OER provides benefits such as reducing costs for students and teachers by avoiding expensive textbooks and encouraging sharing and collaboration. However, OER also presents challenges like ensuring the validity of licenses and authorship of resources, finding specific subject matter, varying levels of quality control, and difficulties accessing and policing usage of open resources.

1. B Y P A U L E L D R I D G E
OER: Benefits and Challenges

2. Benefits
 Reduces cost for students
 Using OER may help students to avoid buying textbooks and other
materials
 Reduces cost for teachers
 Teachers may also save money by sharing digital resources
 Reduces material usage
 Teachers may be able to make fewer copies and use less paper
textbooks
 Encourages an atmosphere of sharing and collaboration
 OER encourages teachers to share ideas and fosters an environment
of collaboration
 Exposes teachers to new resources and ideas
 Open resources may yield ideas that would never come from a
textbook

3. Challenges
 Difficult to ensure validity of license or authorship
 It may be difficult to determine true authorship of an open source
item
 Can be hard to find specific subject matter
 Depending on subject, teachers may have difficulty finding the exact
materials they need
 Little quality control
 Materials can be of varying levels of usefulness and quality
 Students may have difficulty accessing
 Not all students have access to technology
 Difficult to police usage
 Once posted, regardless of license, a resource could be used
commercially or altered