Case 2: OER Commons
This is one example of how you can investigate if someone else already has produced the educational material you need.
Harold wants to find teaching material for his course on blood diseases. He needs an exercise for his lesson and does not have time right now to create his own. Harold believes that there should be material available online, preferably a case that students can work actively with.
Harold tries to find a few open digital learning resources and starts by searching OER Commons, which allows teachers to do a refined search for educational materials located on its database.
On the first page of OER Commons he is given several possible ways of filtering his search. In the search box at the left, he enters the term anemia and chooses a subject area and educational level, in his case College/Upper Division.
Harold sees four different results. " A Case of Iron Deficiency Anemia " looks interesting, so he clicks on Conditions of Use to read the fine print about what permissions are available for this material. He learns that while the teaching notes and test questions are not available, he may download the actual case as a pdf to use and share with students.
The case itself covers the objectives for the lesson, which are about iron deficiency, causes and treatment. He decides that the teaching notes are unnecessary and that the case will suit his needs for the lesson.