Start with a small, clear scope
The most common mistake in a first attempt is trying to replace everything at once. A more manageable plan is to treat the first term as a pilot: one class, one or two units, and a handful of openly licensed resources. If it goes well, you can extend it. If it does not, the cost is small.
The stages below assume a single teacher with a normal workload. Adjust the timing to your own calendar. Results differ between classrooms, so treat this as a framework to adapt rather than a recipe that guarantees an outcome.
Before term: preparation
Check what you are allowed to do. Find out whether your school or institution has rules about required textbooks, approved materials or curriculum alignment. Some places leave this to the teacher; others do not. Ask early, because the answer shapes everything else.
Choose the unit. Pick a unit that is reasonably self-contained, ideally one you have taught before. Familiarity helps, because you can judge quickly whether a new resource is accurate and pitched at the right level.
Write down what learners should achieve. Clear learning objectives come first. List three to six things a learner should be able to do by the end of the unit. These become your test for every resource you consider.
Learn the basics of licenses. You do not need to be a lawyer, but you should understand what an attribution requirement means and whether a license allows changes. Questions around copyright and licensing are covered in more depth elsewhere. If anything is unclear in your situation, ask your institution or read the license text rather than guessing.
Weeks before term: selecting materials
Search for materials that match your objectives. Guidance on finding open resources is available, and a librarian can often help. As you review items, keep a simple record with the title, creator, source address, license, date and a note on whether you need to modify it.
Useful questions to ask of each item:
- Does it match one of my learning objectives?
- Is it accurate, and is the date reasonable for the subject?
- Is the reading level suitable for these learners?
- Can everyone open it? Consider devices, connections and printing.
- Does it work with assistive tools, for example with proper headings and image descriptions?
The last two questions connect to accessible learning materials. If an item fails the test, you can look for another, or, where the license allows, fix it yourself.
Aim for fewer items than you think you need, and keep a fallback, such as a downloaded file, in case a website is unavailable on the day.
First weeks: introduce it plainly
Tell learners what you are doing and why, in neutral terms. Something like: “For this unit we are using some openly licensed materials. I would like to hear what works and what does not.” This sets the expectation that you are trying something and want honest feedback.
Show learners where everything is and how to cite it. Spend a few minutes on how to tell a reliable source from a poor one, since students will encounter many sources on their own. Skills in information literacy are useful here regardless of how the course materials are supplied.
Keep your normal routines. New materials are enough change for one term.
Middle weeks: teach, observe and adjust
Teach the unit as planned, but watch for signs that something is not working. Typical signals include:
- Questions that suggest a passage is confusing.
- Learners skipping the reading.
- Technical problems with access.
- Material that does not match what you are assessing.
Make small adjustments as you go. If a passage is unclear, add a short explanation or a worked example of your own. If a reading is too long, assign a section. Keep a running log of every change, since you will need it later, and note how long each change took. Time is one of the main costs of this approach, and it is easy to underestimate.
Use short, low-stakes checks, such as a few questions at the start of a lesson. They tell you whether the resources are working without waiting for a formal test, and they link to the research on retrieval practice.
End of term: gather feedback
Ask learners a few specific questions rather than “Did you like it?” For example:
- Which resource helped you most, and which least?
- Was anything hard to access or hard to read?
- What would you change?
Compare what you hear with your own notes and with any assessment results. Be cautious about drawing conclusions. A single class is a small sample, other things changed during the term, and a result in either direction might have other explanations. The point of a pilot is to learn about your own situation, not to prove a general claim.
Review and decide
At the end of term, sit down with your log and sort items into three groups: keep as is, keep with changes, and replace. Record any changes you made to the materials, along with their attribution, so that you or a colleague can reuse them. If you improved something and the license permits sharing, consider whether to share it back, though this is optional and may depend on local policy.
Then decide the next step. Options include repeating the unit with revisions, adding a second unit, or stopping if the approach is not worth the time. All three are reasonable outcomes. Talking it over with a colleague can start the teacher collaboration that makes next term easier.
By the end of the first term, you should have a small, tested set of materials, a log of what you changed, and a realistic sense of the effort involved. That is a more useful result than a polished plan that has never met a class.