BENEFITS & CHALLE

NGES

OF USIN

G OPEN

EDUCATIONAL

RESOURCES

BY: TRAC E Y C

O L E

INTRODUCTIONOpen Educational Resources are becoming more widely available through a variety of reputable sources under Creative Commons licensing. There are many benefits to the use of OER, but OER presents challenges as well. This presentation attempts to explain some of those benefits and challenges.

To read more about OER, please visit the following websites:• Open Washington [http://www.openwa.org/]• Creative Commons Wiki [https://

wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Main_Page]

BENEFITS OF U

SING OER

SAVING TIME AND EFFORTIt’s no secret that educators are short on time. Especially with the current state of education—underfunded and overburdened—it can be very difficult for educators to plan and execute effective instruction for their students.OER has the potential to save educators time and effort by helping them to avoid “reinventing the wheel.” When educators create and share their materials as OER, they are expanding their collaborative circle worldwide, offering the benefit of their expertise to other professionals and receiving the same in turn. What educator hasn’t collaborated with colleagues in an effort to save time and effort? OER is a newer, bigger, better way to collaborate with other educators.

REINVENTING EDUCATIONThe field of education is ripe for innovation as technology continues to develop and allow for new content and areas of study. OER puts previously unobtainable resources into the hands of those who need it most—education innovators. Education thrives on the dissemination of ideas and resources, and in our fast-growing and ever-changing society, that means being in a constant mode of creation. For example, new subject areas have emerged as a result of technology that are more accessible worldwide because of OER. Coding, game development, and business analytics are just a few innovative subject areas in which educators at the forefront are creating and sharing OER for the benefit of others.

PEDAGOGY & ANDRAGOGYAlong with changes in content areas, education has also experienced a shift in pedagogical and andragogoical methods. In previous generations, a classroom had four walls, one teacher, and about thirty students, and materials were limited to media (print and otherwise) that had to be purchased from publishers. But with the advent of online courses--closed, massive, and every type in between—educational methods of delivery have changed drastically. Educators using OER in these new instructional environments find that their materials are easily disseminated to students on a variety of platforms and devices. They enjoy the freedom to use and remix OER with their students without the fear of violating copyright.

COST OF MATERIALS FOR ALL STAKEHOLDERSPublished materials are expensive. And it’s not surprising, given the emphasis on public education in the United States, that educational publishing is such a lucrative business. With every wave of change in education, it seems publishers have a new product to market to schools, rerouting funds to these products that could be used for more dire needs.With the adoption of OER, public schools in particular stand to save significant amounts of taxpayer money. This money can in turn be reinvested in other programs that benefit students. Thus, OER benefits all stakeholders—the student, teacher, school, taxpayer, and society as a whole—when the billions of dollars publishing companies used to collect for their products can be used to bolster the struggling public school system.

LIVING MATERIALSOne of the drawbacks to printed educational materials is how quickly they become outdated. Particularly in science and history textbooks, we see new research and events that require whole new editions of textbooks to be published, at great cost to the user. Since OER are mostly digital materials, changes can be made almost immediately that will in turn matriculate to the student more quickly so that the content being taught is as up-to-date as possible. Thus OER act as a sort of “living” resources that adapt to the needs of their users in a timely fashion.

CHALLENGES OF U

SING

OER

THE NEEDLE IN THE HAYSTACKOne need only Google “OER” to find the vast array of websites that promise free materials. It’s easy for educators to become overwhelmed during their efforts to find quality OER from reputable sources when they are used to the traditional textbook market. The sheer volume of resources on any given topic can paralyze educators, and this combined with the usual lack of time any given educator deals with, can push us right back to what we’ve always done.Schools need to invest in support staff that is knowledgeable and skillful in researching OER for educators. Librarians, instructional designers, and effective department leadership should be easily accessible, ready and willing to coach educators in their quest for OER.

THE WHITE WHALEThe flip side of the needle in the haystack is the white whale. Some content areas simply do not have many resources available yet because they are highly specialized or too new. Educators facing this dilemma must work to compile OER for the benefit of others, even if scouring existing resources is exhausting. Again, support staff such as librarians, instructional designers, and department leadership should be available to drive the effort of OER creation, because without people willing to create new OER simply for the benefit of others, the entire OER movement would fail.

“TEXTBOOK=COURSE” MINDSETMany instructors rely almost entirely on one or two textbooks for their course content. When faced with the proposition of resource changes, these instructors balk because they don’t want to be told they cannot use the textbooks they have always used.An OER approach requires that an instructor be more like a curator, picking and choosing the best materials for their courses, not relying too much on any one resource. It’s simply a better way to teach, especially in content areas that often have many different perspectives to consider. Instructors need to break away from their dependence on a single textbook and trust their own ability to craft content and activities for their students (and an OER repository) that is just as good—maybe better—than published, copyrighted content. The additional benefit of using OER is that students can also become curators of content, remixing and reworking OER they find to suit their learning experiences and even teach one another.

THE NEED FOR INCENTIVES The demand on instructors is especially great in education. An instructor is confident in her own knowledge and abilities, but forces beyond her control can at times dictate how she does her job. Thus the adoption of OER has to be handled with care—instructors that perceive OER as a mandate from the top will resist its implementation. However, incentives for OER piloting and adoption may ease the resistance of instructors. Any institutional change that happens with the input and active participation of the instructors will find more long-lasting commitment and loyalty. Thus, institutions should incentivize instructors to be directly involved in the OER adoption process.

THE NEED FOR PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENTOER adoption can’t happen without skilled leaders. Schools need to encourage and invest in training opportunities for their educators that emphasize OER and provide explicit instruction in all things OER and Creative Commons. Because of the nature of OER, many such training opportunities are offered for free, such as the Open Washington project.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Creative Commons and the double C in a circle are registered trademarks of Creative Commons in the United States and other

countries.