Presentation on pros/cons of OER

1. OER
Open Educational Resources
Three PROs & CONs of using OER
Presented by Craig Goodman for OER 101

2. OER Defined
• “Open educational resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials
in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an
open license that permits no-cost access, adaptation and redistribution by others.”
- Education-oer / Creative Commons
• Open Education "...is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is
a public good and that technology in general and the Web in particular provide
an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge."
-The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation

3. OER - Pros
• Savings for students - Over the course of a year, the average college student spends more
than $1,200 on books and materials, according to the College Board (Kristoff, 2018).
• OER are FREE materials for students to access and use during and after a course.
• More choices – 80% of the textbook market is controlled by five main textbook companies
(Parker, 2018).
• OER offer a huge selection from many universities, colleges and other educational institutions in
higher education, providing a much larger range of materials and ideas.
• Piece of mind – Many faculty want to use a variety of materials but worry about copyright
infringement as the rules governing fair-use can be confusing (.
• OER are materials you can use without worrying about possible copyright infringement or
providing monetary compensation for using them.

4. OER - Cons
• Sustainability of OER - While college and university administrators have supported
efforts made by faculty to developed OER materials and share them, it is not clear if this level
of commitment and funding will remain into the future, thus potentially decreasing future
OER offerings.
• Non-revocable nature of Creative Commons licenses - One cannot stop someone,
who has obtained one’s work under a Creative Commons license from using the work
according to that license – even if the work is no longer publicly made available.
• Accessibility – Just like many textbooks, OERs are not by default fully in compliance with
rules governing accessibility of materials. Faculty may need to put in additional effort to make
OER materials assessible for students.

5. References
“Copyright Infringement.” What Is Copyright Infringement?, Click Industries Ltd.,
2019, http://www.clickandcopyright.com/copyright-resources/copyright-
infringement.aspx.
DeBarger, Angela. “Open Educational Resources.” Hewlett Foundation, William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, 3 Aug. 2016,
https://hewlett.org/strategy/open-educational-resources/.
“Education / OER.” Creative Commons, Creative Commons, 2019, https://creativecommons.org/about/program-areas/education-oer/.
Kristof, Kathy. “What's behind the Soaring Cost of College Textbooks.” CBS News,
CBS Interactive, 26 Jan. 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/whats-behind-
the-soaring-cost-of-college-textbooks/.
Parker, Quin. “How The 5 Main Textbook Companies Are Being Disrupted.” Top
Hat, Tophatmonocle Corp, 15 Nov. 2018, https://tophat.com/blog/textbook-
companies-disrupted/.
Additional resources provided by How to Use Open Educational Resources training by SBCTC , CC BY 4.0.