Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available online for anyone to use, modify and share. They include textbooks, videos, tests and other materials. OER offer many benefits such as low costs for students, diverse sources of information, and the ability for instructors to customize materials. However, there are also shortcomings like the time required to find high quality OER, concerns about accuracy, and limited options in some specialized fields.

1. Open
Educational
Resources

2. What are Open Educational Resources?
Resources that are available for direct use,
sharing, and remixing as long as they are in the
public domain or contain an open license
Includes: pictures, text books, course
materials, videos, etc.

3. What are the benefits of OER?
1. Low cost to students
- OER textbooks can range from $0 to $40
2. Diverse sources of information
- OER sources range from university
programs such as Carnegie Mellon’s
Open Learning Initiative to open licensed
videos on You Tube.

4. What are the benefits of OER?
3. Creative remixing of material
- As long as the license permits alterations
the resources can be changed for each
instructor’s vision of their course
4. Accessible to everyone
- From the independent student who wants to
learn a new subject to a student in another
country getting a course translated into their
own language, OER can provide access in
ways that traditional educational resources
may not be able to

5. What are the benefits of OER?
5. Open licensing permits authorship
- Creative commons licensing permits
attribution to the original author of OER
materials even if the content is permitted
to be altered

6. What are the shortcomings of OER?
1. An abundance of OER resources
- Scouring OER websites and materials can
be time consuming for an already busy
instructor
2. Quality control of resources
- Although most OER materials are peer-
reviewed there is still concern about some
materials being inaccurate

7. What are the shortcomings of OER?
3. Limited OER materials for specialized disciplines
- Availability of quality animations and
simulations for many STEM concepts are limited
4. Global regions with limited internet infrastructure
- Not all students/instructors may have
access to OER materials online

8. What are the shortcomings of OER?
5. Reduced enrollment to specific courses,
departments, and/or colleges who may not be
able to provide numerous OER-driven courses
- If courses are advertised as low cost, students
will always choose them over courses that may
not be. This creates a disadvantage to
instructors who may not be able to convert
to OER due to departmental standards.