This presentation provides some insight of the benefits and challenges of open educational resources.

1. Benefits & Challenges
of Open Educational
Resources
By: Hillary Goodner

2. Benefits
 Cost
 Ease of Use
 Visibility of Subject
 Social Responsibility
 Accessibility

3. Cost
 The price for publisher textbooks seems to increase every
year
 Alternative options are available: e-text, rentals, etc.
 Many textbooks in higher education can cost $100-200
 Additional financial stress imposed on students
 Students may choose to take courses with less expensive
requirements

4. Ease of Use
 OER is digital, it is easy to search and discover course materials
 The resources for a course can easily be conveyed to students
through learning management systems (I.e. Canvas, Blackboard,
Moodle, etc.)
 OER materials are built initially in a digital format making them
user friendly and potentially adjustable for accessibility
 Students may be required to purchase additional access to
learning management systems created by publishers
 May not be user friendly or accessible
 Instructors do not have access to troubleshoot these websites

5. Visibility of Disciplines
 Not all disciplines are readily visible to all
 Learners may change their career goals and interests'
numerous times because of introduction to new disciplines
later in education
 This could extend the learners educational time commitment
and expenses

6. Social Responsibility
 All who desire to learn should have access to quality
materials
 Provides all learners the tools and resources to study and
excel in higher education

7. Accessibility
 Many publishers do not have all educational materials in an
electronic format
 Publishers materials are protected under copyright laws and
cannot be modified
 Not all learners can easily access publisher formatted
materials

8. Challenges
 Quality Assurance
 Sustainability
 Lack of Understanding of Licensing
 Non-revocable Nature of OER
 Accessibility

9. Quality Assurance
 Peer-review of materials prior to release to public
 Many sources offer OER
 Numerous choices when searching for materials
 Challenges-
 Materials do not need to be peer-reviewed to be released
 Amount of materials may be overwhelming to sift through to
find quality materials

10. Sustainability
 The issue of keeping OER up-to-date
 Expensive and time consuming to continuously update
resources to be current with advances in the individual
disciplines

11. Lack of Understanding:
Licensing
 Training would provide all educators with the opportunity
learn of the numerous Creative Commons licenses
 Recognize that "open" does not necessarily mean no
attribution
 Understand Public Domain vs. Open License

12. Non-Revocable Nature
 Important challenge for providers
 You do not have to ability to control who uses your work under
the Creative Commons licenses.
 Some educators may find trouble in releasing their hard work
freely to others

13. Accessibility
 OER works with certain Creative Commons licenses would
allow for remixing to provide all with accessible learning
materials
 Having initial digital works make this process much easier
 Not all sources of OER identify the accessibility of the
resource
 Educators who adopt the material would have to assess and
make any necessary modifications for accessibility purposes

14. Final word
 OER are important for many reasons
 Common sharing amongst educators
 Allows for collaboration and building upon each
other's educational materials
 Quality assurance
 Beneficial cost to students and institutions
 Ease of access
 Social responsibility to provide for all