The document discusses some of the challenges and opportunities of open educational resources (OER). Some of the key challenges mentioned include how to fund updating OER materials long-term, ensuring current openly licensed materials remain available, funding faculty to find and evaluate OER, and teaching instructors about OER. However, the document also outlines opportunities like lowering costs for students, providing worldwide access, supporting different learning styles, enabling collaborative development of materials, and having a clear attribution process. The conclusion is that while there are challenges, addressing them can promote greater access to education.

1. C H A L L E N G E S A N D O P P O R T UN I T I E S
OPEN EDUCATIONAL
RESOURCES (OER)
By: Sadie Rosenthal
3D Scales of Justice by Chris
Potter is licensed under CC BY 2.0

2. CHALLENGES OF OER
I think that to move forward with OER, several
questions need to be asked.
1. How will updating OER materials be funded in the
future?
• The start up funds will likely not last indefinitely.
2. How can we ensure that current materials that are
openly licensed will be available in future
quarters?
• Currently, the licenses are revocable.
3. How do we fund faculty to allow them to find
materials so that they can use more OER in their
courses?
• It takes significant time to find and vet each resource

3. CHALLENGES OF OER (CONTINUED)
4. How do we teach the teachers
about OER?
• OER is currently not a household
acronym and may not understand
ideas such as attribution.
5. What is needed to create
materials that cannot be found?
• Textbooks through the publishers have
case studies, assessments, and lots of
other material. We will likely need to
help instructors create these types of
things if they are not available through
the commons.
Lightning by Ian
Sanderson is licensed
under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

4. OPPORTUNITIES OF OER
While there are challenges, they are several reasons
to address these challenges.
1. Lower costs for students.
• I think this is self-explanatory.
2. Worldwide access.
• It is great to promote access to education.
3. Different ways of learning are supported.
• Text, images, videos…and some may be captioned in
different languages!

5. OPPORTUNITIES OF OER (CONTINUED)
4. The development of
materials is an
iterative process.
• What a great way to
collaborate with others
around the world!
5. Attribution is a clear
process.
• Using legal sources is a
good thing to model for
our students!
Sunshine Falls by Dawn Ellner is
licensed under CC BY 2.0

6. CONCLUSIONS
This was just a short synopsis of some challenges and
opportunities of OER. I feel that this course has given
me the tools to decide whether OER is right for me
and my courses.