1. Vision: Establish a clear vision statement to promote and guide digital content development, review, and use, grounded in an unwavering commitment to quality, accuracy, and accessibility, including alignment to college- and career-ready standards. Communicate that vision to all stakeholders. State and district leaders should adopt a public strategy for the development, review, and use of quality digital materials in classrooms and should communicate that vision to educators, school leaders, students, content-creators, and other stakeholders, emphasizing digital content’s role in promoting student success. To support implementation of this vision, and build confidence in digital materials, states and districts must effectively communicate with the public and all stakeholders about their commitment to ensuring digital content quality, including being transparent about the strategies that will be used to ensure that only quality digital materials are used in the classroom.

2. Leadership: Designate experienced state and district leaders to lead quality assurance policy development and oversight, and also empower practitioners, such as curriculum experts, professional learning specialists, content experts, technology leaders and other stakeholders with supporting implementation strategies for ensuring digital materials quality. This step must include investing in stakeholders’ capacity—at all levels—to execute the state or district’s digital content quality assurance strategy, including establishing classroom evaluation and performance templates/protocols, complemented by feedback loops designed to lead to timely content improvements and updates.Quality assessment of digital instructional materials, including OER, should be formalized at the state or district level and then be embedded in the education enterprise as a central exercise of educators and school leaders. This step includes establishing a robust process that enables the assessment of digital materials through different approaches and at various levels—with options for self-assessment, peer (and student) review, quality branding, and benchmarking or rating systems. States and districts should determine the goals and objectives of their digital quality assurance work at the outset (see recommendation 1) and then select relevant and representative stakeholders who can lead and execute the quality assurance process.

3. Guidance: Provide rich guidance describing the characteristics of sound digital content quality assurance systems, such as developing and acknowledging tools and uniform state or local indicators and standards, and advancing an inclusive, not exclusive, approach to quality review.States and districts should develop and provide educators with guidance about how to ensure the quality of digital instructional materials, including OER. As described above, many of the standards and indicators traditionally used by states and districts to assess instructional materials can and should be included in a quality assessment of digital resources.

For example, broad standards and specific quality measures to consider include the following:

• Content quality: accuracy; alignment to standards; contemporary; comprehensiveness, organization, and pacing;and representation of diverse cultural, gender, and linguistic backgrounds
• Pedagogical quality: cognitive considerations—types of tasks, challenge, and learning outcomes; accessibility for varying student needs; and motivational strategies
• Resources quality: separate materials to support teacher planning and presenting subject matter, assessments, and technological interactivity
• Technological quality: accessibility, usability, interoperability across systems and platforms; and appropriate open licensing

When developing guidance on how to assess digital quality, states and districts should avoid overly prohibitive approaches with respect to digital content, in which any content that does not meet a specific mark is barred from the classroom. Digital content can be updated and altered for different teaching styles and to reflect unique student needs and interests at any time.

4. Professional Learning: Support educator preparation and professional learning opportunities focused on skills for the quality assessment of digital materials. States and districts, and educator preparation programs should provide educators with professional learning opportunities on how to select and use digital instructional materials and integrate them into their classrooms. A key focus of such courses and workshops should be on the skills and strategies needed to assess the quality of digital materials against state standards and local needs and expectations.

These types of professional learning opportunities could be led and facilitated by highly experienced teachers and other educators who are skilled in the use of digital materials, particularly to the degree they are experienced at creating, using, and modifying OER. Professional learning activities for (and by) educators not only are useful for formal quality reviews supported by the state or district in which materials are of cially vetted. They also will empower teachers and other educators to vet available digital materials independently, as the need arises, in order to identify resources that are valuable for their particular students.

5. Assessment and Evaluation: Ensure sufficient resources to establish and sustain an effective system of quality assessment of digital materials.This requires that states and districts address educator and student access to digital resources and invest in professional development to enhance educator acumen regarding the development, use, and assessment of digital materials. States and districts also should ensure dedicated resources for evaluating the impact of digital learning materials on teacher practice and student learning over time.