Open Educational Resources (OER) are free educational resources that can be used, distributed, and shared without copyright restrictions. OERs include resources available on websites like openwa.org for Washington educators and openculture.com which links to free online courses. OERs have advantages like reducing corporate influence in education, increasing social justice and access for all students, and giving instructors more flexibility and agency in choosing materials. However, there are also downsides like information overload in finding high quality OERs and potentially devaluing knowledge by equating free with less value.

1. Open Educational Resources
by Jake Frye

2. What Are Open Educational
Resources (OER)?
 Resources for educators that are free to use,
distribute, and share
 Why?
- The work resides in the public domain (no
copyright attached)
- The work is covered by an open license,
such as Creative Commons

3. Sample Resources for Finding
OER
 http://www.openwa.org/find-oer/: An OER site
created for Washington state educators
 http://www.openculture.com/freeonlinecourses: Links
to a variety of online courses
 https://www.gutenberg.org/: A project dedicated to
digitizing and preserving books that have fallen into
the public domain

4. Why Use OER?
 Preserving education: Using OERs reduces
the influence of corporations in the classroom
and resists the commodification of knowledge
 Social justice: OERs are free and accessible
by all; using OERs levels the playing field and
gives access to all students, regardless of
socioeconomic class

5. Why Use OER? (con't)
 Lower student frustration:
- Students may pay as much as $300 for a
textbook that they only use once
- Resell values are poor
- Students do not always receive financial aid
in time to purchase texts
- Instructors frequently change class texts
between quarters or semesters, making it
difficult for students to sell back or buy used
copies the next quarter

6. Why Use OER? (con't)
 Increase instructor agency:
- Adjuncts often cannot choose their own book
because they must use the default reader;
OERs could allow instructors to circumvent
the bookstore shelf
- Instructors could choose texts directly based
on teaching style and preferences;
instructors could draw from multiple texts or
change texts without incurring student
expense

7. Why Use OERs? (con't)
 Flexibility: OERs are often electronic and
thus available for sharing, e-mailing, using in
online courses, and projecting on the board
without relying on clumsy doc cams

8. OERs: The Downsides
 Information overload—many OER sources to
choose from
 Choosing quality materials—the quality of
OERs range wildly from excellent to poor
 Devaluing knowledge: In a consumer society,
“free” is unfortunately often equated with
“without value”
 Placing increasing economic pressure on
textbook companies
 Lack of accompanying customer support