Guidelines: The Do's, Don'ts and Don't Knows of Creating Open Educational Resources.

Background: In medical education, there is a growing global demand for Open Educational Resources (OERs). However, OER creators are challenged by a lack of uniform standards. In this guideline, the authors curated the literature on how to produce OERs for medical education with practical guidance on the Do's, Don'ts and Don't Knows for OER creation in order to improve the impact and quality of OERs in medical education.
Methods: We conducted a rapid literature review by searching OVID MEDLINE, EMBASE, and Cochrane Central database using keywords "open educational resources" and "OER". The search was supplemented by hand searching the identified articles' references. We organized included articles by theme and extracted relevant content. Lastly, we developed recommendations via an iterative process of peer review and discussion: evidence-based best practices were designated Do's and Don'ts while gaps were designated Don't Knows. We used a consensus process to quantify evidentiary strength.
Results: The authors performed full text analysis of 81 eligible studies. A total of 15 Do's, Don't, and Don't Knows guidelines were compiled and presented alongside relevant evidence about OERs.
Discussion: OERs can add value for medical educators and their learners, both as tools for expanding teaching opportunities and for promoting medical education scholarship. This summary should guide OER creators in producing high-quality resources and pursuing future research where best practices are lacking.
Competing Interests: FK, MW, MRCH, MB, DKT, and YMK have no conflicts to declare. YY is the recipient of the TUBITAK Postdoctoral Fellowship grant. BT has received stipends from the University of Saskatchewan for teaching and research and the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons for teaching and administrative work. TMC reports an honoraria and a research grant from McMaster University for her education research work with the McMaster Education Research, Innovation, and Theory (MERIT) group and administrative stipend for her role of associate dean via the McMaster Faculty of Health Sciences Office of Continuing Professional Development. She also discloses that she has received various grants from governmental sources (Government of Ontario, Virtual Learning Strategy eCampus Ontario program).
(Copyright: © 2023 The Author(s).)