Choosing the Right Tools for Your OER

When you are outfitting your pack for a long trail, every item needs a purpose. The same is true when choosing tools for your OER. Each tool you add is something you and your learners will carry through the learning journey, so it is worth selecting tools that are useful, dependable, and well-suited to the path ahead – not just added weight. In this chapter, you’ll be given a variety of lenses to help you evaluate the tools you are considering. First, we’ll begin by looking at those tools through a model that helps you consider who will use the tool and how it will be used. Then, we’ll look at those tools again through the lenses of accessibility, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), engagement, student privacy, and sustainability. The chapter closes with a reflective practice to help guide and align your own choice of tools.

Start with the Learning Objectives, Not the Tool

Whether you are designing a course or an OER, the tools and technologies you choose should be aligned with and support your learners toward achieving your learning objectives^[1][2]. When designing your OER, it can be tempting to start with a tool you found because it looks useful or fun, but tools work best when they are chosen in service of the learning objective. For example, an instructor might discover an impressive interactive timeline tool and want to add it to a chapter, but if the learning objective is for students to compare two theories, a simple comparison chart or guided discussion prompt may support that goal more directly. Before choosing a tool, first consider what learners need to do, and then choose the tool that best supports that work.

The TCoP Model for Tool Choice

As you are considering how to use these tools, consider also who might use them. While we typically think about the instructor as the one using the tools, many of these tools could be used by the student, too. The Technology Consumer or Producer (TCoP model)^[3] is a proactive, helpful tool as you are planning your instruction and potential Open Pedagogy options.

The TCoP model asks you to consider both

• Who is using the technology?
• How are they using it?

Thinking through both questions can help you move beyond choosing tools just because they are available and instead choose them because they fit your instructional purpose.

Select the arrows for explanation and examples of each situation.

As you continue through this chapter, consider how technology and tools might be used and who might use them, while remaining thoughtful about the tool itself.

Evaluate the Tool Through Accessibility and UDL

Once you have identified the role a tool might play, the next step is to evaluate whether it is a good choice for your learners. Though a tool might help students meet a learning objective and prove useful for some students, consider whether all of your learners can actually use it.  As you look for and explore potential tools, take a beat to ask:

• Will this work for students using a screen reader?
• Is there a cost involved for learners?
• Will it work on all devices?

These and other questions will help guide you in deciding whether the tool is a good choice. You will want to review the accessibility of any tool before deciding to use it. We have provided you with guides to the three main tools covered in this chapter, but you will want to review any other tool’s accessibility before deciding to use it. See Clearing the Trail: Accessibility for more on ensuring your OER is accessible.

• • Pressbooks Accessibility 
  • H5P Accessibility
  • Hypothes.is Accessibility

Accessibility is one part of this decision-making process. Another is designing with learner variability in mind.

Universal Design for Learning, or UDL, is based on the understanding that all learners vary and that there is no “average” student. Since we cannot plan for every variability of every learner, UDL focuses on designing, developing, and delivering curriculum with built-in options that help reduce barriers and support learners more equitably. By designing curriculum that works for all learners, the learning environment becomes more equitable, accessible, and inclusive for all diverse student populations.

“UDL is really just ‘plus-one’ thinking. For every interaction that learners have now, with the materials, with each other, with instructors, and with the wider world, provide one more way for that interaction to happen.” –Thomas Tobin

UDL does not require you to apply every guideline, checkpoint, or strategy at once. Instead, start by identifying one current challenge and adding one more support, one more option, or one more pathway for learning. That one addition might be a transcript for a video, a text alternative to a visual, a reflective prompt, or a second way for students to engage with the content. That is enough to begin.

Engagement with Purpose

Since engaging learners is so important^[5], we want to be sure the tools we choose support engagement. At the same time, we want to do so with wisdom. Not every piece of content needs to be interactive, or we risk distracting or overwhelming our learners^[6]. A good tool does not simply add activity to the page, but instead, it helps learners think, practice, apply, reflect, connect, or create.

One useful way to think about engagement is through Moore’s three types of interaction^[7]: 

Select the arrow next to each interaction type to get practical ways to implement each in an OER. 

For OER creators, the goal is not to include every kind of interaction, but to be deliberate about which kind belongs where. A self-check, an annotation activity, and a reflection prompt each support different kinds of learning work.

Evaluate Student Privacy and Data Practices

Choose tools that ask for the least amount of student data necessary to do the learning work. If a simpler, lower-data option can meet the same learning objective, that is often the better choice.

When choosing a tool for your OER, take a moment to look beyond what the tool can do and consider what the tool does with student data. Some tools collect more information than you might expect, including names, email addresses, usage patterns, uploaded work, location data, or interactions that can be analyzed over time. In some cases, tools may also retain rights over uploaded or generated content, or change their policies as new AI features are introduced.^[8]

Before asking students to use a tool, read the fine print. Look for the tool’s privacy policy, terms of service, and copyright or ownership language. Ask questions such as:

• What student data does this tool collect?
• Is student account creation required?
• Can students use the tool without sharing unnecessary personal information?
• Does the company retain, reuse, or sell user data?
• Does the tool use student inputs to train AI systems or improve its products?
• Who owns the content students create there?
• Does your institution already provide guidance or approved alternatives?

Research on digital rights and responsibility in education has emphasized that educational technologies raise important questions about privacy, data security, awareness, and governance, and that institutions and educators need clearer guidance and stronger data protections.^[9] If a tool collects more data than is necessary for the learning task, requires students to surrender rights to their work, or makes its policies difficult to understand, it may not be the right choice, even if it is engaging or convenient.

Evaluate the Tool Through Sustainability

Besides ensuring the tools we choose are accessible and engaging, we have one more thing to consider: the sustainability of our tools. A tool may be exciting and useful, but it may not be the best long-term choice if it is difficult to revise, maintain, or includes environmental costs. In the Planning for Sustainable Growth chapter, we take a closer look at sustainability and how it can guide your decisions about tools and technologies in OER design.

Choose the Simplest Tool That Fits the Purpose

The goal is not to use the most impressive tool. The goal is to use the tool that best supports learning without adding unnecessary barriers, distraction, or maintenance.

After thinking through the learning objective, the TCoP model, accessibility, UDL, engagement, privacy, and sustainability, you may find that several tools could work. When that happens, choose the simplest tool that fits the purpose.

Sometimes a short reading prompt, a well-placed image, a structured textbox, or a simple H5P activity will do the work more effectively than a more complex tool. The goal is not to use the most impressive tool. The goal is to use the tool that best supports learning without adding unnecessary barriers, distraction, or maintenance.

In other words, choose tools thoughtfully. Let the learning objective lead. Let TCoP help you think through who is using the tool and how. Then use accessibility, UDL, engagement, and sustainability to decide whether the tool is truly a good fit.