Short presentation on the benefits and challenges of using Open Educational Resources

1. Open Educational Resources:
Benefits & Challenges
"Open Educational Resources: Benefits and Challenges“ by Debbie Crumb is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
06/26/14
Background photo blue by Conrad Bakker is licensed under CC BY

2. Benefits for Students
• Can save money on textbooks
• Resources created by their instructor are
improved by using expertise of creators of
other OERs
• Have access to additional support resources
created by someone other than their instructor

3. Benefits for Instructors
• Happier students with more $$ in their
pockets
• Ability to use the expertise of creators of
other OERs
• Gives more credibility to their resources by
including quality OERs created by others
• Can save time by not having to re-invent the
wheel and create own resources.

4. • Depending on how resources for their class
are cobbled together, there can be
inconsistencies and lack of uniformity in
content and format – but students may not
care as long as they are saving $$ on
textbooks!
Challenges for Students

5. • Some technical subject areas may not have as many
OERs as other subject areas
• Takes considerable time to sort through all the
available OERs and select the best for your course
• May take time to verify if resources you want to use
are in the public domain or are open licensed
• Trying to cobble together the OERs for your class so
that the content and format are as consistent as
possible
• You can’t change your mind and revoke your Creative
Commons license at a later date.
Challenges for Instructors