The pros and cons of OER

1. OPEN EDUCTIONAL RESOURCES
(OER):
PROS and Cons
Sean Culver

2. Benefits of OER

3. Financial savings for students
• The cost of higher education is getting higher and higher. In fact, the
cost of a college education has become an issue of national
discussion. The issue will be a topic during the upcoming presidential
election. Choosing OER resources is an on the ground method for
faculty to lighten the economic burden of a college education for their
students. It is a micro-level decision that can aide students regardless
of what happens at the macro-level of national policy.

4. Provides access to quality material that could
otherwise have been ignored
• Traditional textbooks and resources often come prepacked. These
resources are often excellent, but their prefabricated nature means
that instructors have less of an incentive to search for other alterative
resources. OER takes more leg work from faculty but can lead to
fantastic resource that otherwise would not even have been pursued.

5. Creates a role model for proper citations
• Plagiarism is an issue in nearly all disciplines. Students often come
into classes not knowing about how and when to properly cite the
sources that they use for papers. OER is an academic movement
based on attribution. The need of proper attribution for OER
resources creates a climate of respect for citations and hopefully
provides a role model for students for follow with their own work.

6. Forces faculty out of their comfort zone
• College teachers work incredibly hard. They go through years of
education and work diligently to craft lesion plans for their classes.
Traditional educational resources can enable a degree of
complacency, though. Many textbooks have built in lesson plans and
pre-made quizzes and exams. Switching to OER means that
instructors must find new resources and rethink their classes. It forces
instructors to move beyond the pre-made lesson plans or even the
curriculum that they created years in the past. This process can
eliminate stagnation and lead to more creativity in instruction.

7. Democratizes education
• OER makes educational material available to everyone. It opens
education beyond the classroom and enables people beyond the
walls of formal education to learn and grow.

8. Drawbacks of OER

9. Question of quality
• OER sources are new and there is fear that the quality of the
resources are lesser than traditionally copyrighted resources. Is it
worth the cost savings if the resources are lower in quality?

10. Added work for already busy instructors
• College instructors already have a lot on their plates. Painstakingly
going through OER resources to find high quality texts is adding more
work on to already busy schedules. This is especially true of adjunct
faculty who may be teaching about multiple schools just to make
ends meet. This is a lot of additional unpaid labor to place on
instructors.

11. Lack of access for those without reliable
internet access
• Although it seems as if everyone has internet access these days, there
are still plenty of students who do not have internet access. While
these resources can be accessed via computers on campus it would
be difficult for students to use the resources when campus is closed.

12. Accessibility issues
• Creating resources that are accessible to all students is an emerging
movement within education. The idea, called Universal Design for
Learning (UDL), is to reach every student equally. For example, a text
designed under UDL principles would be accessible to students with
impaired vision as it would have a built-in auditory component. The
large corporations that publish traditional textbooks have the
resources to use UDL principles but OER texts might not.

13. It's new and change can be difficult
• OER is a pretty radical departure from the traditional model of
education. Simply put, new things can be difficult. College professors
are brilliant people, but even brilliant people can be reluctant to
change. OER is a change and change can be scary.