Open educational resources (OERs) are freely available teaching and learning materials that can be reused, modified, and shared. OERs offer several benefits such as reducing student costs by replacing traditional textbooks, allowing for quick updates and improvements, and providing scalable and accessible learning materials to students worldwide. However, some challenges to OERs include lack of incentives for continued creation, insufficient training for educators, potential language barriers, requiring internet access and technological capabilities, and missing the human interaction of in-person classes.

1. Affordable Online Access
A few benefits and challenges about OER materials

2. What are open educational
resources?
•Open educational resources are materials for
teaching or learning that are either in the public
domain or have been released under a license
that allows them to be freely used, changed, or
shared with others.

3. What are the benefits in using OER?
• Saves costs for students - The use of OERs instead of traditional textbooks
can substantially reduce the cost of course materials for students.
• Grants access to more quality choices - OERs can be improved quickly
through direct editing.
• Scalability - OERs are easy to distribute widely with little or no cost.
• Expanded access to learning - Students anywhere in the world can access
OERs at any time, and they can access the material repeatedly.
• Improves visibility of the course - Quick availability of material in many
subject areas increases the timeliness and/or relevance of the material
being presented.

4. What are the challenges in using
OER?
• Sustainability of OER – Creators receive no incentive to continue to
produce materials.
• Lack of training opportunities for educators – Not all institutions have the
training capacity to properly equip educators.
• Language and/or cultural barriers – Many OER’s are only in the English
language.
• Accessibility & OER, as well as technological issues – Some students my
have technological limitations. Also, internet is required.
• Lack of human interaction between teachers and students - OER material is
created to stand alone, missing out on the discussion and instructor
feedback.

5. Thank
you!
Dion Alexander