The Benefits and Challenges of using OER in Public Health Education

2. Public Health Education
Public health education may refer to:
 Community Health Education
 Health Advocacy
 An Associates, Bachelors, or Graduate degree
program

3. Benefit #1: Accessibility
Open Educational Resources (OER) are created in
order to be accessible for all students, including those
with potential disabilities. Within public health, the
communities and populations you may be creating
educational materials for are extremely diverse.

4. Benefit #2: Cost
OERs are available free of cost, which is beneficial for
the students as well as the institution, as it is financially
sustainable. Education level has a direct correlation
with population health, therefore the more affordable
education is, the more realistic people will engange,
and the better a population’s health may be.

5. Benefit #3: Knowledge
Sharing
The ability to easily share knowledge enhances the
quality of materials for all to use. As there are a limited
number of quality health related materials currently
available on OER this will greatly improve the options.

6. A teacher can customize their class however they like
and/or students can lead their educational journey.
There are so many areas of study within the field of
public health, therefore this greatly allows for students
and professionals to tailor their education.
Benefit #4: Customization

7. Benefit #5: Life-long
Learning
Students can choose to take courses related to the
field and build their continuing education credits by
taking many health related OER classes. There are a
number of professional certifications related to public
health that require continuing education credits. Aside
from the potnetial requirement, many people in the
field are naturally lifelong learnes.

8. Challenge #1: Availability
It’s often hard to find public health related materials in
the public health field that are actually OER.

9. Challenge #2: Quality
As hard as it is to find materials in the first place, it’s
doubly difficult to find quality health related materials .
Anyone can post and/or license their material, without
having it fact-checked. If material isn’t maintained, it
can become out of date.

10. Challenge #3: Students
may lack access
Not all students have access to computers or the
internet, which makes using OER difficult. Many
students in public health higher education as well as
the communities that public health educators are
trying to reach are from disadvantaged backgrounds.

11. Challenge #4: Licensing
While it has it’s benefits for the material’s author, it’s a
complicated process which can make the use of the
materials complicated. Often, health educators don’t
have time to navigate difficult systems.

12. Challenge #5: Time
consuming
It’s incredibly time consuming to search for and find
adequate OER materials. As stated in the previous
challenge, time is a necessity.