OER benefits & challenges

1. Karen Fernandez
March 6, 2015

2. 1. Reduces the cost of student textbooks and
makes education accessible.
2. Instructors can pick and choose pieces of
differentOER according to the needs of a
course.
3. Allows students from all over the world to
study and learn even if they are not enrolled
in college.

3. 4. Creation and distribution of OER increases
the prestige of an educational institution in the
community. It’s another form of academic
publishing.
5. OER encourages collaboration and sharing
between instructors, students, and institutions.
6. OER also improves teaching by exposing
different approaches to the same subject in
OER.

4. 1. Finding high quality and relevant materials
may be time consuming and difficult for
instructors.
2. OER content could disappear if the content is
taken down from the server. Or content
could change unexpectedly.
3. OER content may not be updated regularly
and become stale.

5. 4. Instructors may need to develop additional
materials to fill in the gaps in order to make OER
work. More work for them.
5.While institutions may support faculty using
OER, they may be reluctant to pay (or release
from other duties) instructors to developOER
materials.