This session explores engaging experienced undergraduate students as peer reviewers of Open Educational Resources (OER). With training, rubrics, and instructor guidance, students gain professional development, enhance academic portfolios, and contribute to the continuous improvement of high-quality, accessible learning materials through open pedagogy.

This session explores an innovative model for incorporating undergraduates into the curation and peer review of Open Educational Resources (OER) through a structured, highly supervised process. Presenters will share methods for training students, guiding them through OER evaluation, and supporting their professional development while advancing the continuous improvement of openly available materials. The session will also introduce attendees to MERLOT peer review requirements and demonstrate how student training aligns with those standards. Presenters will share adaptable rubrics and survey instruments used with students, along with insights from student feedback on professional growth and evidence of learning.

Accessibility, affordability, and innovation at the forefront of conversations about the future of education. OER respond directly to these challenges, but they depend on ongoing review and revision to ensure materials remain accurate, high-quality, and up to date.
Incorporating undergraduates into this process provides a novel solution while advancing the principles of open pedagogy. Moreover, the session speaks directly to the conference themes of vision and innovation. Student engagement in OER peer review reimagines who holds expertise and who can contribute to scholarly review, while improving quality and accessibility of OER materials to learners world-wide.

Traditionally, peer review of OER has been reserved for faculty or disciplinary experts. This session demonstrates how undergraduates, when carefully selected, trained, and supervised, can play a meaningful role in this process. By engaging undergraduates in OER peer review, educators achieve several goals at once:
• Strengthening the OER ecosystem: Students provide fresh perspectives on usability, clarity, and accessibility, improving the quality of openly available resources.
• Developing student skills: Through structured training and mentoring, students sharpen critical thinking, disciplinary expertise, and professional communication while contributing to authentic scholarly work.
• Advancing open pedagogy: This practice embodies the principles of open pedagogy, moving students from consumers of knowledge to active participants in knowledge creation and reliability.

The importance of this panel is twofold: First, attendees will see how peer review of OER can be integrated into coursework or capstone experiences in ways that align with both disciplinary outcomes and broader to commitments authentic assessment, engagement, equity, and access. Second, the session highlights a replicable, sustainable model for OER improvement that distributes responsibility across faculty, students, and the community.

This session is designed to engage participants through examples, discussion, and resource sharing. Presenters will:
1. Introduce Peer Review Standards for MERLOT
o Attendees will learn about MERLOT’s requirements for peer review, including criteria and expectations for reviewers.
o Presenters will demonstrate how student training is designed to align with these professional standards.
2. Share Adaptable Guides, Rubrics and Surveys
o Ideas for guiding student engagement with peer review will be provided, including objectives, outcomes, and instructions, providing educators with resources to integrate student participation into their courses or programs.
o The rubrics used to guide student peer review will be provided, illustrating how disciplinary accuracy, clarity, accessibility, and pedagogical alignment can be assessed.
o Surveys and reflection prompts used to gather student feedback will also be shared, offering insight into how students perceive their growth through the process.
3. Facilitate Discussion on Application
o Attendees will reflect on how they might integrate supervised student participation in peer review within their own contexts.
o Presenters will encourage attendees to identify potential benefits and challenges, sparking dialogue on implementation strategies across disciplines.
o Polls (either Poll Everywhere or Zoom polls) will be used to encourage participation in discussion.

This approach ensures that attendees leave not only with conceptual understanding but also with practical tools to adapt for their own teaching and programmatic needs.
By the end of this session, attendees will leave with the following takeaways:

1. Knowledge of MERLOT peer review process and how student participation can align with professional standards.
2. Concrete strategies for training and supervising students in peer review.
3. Insights into the student experience, drawn from surveys and student reflections.
4. Replicable resources, including student assignments, rubrics and surveys that can be tailored to different disciplines.

Medora Huseby, Ph.D.

Associate Professor at Colorado State University-Fort Collins

Michael Plotkin

Associate Professor and Dept. Chair of Biological Sciences SJC at Mt. San Jacinto College

Jim Bidlack

Professor of Biology at University of Central Oklahoma