1. Benefits and
Challenges of
Open Educational
Resources (OER)
Justina M. Sapna
Unless otherwise specified, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

2. Benefits of OER
• SHARING: free exchange of ideas, expressions of expertise, and resources
• COST: reduced cost or no cost to
students
• ACCESS: to educational materials
24/7 from anywhere (i.e. car, work, couch)
• MARKETING: increased visibility
for institution who hosts/sponsors
materials; thus, potentially higher
recruitment
• TIME: remixing, adapting, revising
materials should not consume as much
time as creating from scratch
Crossroads-sign is licensed under CC BY 3.0.
Justina M. Sapna

3. Challenges of OER
• Social: establishing the culture of sharing
resources among educators who have not
traditionally shared
• Technical/Legal: understanding
copyright and how CC licensing is to be applied
Cockington Green Gardens Maze
by Michael is licensed CC BY 2.0.
• Infrastructure: lack of infrastructure of computers/broadband in parts of
U.S. and World prohibits access to OER; also the “all over the place” organization of
OER across the web makes finding quality materials cumbersome and very time
consuming
• Quality: finding materials that are of high quality and specific enough to the
desired content
• Sustainability: establishing a system and processes to sustain the OER
project beyond initial start up, which includes cost
Justina M. Sapna