Advanced Users — full OER workflow for users who want more control, deeper review, or curriculum-level planning. Librarians, OER leads, curriculum developers, and program reviewers can use these tools to review sources, inspect scoring, compare candidates, support course teams, and document adoption pathways.
OER Navigator matches open educational resources to UFV Social Sciences courses, so faculty start from their syllabus instead of searching external repositories.
Built by Wade Deisman, UFV criminology faculty. Supports UFV's Open Education Strategy and the Open Education In-Action Initiative.
Example OER Match - SOC 101 - Introduction to Sociology
Introduction to Sociology 3e
Strong match
OpenStaxCC BYReliability Rating: High
Best use: Core textbook replacement or chapter-level reading.
Why this matched: Covers introductory sociological concepts, social institutions, inequality, research methods, and contemporary social issues.
OER Navigator supports discovery and comparison. Faculty make the adoption decision. Licence, accessibility, quality, and pedagogical fit remain matters of professional judgment.
Guided pathway:
Find options for your course by entering a course code, topic, or keyword. Save candidates as you go — then compare, export, or use them to build a reading list.
1. DISCOVER:
Local Catalogue SearchExternal AI Leads (unverified — optional)
📚 Course Lookup
— select any UFV Social Sciences course to find matching OER
🏫 What Peer Institutions Are Using — BCcampus Adoption Finder (reference only)
📋 Search Using the Official Course Outline
— paste or upload the institution's official course outline document (not your personal syllabus)
Uploaded documents are not stored. Saved OER decisions may be stored so your lists persist. Do not upload student records or confidential information.
Uploaded documents are not stored. Saved OER decisions may be stored so your lists persist. Do not upload student records or confidential information.
🔍 Keyword Search
📄 Upload or Paste Course Outline
Uploaded documents are not stored. Saved OER decisions may be stored so your lists persist. Do not upload student records or confidential information.
Uploaded documents are not stored. Saved OER decisions may be stored so your lists persist. Do not upload student records or confidential information.
🔁 Substitution Search
— name the textbook you currently assign; find an open substitute
📖 Chapter-by-Chapter OER Mapper
— breaks your current textbook into chapters, finds an OER match for each
Enter the textbook you currently use. If AI-assisted chapter mapping is enabled,
the system will generate the chapter breakdown automatically. Otherwise, paste your table of
contents below — one chapter per line.
Uploaded documents and pasted text are not stored. Saved OER decisions may be stored so your lists persist. Do not upload student records or confidential information.
🤖 AI Discovery Leads
— Claude searches the live web for OER beyond the local catalogue
⚠ AI Discovery Leads are exploratory suggestions, not catalogue results. Claude searches the live web for OER beyond the local catalogue. Leads link to pages found at the moment of your search, but they remain unreviewed — confirm licence, availability, accessibility, and course fit before adopting.
🗂 Browse — OER Library
Save candidates as you search, then compare them, export them, or use them to build a reading list. Need the full workflow?
Review the resources you've saved. Check how well each one fits your course, how reliable it is, and what it does and doesn't cover. Narrow your Long List down to a Short List of your strongest candidates.
2. EVALUATE:
📋 My Long List
— every candidate you've saved, rejected, or flagged across all searches in this browser
Click ✓ Add to my long list on any result card to add it here. Once you've narrowed things down, use → Promote to move a resource
on to your .
Use ↩ Remove on any row to clear a decision and put a resource back into play.
No saved resources yet.
📝 My Short List
— candidates you've narrowed down from your Long List
Promote resources here from your
.
When you've made your final call on a resource, promote it again to your
.
No saved resources yet.
🧪 Evaluate a resource for a stated purpose
Identify an OER resource (by title, URL, or catalogue ID) and describe the course context
or purpose you have in mind. You'll get a combined fit + reliability rating verdict with the reasoning spelled out.
📋 Evaluate a reading collection against a syllabus
Paste your course outline and list the readings you've already compiled. You'll get a
gap analysis: well-covered outcomes, thin spots, missing topics, redundancy flags, and
a licence/reliability rating summary across the whole collection.
Uploaded documents and pasted text are not stored. Saved OER decisions may be stored so your lists persist. Do not upload student records or confidential information.
Uploaded documents and pasted text are not stored. Saved OER decisions may be stored so your lists persist. Do not upload student records or confidential information.
Bring your shortlisted resources together and assess them as a whole. Do a gap analysis to see what's well covered, what's thin, and what's missing. Then build a Course Reader — a structured, exportable collection with citations — to organize everything into a unified whole.
3. CONSOLIDATE:
Make your final selections and confirm your adoption decision. Promote your strongest candidates to the Final List, then generate a one-page scan report to share with colleagues, your librarian, or a curriculum committee.
4. ADOPT:
✅ My Final List
— your final, adopted selection
This is what feeds the
.
Promote resources here from your
once you've made your final decision.
No saved resources yet.
Export your work and prepare it for Brightspace. Direct LMS integration is planned for Phase 2; today you can download practical files and import or post them yourself.
⬇ Export & Brightspace preparation
Direct Brightspace integration is planned for Phase 2. Current export options:
PDF export — use the Course Reader Builder (Step 3 — Consolidate) to generate a PDF with APA/MLA citations, suitable for posting directly to Brightspace as a course document.
Brightspace import package — Course Reader Builder can export an IMS Common Cartridge package (.imscc) for manual Brightspace import.
Link sharing — each OER resource has a direct URL; these can be added to a Brightspace content module individually.
Contact your library — the library can assist with adding open resource links to course reserves or Brightspace modules.
Stay current. Once you've adopted resources for a course, Refresh keeps you informed as new OER becomes available in your subject areas — so you can refresh your reading lists without starting the whole discovery process again. Choose your interests and how often you'd like to hear from us.
🔄 How Refresh works
The catalogue is continuously updated with new open educational resources from
BCcampus, OpenStax, LibreTexts, OER Commons, and other trusted repositories.
When new resources arrive in your subject areas, you receive a digest
— a curated, reliability rating-based list — at the cadence you choose.
Monthly — new resources each month that match your interests
Semi-annual — a richer digest every six months
Annual — one comprehensive yearly update
Digests include: resource title, source, licence, reliability rating, and a plain-language
description — the same information you see in the main search results, formatted for email.
📬 Subscribe to OER Refresh
The full subscription form opens in its own window. You can select
one or more of the 13 Social Sciences subject areas and choose your preferred frequency.
🎓 Getting resources into Brightspace
Course Reader packages can be imported into your Brightspace course as content modules.
Download the package from Course Reader Builder and import it via
Brightspace → Course Admin → Import/Export/Copy Components → Import Components.
Direct Brightspace integration (no manual import) is planned for a future phase
and requires institutional configuration. Contact your library or OER support
contact for updates.