OER for Health Science: Next Step After Core Curriculum Subjects

Currently, Open Educational Resources (OER) development focuses on core curriculum subjects. After completing the core curriculum, students must pursue upperclassman subjects to complete the bachelor's degree. Many professions in health science require graduate degrees to be certified as allied health professionals. The demand for OER is high to reduce these many years of higher education costs in various health science majors. In contrast, the supply of OER in these areas is limited. My co-authors and I developed three OER textbooks since the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic in 2020. The books include "remix" portions, and therefore, we did not write everything from scratch. In addition, I received TWU's OER mini-grants to develop these books for three different courses in the Department of Communication Sciences and Oral Health (CSOH). This presentation will discuss the key points to design, organize, refine, compile, and publish OER materials for health science disciplines in two publicly available digital libraries, namely, OER Common (national-level) and OERTX (state-level). This presentation will also introduce available OER resources that allow "remix" and some format choices for OER materials.