There are three ways in which instructors can work with Open Educational Resources. These three ways are as follows:

• Adopt -- use an OER as is to replace high-cost materials
• Adapt -- based on class contexts, combine multiple OER (and add original open content)
• Author -- publish and license your own work as OER

• Best Practices for Attribution

  Check out this wiki entry on best practices to provide an attribution statement for items using a work published under a Creative Commons license.

Adopting an OER allows you to provide your students an alternative to expensive textbooks. The steps below will help you adopt an OER.  

1. Search for the appropriate textbooks for your course. (Browse the OER repositories section and search for openly licensed textbooks).
2. Review and evaluate the textbooks based on the content and whether it suits your teaching style and your students. 
3. Decide if you want to use the textbook as is, edit, or modify the contents. If you want to make edits make sure the licensing allows that (see subsequent sections on Creative Commons Licenses). 
4. Share with your students.

It is highly recommended to take a look at the Adoption Guide: A reference for instructors, institutions, and students on adopting open textbooks

Before adapting/editing an OER, specifically an open textbook, consider the below questions. The answers to these questions will give you insights on the level of effort involved in modifying an open textbook.

Questions about the textbook:

• In what file format(s) is the open textbook currently available?
• How much content needs to be changed: a few sentences or entire chapters?
• Do illustrations, graphs, or charts need to be changed?

Questions about your resources and plans:

• How comfortable are you with technology? Do you have access to software or other help you may need?
• Is it important that your version of the textbook be available in multiple formats?
• Do you plan to share your adapted textbook only with your students or with a wider audience?

It is highly recommended that you read MODIFYING AN OPEN TEXTBOOK: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW from Open Textbook Network, before adapting a textbook.