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BackgroundOpen Educational Resources (OERs) help instructors create innovative lessons and foster cost-effective and equitable access to educational materials. As more instructors turn to OERs to enhance their courses, there is a growing demand for the creation of more lesson plans. MethodsTo increase the number of high-quality OERs in undergraduate biology and physics, the journalCourseSourceintroduced Writing Studios to assist educators in writing and publishing OERs. Over a period of 5 years, 188 attendees participated in one of 11 different Writing Studios in which they followed a scaffolded worksheet to help draft their OER and engaged in peer review with partners. Attendees completed surveys before and after participation, and we tracked whether or not they published their manuscripts. ResultsWe found that 38.8% of attendees shared their OERs through aCourseSourcepublication. Several characteristics predicted OER sharing through publication such as format of the workshop and attendee’s type of institution. Participants also described a variety of supports and barriers that impacted their ability to publish as well as possible long-term supports that would help bring resources to publication. DiscussionThis study highlights the importance of ongoing support and tailored strategies to facilitate the sharing of OERs. The findings can benefit instructors and professional development leaders who are committed to increasing the number of high-quality resources that are available. 

With the onset of COVID-19, colleges and universities moved to emergency remote teaching, and instructors immediately adjusted their curricula. Many instructors adapted or developed new online lessons that they subsequently published as Open Educational Resources (OERs). While much has been examined related to how entire course designs evolved during this period, the same attention has not been paid to how individual lessons were structured to meet online learners’ needs. As such, we evaluated OER lessons for the integration of universal design for learning (UDL) guidelines and active learning strategies. We evaluated OER lessons published in CourseSource, which is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on biology lessons implemented in undergraduate classrooms and provides the necessary details and supporting materials to replicate the lesson. We found that biology instructors used a variety of UDL guidelines and active learning strategies to encourage student learning and engagement in online teaching environments. This study also provides a collection of OER online lessons that instructors and educational developers can use to inform the practice of engaging biology students.