OER Benefits and Challenges Presentation

1. Benefits and Challenges of OER
Materials
By Cynthia Clausen

2. Benefits
Cost to the student: Costs of textbooks have increased 88% in the last 10
years. The current cost of the Anatomy and Physiology text that we use, if the
student buys it new, is close to $300. Our student body is mostly working parents
who are trying to save costs.

3. Benefits
Access to many resources: There are such a great variety of resources
available to faculty now that aren’t limited to the one textbook you choose. This
enhances the creativity of the instructor and the learning experience of the
student.

4. Benefits
No worry over copywright infreingement: It takes some effort and time to learn
about open licensing and public domain, but once you are fluent you can use
many different resources to create your class without worrying about infringing on
copywright law.

5. Benefits
Social Responsibility: Education is low cost for anyone with these resources.
As a student you can access the materials before the class begins, to preview the
course and ensure interest and applicability. After the class you can review the
resource. And, even if you aren’t a student these books and other resources are
available.

6. Benefits
Raises the quality of resources: By gathering many different contributors to
develop a resource like a textbook, the quality of that resource increases. The
Anatomy and Physiology textbook I found in OpenStax had over 15 contributors.

7. Challenges
Accessibility: Laws regarding accessibility of teaching materials, especially
online materials, are something that we are all having to look at more closely.
These OER resources are not necessarily acknowledged as accessible, leaving
the determination up to the faculty member.

8. Challenges
Sustainability: Keeping the OER resource up to date might not be funded and
might take a lot of time from the original contributers. There isn’t a good way to
tell if an OER has been kept up to date with current material.

9. Challenges
Overwhelming: The amount and places to search for OER materials seems to be
a little overwhelming to me. This might be because I’m at the beginning of the
learning curve and I’m guessing that it will become less overwhelming as I
become more familiar with all that is out there.

10. Challenges
Time Consuming: Organizing and finding and citing these resources as you
incorporate them into your class seems really time consuming and almost
prohibitive at this point.

11. Challenges
Quality Assurance: There isn’t good research at this time on whether students
learning experience and content retention is as good with OER as compared to
other resources. From what I can tell I wouldn’t be put off of OER materials
because of this, but I would be interested in looking at this data once collected.