OER Checklist with help links
OER Creation Checklist
If you have additional questions about how to accomplish anything in this checklist, please contact the OpenLab Community Team at openlab@citytech.cuny.edu. If you have questions related to course materials, attribution, and intellectual property and/or copyright please contact Cailean at ccooney@citytech.cuny.edu.
Site Structure
- Site Title and Tagline
- Have you changed the default tagline (“Just another OpenLab Site”)? The tagline should sum up the site in a few words (e.g. “An OER for Introduction to Sociology”) and can be changed in Dashboard > Settings > General.)
- Header images
- Have you uploaded a header image that is different from the default header?
- Have you provided attribution for the header image?
- Homepage
- Have you set up a homepage that orients students to the site?
- Menu/Navigation
- Have you set up a custom menu?
- Are your menu labels short, succinct, and readily understandable to students?
- Does your menu contain the minimum number of items possible?
- If you use dropdowns in your menu, have you included links to all dropdown items on the top-level page?
- Widgets
- Have you edited the sidebar widgets from the default?
License and Attribution
- Does all content on your site comply with intellectual property law and permission guidelines?
- Are authorship and licensing permissions prominently displayed on your site?
- Do all images used on your site include attribution?
Usability and Accessibility
- Have you reviewed the Best Practices for Accessibility on the OpenLab document?
- Have you added alt text to all your images?
- Are you using headings effectively for easier scanning and accessibility?
- Are you “chunking” the content on your site, for easier reading and scanning?
- Have you made sure text and images on your site have a high color contrast ratio for visibility and readability?
- Have you chosen a theme and organized your site so that it is accessible to people using different kinds of devices?
Openness
- Have you made your site open/public?
This checklist by Andrew McKinney, Bree Zuckerman, and Cailean Cooney is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
