This document discusses the benefits and challenges of Open Educational Resources (OER). The benefits include: helping to further collaboration and sharing of ideas in education; providing low-cost or free course materials to reduce financial barriers to education; and allowing others to more freely build upon and advance the work. The challenges include: potential opposition from large educational publishers; variability in the quality of available materials; inability to revoke a creative commons license; and potential diminished reputation if low-quality OER are used in higher education institutions.

1. Benefits & Challenges of OER
By Burl Battersby
Benefits & Challenges of OER by Burl Battersby is
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2. Benefits of OER
1. Open Education Resources help to further the culture of collaboration and
the sharing of ideas which is at the core of what education is all about.
From the first classroom, sitting around a firepit, to today, with the
students taking online classes via their laptops, we have - in a way - come
full circle with OER.

3. Benefits of OER
2. When the course material is low cost (or free of charge) the students have
the benefit of the learning without incurring excess debt. The fact that a
used textbook can cost hundreds of dollars is a huge dissatisfier for
students and can discourage them from wanting to continue their
education. Lower cost course materials remove barriers to their continued
education.

4. Benefits of OER
3. Increased access to the core material allows for further development of the
concepts by others. Making it easy to build on your work allows others to
more freely advance your work and the discipline as a whole. Although
copyright material is also used as the foundation for the works of others, it
is not as easy to access as a work that has a creative commons license.

5. Benefits of OER
4. Increased access to the materials for students. Open education resources
are more available to any student which enables them to explore the
subject and develop their knowledge of the content more broadly than
what would be gained from just one textbook.

6. Benefits of OER
5. OER, for the reasons listed here, enable a more collaborative approach to
the material. Students become empowered to become more part of the
learning process if they can engage in the development of the course
material. Educators join in an evolving conversation that enriches the
available source of course material.

7. Challenges of OER
1. The elephant in the room when it comes to Open Education Resources is
the large publishers and multinational companies that depend on the sales
of educational materials for their survival. I would imagine that they will
mount campaigns to thwart OER’s influence and reach or they will try to
find ways to include themselves in the trend through low-cost affiliates.

8. Challenges of OER
2. A challenge with OER is the fact that some of the material available is
questionable in terms of origin and may not be the high-level quality
required for higher learning.

9. Challenges of OER
3. The fact that a creative commons cannot be revoked is potentially a
problem. If I can’t regain sole rights to the material I may be reluctant to
license it as such.

10. Challenges of OER
4. The growth of creative commons and other open license material has the
potential to diminish the established reputation that higher education has
in terms of the quality of the resources. If low-quality material is used in
an institution the overall reputation of the college can become tarnished.

11. Challenges of OER
5. Although the established textbook publishers charge high prices for their
work, this revenue is at least partially used to fund further development of
the materials in a prescribed and systematic fashion. If this structure were
to be made obsolete through open licensed material some of the research
and development would be impacted.

12. Thank you!
Benefits & Challenges of OER by Burl Battersby is
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