Benefits and challenges of OER

1. Open Eduactional
Resources (OER)
Benefits and Challenges

2. Benefits of OER
● Cost Savings and access for students
● Social Responsibility
● Professional Development for faculty
● Ability to modify content and activities
● Opportunities for collaboration and peer review

3. Using OER ensures that students have access to their course
materials on day 1. No more waiting to buy textbooks or
having to choose between buying course materials and
paying rent, bills or buying food.
Benefits of OER - Cost Savings & Access

4. Using OER promotes access to education for all, no matter
income level.
Benefits of OER - Social Responsibility

5. Benefits of OER - Professional Development for faculty
Faculty have much to learn when incorporating OER into
their courses, opening the doors to many professional
development opportunities.

6. Benefits of OER - Ability to modify content and activities
Using OER allows faculty to customize course content and
activities to best suit their needs. You are not bound to what
the textbook has decided you should do.

7. Benefits of OER - Opportunities for collaboration and
peer review
Freely sharing educational resources provides opportunities
for collaboration that may not otherwise be available. Having
peers review, modify, and improve on your work benefits all.

8. Challenges of OER
● Hard to find quality resources
● Time consuming
● Sustainability
● Training
● Accessibility & OER

9. Challenges of OER - Hard to find quality resources
While there are an abundance of OER, it is hard to find and
evaluate their quality and relevance.

10. Challenges of OER - Time consuming
It is time consuming to sift through OER that are currently
available and even more time consuming to create your own.

11. Challenges of OER - Sustainability
What happens to OER when start up funding runs out? How
will the resources be maintained and their quality assured?

12. Challenges of OER - Training
Faculty need training to learn how to find, revise and
incorporate OER. Competing priorities and lack of training
opportunities make this a challenge.

13. Challenges of OER - Accessibility & OER
Accessible OER is hard to find. It is not always easy to
identify whether a resource is accessible, and if it is not, how
to modify it so that it is.