This document discusses the benefits and challenges of open educational resources (OER). The benefits include allowing instructors to share knowledge, providing students with alternative resources, cost savings for students, opportunities for student involvement in creation and use of OER, and providing educational access. The challenges include the time needed to search for and select materials, lack of materials for some subjects, limited institutional involvement, maintaining organized libraries including removal of outdated materials, and ensuring proper accessibility of images.

1. BENEFITS AND CHALLENGES OF OER
Open Sign by Matt Katzenberger Is licensed by CC BY NC SA
Susan M. Hampson

2. BENEFITS OF OER
1. Provides an opportunity for instructors to share their knowledge.
2. Provide students with resources that are not mainstream.
3. Cost savings to students.
4. Getting students involved in the creation and use of open educational
resources.
5. Provides educational opportunities where those opportunities are scarce as
well as providing life-long educational opportunities for anyone interested in
learning something new.

3. CHALLENGES OF OER
1. It takes time to search for materials and then, once found, deciding
what materials would work best.
2. Certain subjects have fewer materials available.
3. Getting more institutions more involved in OER, especially at the
community college level.
4. Collecting, organizing and maintaining libraries of the materials, in
particular, reviewing for outdated materials.
5. With regard to historical images, I found that some of them need to be
described better, better alt text.