This document discusses the benefits and challenges of using open educational resources (OER) in higher education. Some key benefits include significant cost savings for students, increased access to course materials, the ability for instructors to enhance content with multimedia and keep materials up to date easily. However, challenges include a lack of faculty awareness about OER, the time needed for developing or curating materials, concerns about quality assurance and sustainability over time given lack of financial support, and uncertainty about whether OER work will be valued for tenure. Overall OER aim to increase equitable access to information through more affordable and customizable learning materials.

1. Benefits and
challenges of OER in
Higher Education
BRENDA BOYD, PH.D.

2. Open Educational Resources
•Commonly refers to
• Teaching and learning materials
• Openly accessible
• In public domain
• Released under open license (i.e. Creative Commons)
https://creativecommons.org/about/program-areas/education-oer/
•But also include “…technologies that facilitate collaborative, flexible
learning and the open sharing of teaching practices… (Hodgkins-Williams, 2010)

3. Some of the benefits of OER use
•Significant decrease in cost to students
• Increase likelihood of students accessing course materials
•Ability to enhance content
• Include videos, other multi-media content
•Nimbleness in updating
•Instructor driven content choice
•Social justice through OER

4. Significant decrease in cost–response to
access issues
•Textbook price increases continue to exceed inflation by more than 150% (Burns,
2021)
•Up to 65% of students do not purchase textbooks required for their courses
(SPIRGS, 2014)
•Higher likelihood of first generation and Pell grant recipient students to opt out
of buying texts to manage cost of education (Appedu, Elmquist, Wertzberger, & Birch,
2021)
•Most OER come at little to no cost to students

5. Ability to enhance content
(Hodgkinson-Williams, 2010)
•OER course materials not limited to text
• Instructor authorship allows for ease of inserting active learning opportunities
•OER approach increases propensity to utilize an active learning pedagogy
•Student engagement with course content can be increased with enhanced
content

6. Nimbleness
•Faculty created course materials can be quickly updated with new information
•This process is expedited by increased OER materials that can be utilized
• The ability to reuse, revise, remix, redistribute and retain materials means faculty are
not required to recreate additions to course content)

7. Instructor driven content choice
•Relative ease of text creation removes instructor need to rely on published (and
expensive) texts
•Increases opportunity for instructor to select topics and set objectives based on
specialized understanding of field
• The course becomes about what the instructor knows to be important, rather than what text
books choose to cover
•It is this author’s personal and professional opinion that this is a critical reason for
developing OER content for one’s courses. Instructors (including this one) have been
too dependent on content included in published textbooks. Utilizing an OER approach
changes the perspective on selecting content in an important and positive way.

8. Social Justice through OER
•The accessibility and equity opportunity provided by OER must not be
overlooked. At it’s base OER is about equal access of information.
•The previously discusses cost of textbooks is a simple example
•In addition, disrupting the usual “systems of scholarly communication” (Ivory &
Pashia, 2022) is a means OER has to increase the voices heard and the access by
a broader variety of learners

9. Challenges to using OER
•Lack of awareness by faculty of process
•Time/labor required by faculty to develop or locate OER content
•Quality assurance when using other’s materials
•Sustainability
• Cost of supporting faculty in doing the work
• Attitudes at HEI’s about financial support for this model
•Concerns about tenure and promotion when engaged in OER adoption/development

10. Lack of faculty awareness of OER
•Increasing attention to, but still limited specific knowledge by many faculty
(Bayview Analytics, 2022)
•Institutional initiatives increase awareness, for those involved

11. Quality Assurance
•Some faculty report concerns about the quality of material available in OERs
•Other studies show relative satisfaction with quality
•Likely dependent on approach
• If adopting OER as is (without adaptation or remixing) may be larger concern
• If time allows to revise, remix, adapt, then this may be less of a concern
•May also be effected by process in place at HEI (vetting process in place or not)

12. Locating or creating OER takes time and
support
•Faculty report (Lantrip & Ray, 2020)
• Administrative support most important factor
• Initiatives to adopt OER may been seen as one time or not sustained
• Support for identifying OER or training in creating OER may not be available

13. Sustainability (Annand, 2015)
•Faculty may have to take on OER adoption as a individual commitment
•HEI culture has not yet changed to support OER as a norm
•This grass roots movement needs to continue to solidify in the halls of academe

14. Tenure and promotion concerns
•Traditionally, revising materials for course content would not be included in a
tenure and/or promotion portfolio
• Thus, time spend on OER development may be seen as time not well spent by a
junior faculty member
•However, efforts to make clear the contribution of this work are increasing
• Driving OER Sustainability for Student Success