In collaboration with leaders from the Open Education Resources (OER) community, Achieve has developed eight rubrics to help states, districts, teachers, and other users determine the degree of alignment of OERs to the Common Core State Standards and determine aspects of their quality. The rubrics represent an evaluation system for objects found within OERs. An object could include images, applets, lessons, units, assessments, and more. For purposes of the evaluation, any component that can exist as a stand-alone tool qualifies as an object. The rubrics in the suite can be applied across content areas and object types. In general, the rubrics should be applied to the smallest meaningful unit. In some cases, this may be a single-lesson or instructional support material, while in others it might be a complete unit of study or set of support materials.
These rubrics seem extremely helpful in determining the quality and alignment of Open Education Resources. While every object may not need to be considered in relation to every rubric, some may benefit from this thorough examination. While the directions say to use the smallest stand-alone unit as the subject of analysis, this may pose a problem when looking at standards’ alignment with individual lessons. Full alignment is described as addressing an entire standard, yet often a standard is too large of a grain size for a single lesson. In this situation, it may be more helpful to consider a suite of lessons that address a standard in its entirely when using the standards alignment rubric. Along with the rubrics, this website offers a variety of training materials.