters can also be navigated by using arrows at the bottom of each page. Each chapter has text, video and/or interactive content on a single page.
Material Type: Textbook
Biology is designed for multi-semester biology courses for science majors. It is grounded on an evolutionary basis and includes exciting features that highlight careers in the biological sciences and everyday applications of the concepts at hand. To meet the needs of today’s instructors and students, some content has been strategically condensed while maintaining the overall scope and coverage of traditional texts for this course. Instructors can customize the book, adapting it to the approach that works best in their classroom. Biology also includes an innovative art program that incorporates critical thinking and clicker questions to help students understand—and apply—key concepts.
Material Type: Full Course
An integrated course stressing the principles of biology. Life processes are examined primarily at the organismal and population levels. Intended for students majoring in biology or for non-majors who wish to take advanced biology courses.
Material Type: Full Course, Lecture, Syllabus
The BranchED Equity Rubric for OER Evaluation is intended for use by teacher educators to evaluation instructional materials for equity.Grunzke, R.Z., Jiles, T. Mayo, S., Grotewold, K., & Ianniello, P. (2021.) Equity Rubric for OER Evaluation. Branch Alliance for Educator Diversity.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
This resource is a modification of the Washington Models for the Evaluation of Bias Content in Instructional Materials (2009) that is made available through OER Commons under a public domain license. This resource attempts to both update the content with more contemporary vocabulary and also to narrow the scope to evaluating still images as they are found online. It was developed as a secondary project while working on a BranchED OER grant during summer 2020. It includes an attached rubric adapted from the Washington Model (2009).
Material Type: Assessment, Diagram/Illustration, Lesson, Teaching/Learning Strategy
This module was created in response to an observed need by BranchED and the module authors for efforts to increase the recognition, adaptation, and use of open educational resources (OER) among pre- and in-service teachers and the faculty who work in educator preparation programs. The module's purpose is to position teacher educators, teacher candidates and in-service teachers as empowered content creators. By explicitly teaching educators about content that has been licensed for re-use and informing them about their range of options for making their own works available to others, they will gain agency and can make inclusive and equity-minded decisions about curriculum content. The module provides instructional materials, resources, and activities about copyright, fair use, public domain, OER, and visual literacy to provide users with a framework for selecting, modifying, and developing curriculum materials.
Material Type: Module, Unit of Study
Building on the principles explored in Foundations of Intercultural Teaching, this resource introduces educators to educational strategies that can foster more inclusive, equitable, and just classroom environments.
Material Type: Textbook
The Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is releasing this model tool for screening for biased content to Washington districts in the hope that it will provide suggestions and examples for review teams during the instructional materials selection and adoption process.
Material Type: Teaching/Learning Strategy
Why do affluent, liberal, and design-rich cities like Minneapolis have some of the biggest racial disparities in the country? How can designers help to create more equitable communities? Introduction to Design Equity, an open access book for students and professionals, maps design processes and products against equity research to highlight the pitfalls and potentials of design as a tool for building social justice.
Material Type: Full Course, Textbook
