6. Sharing and Publishing OER

🎯 Learning Outcomes	📍 Guiding Questions
Prepare OER so they can be understood and used without additional explanation Choose an appropriate license for your materials Select platforms and formats that support access and reuse Document materials clearly to support discovery and adaptation Make practical decisions about when materials are ready to share	When are your materials ready to share? What license should you choose for your materials? Where should you publish, and in what format? What information do others need to reuse your work? How do you make your materials findable?

Your materials work for your training. Now the question shifts: can someone else use them?

There is a gap between materials that work for you and materials that work for others. You know your sequencing logic, context, and how an activity flows — but this knowledge is not visible to someone encountering your work for the first time. A facilitator browsing a repository needs to quickly understand what a resource is, who it is for, and how to use it. If those questions require detective work, they will move on.

This lesson is about closing that gap — through documentation, licensing, format choices, and platform decisions that make your work genuinely shareable.

Why this matters¶

Creating or adapting materials is only part of the work. If those materials remain tied to your own delivery — dependent on your explanations, your sequencing, and your context — their usefulness stops with you. This builds directly on the decisions you made in earlier lessons about what to reuse, adapt, or create.

Sharing is what turns individual materials into resources that others can use, adapt, and build on. It is the step where your work becomes part of a wider body of knowledge, rather than something that only works in your own setting.

However, sharing is not simply a matter of uploading files. Materials that are not clearly documented, are difficult to edit, or are published where your intended audience will not find them are effectively unusable, even if they are openly licensed.

Sharing also has real costs. Preparing materials so others can use them takes time, and it can feel uncomfortable to share work that is not perfect. You may also need to balance openness with organisational expectations or resource constraints. The goal is not to remove these tensions, but to make deliberate decisions about what is realistic to share and when.

In many cases, “ready enough to be useful” is a more realistic goal than “fully complete.”

The aim is not to share everything, perfectly. It is to make deliberate choices about what to share, how to share it, and what level of effort is justified — so that your materials can be used beyond your immediate context without creating unnecessary work for you.

Choosing a license for your materials¶

In Lesson 3, you learned how Creative Commons licenses work and what each condition (BY, SA, NC, ND) means. Now you need to choose one for your own materials. This is a design choice, not a legal formality — the license you pick shapes who can use your work and how far it can travel.

The decision comes down to one question: how open do you want to be?

For training materials, CC BY is usually the right choice. It allows anyone to reuse, adapt, and redistribute your work as long as they credit you — maximising reach with no barriers. If you want adaptations to remain open on the same terms, CC BY-SA achieves that. Adding NC (NonCommercial) or ND (NoDerivatives) restrictions significantly limits who can use your work; ND in particular undermines the core value of open training materials, since it prevents the localisation and adaptation that make resources genuinely useful.

When in doubt, choose CC BY

CC BY is the default for materials intended to have the widest possible impact. It removes barriers to reuse while still ensuring you receive credit.

One constraint to check: if you adapted materials from other sources, their licenses may limit your options. CC BY-SA source material, for example, requires your version to carry the same license. Review your source licenses before finalising your own.

Preparing materials for others¶

Checking readiness¶

In Lesson 5, you applied the "stranger test" — writing materials that someone in a different context could follow without your help. Now apply that same lens one more time, specifically for sharing. Work through your materials and ask:

Can someone follow the instructions without you in the room? Where would a new facilitator need to improvise or guess?
Is the purpose of each component clear? Not just what to do, but why?
Are prerequisites stated? What must learners know, have, or have completed beforehand?
Is anything still in your head? Verbal context, on-the-fly adjustments, delivery notes — if it matters, write it down.

Ready enough is ready

The most common reason materials are never shared is waiting until they feel complete. They will not. Share when materials are clear enough to be useful, and plan to improve them based on how they are actually used. A first version with rough edges is more valuable than a polished version that never leaves your hard drive.

Adding documentation¶

Documentation is the context that makes your materials usable by strangers. At minimum, include:

Purpose and learning outcomes — what the materials are designed to achieve
Intended audience — who the materials are for, including assumed background and skill level
Instructions for use — how to use the materials, including sequencing, timing, and any preparation needed
Assumptions and requirements — what tools, access, or prior knowledge is needed
License and attribution — your chosen license and credits for any adapted materials
Adaptation guidance (if relevant) — notes on how the materials can be localised or translated, including which elements are intended to be replaced
Attribution — attribution should not be buried; make it easy for others to see what you built on

Place this documentation where users will find it. A README file in a repository, an introductory section in a document, or a metadata page on a platform all work. The key is that someone should not have to open and read every file to understand what the collection contains and how to use it.

Choosing formats and platforms¶

How you format and publish your materials determines not only whether others can access them, but whether they can adapt and reuse them effectively. These are practical decisions, not afterthoughts.

Format for access¶

The format you choose determines whether others can actually adapt your work — not just read it.

Share in editable formats (Word, Markdown, Google Docs, LaTeX source). If you share only a PDF, you are technically allowing adaptation but practically making it very difficult. The accessibility principles from Lesson 5 — structured headings, alt text, clear language — also matter here, because they determine whether your materials work across devices, screen readers, and low-bandwidth settings.

PDF is not an open format

PDF is useful for final, fixed-layout documents, but it is not ideal as a primary sharing format for OER. It is difficult to edit and does not adapt well to different screen sizes. If you share a PDF, also provide an editable source file.

Platform for purpose¶

Where you publish depends on who you want to reach and how you expect materials to be used.

Institutional repositories (your university's or organisation's open access platform) provide permanence and discoverability within academic systems. Good for materials you want to be citable.

Domain repositories like Zenodo provide DOIs (persistent identifiers) and are designed for research outputs including training materials. Useful when you want a citable, permanent reference.

Code and content platforms like GitHub support versioning, collaboration, and community contributions. Well-suited for materials that will evolve over time, especially technical training.

Open platforms like OER Commons are designed specifically for educational resources, with metadata fields that support discovery by other educators.

Your own website or blog gives you full control and immediate accessibility, but lacks the discoverability and permanence of repositories.

There is no single correct choice. You can publish in multiple places — a primary version on GitHub with a citable snapshot on Zenodo, for example. Choose based on where your intended audience is most likely to look.

Making materials findable¶

Even well-prepared materials are useless if no one can find them. Help potential users discover your work:

Consistent naming and structure — use clear file names and organisation so others can navigate your materials easily
Clear, descriptive titles — "Introduction to Qualitative Data Analysis: Workshop Materials for Community Health Researchers" is findable; "Module 3 Materials" is not
Keywords and tags — use terms your audience would search for, including discipline, level, method, and format
A clear summary — a 2–3 sentence description that tells someone what the materials are, who they are for, and what they cover
Context for use — a note about the setting the materials were designed for, which helps others judge relevance

Where possible, use simple, consistent structures and formats so others can combine your materials with their own. Even small choices — clear headings, consistent file naming, and standard formats — make it easier for your work to be reused alongside other resources.

In practice¶

👉 Use Activity 14: OER Workflow — prepare your materials for sharing

Work through Section 5 (Prepare for Sharing). Document what you will share, in what format, with what license, on what platform, and with what documentation.

what to do: Prepare at least one set of materials for sharing — add documentation, choose a license, select a format and platform, and ensure the materials can be used without your explanation
focus sections: 5 (Prepare for Sharing)
expected output: Materials ready to share, with documentation, license, and a plan for where and how to publish
approximate time: 20–30 minutes

👉 Come back to Activity 9: Practice & Feedback Plan

what to do: Identify where someone using your materials might need clarification or support. Use this to refine your documentation — if you can anticipate where a facilitator would struggle, address it in the materials rather than leaving it to chance.
expected output: Refined documentation informed by anticipating how others will use your materials
approximate time: 10–15 minutes

Before you move on¶

You should now have:

materials that can be used without your explanation
a chosen license applied to your materials
clear documentation (purpose, audience, instructions, assumptions, attribution)
a decision about format and platform for sharing
materials that are findable (clear title, keywords, summary)

In the next lesson, you will plan how to sustain and improve your materials over time as they are used in real contexts.