Benefits & Challenges to Open Educational

ResourcesBy Jessica Weimer, M.Ed.

For OER 101

Benefits

• Lower or eliminate cost for textbooks

• Increase access to education

• Ability for collaboration between faculty – even interdisciplinary.

• Current & relevant materials

• Allow different format for learning materials – encourages Universal Design in courses

Challenges

• Not knowing how to find or access quality OER for our discipline

• The time it takes to adopt and/or adapt new educational materials

• College buy-in: pushback from others in department and/or administration

• Student buy-in: some may want “real” textbooks or feel like OER are of lower quality.

• Current and relevant materials may stop being created as it takes time and effort to develop them, but as open resources they give no reimbursement aside from grant-funding.

In Conclusion…• The benefits of OER outweigh the challenges.

• While it takes time and effort, our duty as faculty is to provide the best education at the lowest cost – OER helps us do that.

• We should seek student, faculty, & administrative buy-in to support the creation and maintenance of quality OER.