OER stands for open educational resources, which are free educational materials that can be used and reused under open copyright licenses. Some key pros of OER include reducing costs for students and improving access to education, allowing materials to be reused and updated over time, and giving authors a chance to receive peer feedback. Potential drawbacks include the lack of standardized quality control for OER materials, the inability to retract open licenses, and challenges ensuring accessibility and long-term sustainability of resources.

1. Pros and Cons of OER
Kelsay Stanton
Wenatchee Valley College

2. What is OER?
 OER stands for “Open Educational
Resources”
 OER are free for everyone to use
 By using Creative Commons licensing
to copyright material, the author of the
material grants permission for use!

3. Why use OER?
 Equitability of education
◦ Reduces costs for students
◦ Improves ability of all students to access
quality educational materials!
 Helps students retain knowledge
◦ OER allows for reuse of materials
◦ Also helps students “brush up” on a wide
variety of subjects.

4. More pros for OER
 Potentially provides peer review
◦ Your work – “out there” – what a great
chance to get critical feedback!
 Allows for reuse of materials
◦ Students can keep coming back to the
material
 Improves the quality of education by
increasing the number of contributors

5. Drawbacks of OER
 Quality
◦ Maintaining the quality of OERs hasn’t
been standardized
◦ Not all users of OER know how to judge
the quality of the materials
 Can’t retract a Creative Commons
license
 Accessibility of materials
◦ Not all OER are accessible and therefore
may take additional time to make them
accessible.

6. More cons to OER
 Public misunderstanding
◦ Not everyone knows about OER
◦ Some members of the educational
community may feel that OER threatens
their rights to their intellectual property
 Sustainability
◦ Funding to ensure up-to-date and quality
material may be limited