This document provides an introduction to open educational resources (OER) for educators. It defines OER as open-licensed digital assets that are free to use for teaching, learning, and research. The document outlines benefits of using OER, such as reduced costs for students, flexibility for educators to customize materials, and easy updating of current content. Challenges of using OER include ensuring quality and currency of materials, a lack of supplemental resources, and the time required for educators to discover and modify OER content for their specific needs. The document provides sources for further information on both benefits and challenges of adopting OER.

1. OER INFO FOR EDUCATORS
L.J. Bothell
Shoreline Community College
Business Technology | lbothell@shoreline.edu
February 1, 2018

2. Introduction
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3. Introduction to OER
OER Definition
• Open Educational Resources (OER) are open-licensed digital assets, text,
and media that are free-to-use for teaching, learning learning, and
research purposes.
Examples of OER Materials
• Textbooks and documents published under Creative Commons (CC)
licensing.
• Portions and/or full curriculum for courses that educators can freely use
and often (per CC licensing) modify and customize.
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4. Benefits of Using OER Materials
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5. Benefits for Students
• Easy access to learning materials: Students can access OER
textbooks and course curriculum materials on digital media
formats, not carry heavy textbooks. Students can also access
materials before a course starts.
• Substantial drop in costs: Students can avoid the high prices
of print textbook/learning materials, which can otherwise
affect students’ stress and classroom performance when
awaiting financial aid, when low income, and when deciding
how to spend limited education dollars. Students also feel
they need to resell pricey print textbooks, instead of keeping
for future reference. OER texts and curriculum media can .
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6. Benefits for Educators
• Currency: OER materials can be current and regularly
updated/revised by authors, whereas textbooks rely on print
publication and distribution timelines and can quickly be out-
of-date. In addition, OER materials that are used by multiple
educators face a form of ongoing peer review that allows for
fresh questions and updates.
• Flexibility: Educators can find pre-created pieces/modules to
work with and mix and match, based on the allowances of
the licensing, and use a mix of content types, like graphics,
video, quizlets, and other multimedia formats. This offers
more control of the educator’s own course curriculum.
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7. Benefits for Educators, continued
• Customizing: Educators can create and license for sharing course
materials of their own, and combine them with other OER
materials in a modular and customized format/order of content
that doesn’t waste student attention. In addition, educators can
scale the use of OER materials per the needs of their course’s credit
and content load.
• Access: If course materials are available as already-licensed OER
content, the educator doesn’t have to be concerned about
copyrights of the material beyond establishing the boundaries of
the ‘open’ license and using the material responsibly in the
classroom. There isn’t the need to contact the author or to track
down additional permissions to share, which saves educators’ time
in curriculum creation, especially in the rapid-paced adjunct world.
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8. Challenges of Using OER Materials
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9. Challenges for Students
• Language and Accessibility: OER materials might not be
available in accurate translations of other languages, and
might not use appropriate/professional primary language of
the educator’s country. In addition, OER multimedia might
not be fully prepared for accessibility purposes for other-
ability student needs if used as-is – such as for students with
sight or hearing difficulties.
• Personal Content: OER materials may be at their best when
presented by educators who interact with students; if
materials are presented primarily as online course
information, especially if an instructor used a mix of content
types, styles, and formats, students can become confused
and feel disassociated from the course materials.
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10. Challenges for Educators
• Quality Control/Viability: Educators need to carefully review
materials, particularly OER textbooks, to verify that they are
accurate, current, unbiased, and relevant to the course needs.
Unlike publishers of books, there is usually no editorial or curating
staff to verify OER quality. Some OER material may be biased,
product-driven, and/or not reflect a full coverage of necessary
educational content.
• Currency: While many OER materials may be current and regularly
updated/revised by authors, many are not because this is done on
a voluntary basis. OER authors don’t currently have an automated
way of learning whether their original OER materials were really
useful or what improvements should be made, and/or might not
hate the time to make the changes. Materials also may no longer
be updated after an instructor/curator moves into other subject
areas.
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11. Challenges for Educators, continued
• Additional/supplemental resources needed: Educators many
need to consider additional/support resources that are
needed with modified OER materials, such as evaluation
tools, study guides, and alternative explanations; also,
additional materials many not be OER.
• Discoverability and time consumption: Educators, particularly
those on a tight timeline, may have trouble finding and
modifying / combining appropriate OER materials that fit the
needs of the course. This can be further complicated if an
educator teaches a series and wants a consistent look and
feel throughout. In addition, educators can face too many
choices, many of which might need mixing, editing, and
blending to be useful.
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12. Sources
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13. Information Sources for Presentation*
• 4 Challenges for OER in Higher Education
• OER And Low Cost Materials at Penn State
• Pros and Cons of Using OERs for Instruction
• Open Educational Resources (OERs): Tools for Affordable Learning: Benefits
and Challenges of OERs
• Ten Years Later: Why Open Educational Resources Have Not Noticeably
Affected Higher Education, and Why We Should Care
• What are the benefits in using OER?
*relaxed format
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