Educators have more flexibility in their course curriculum when using open educational resources (OER) compared to traditional textbooks. OER allow instructors to select customized content without being restricted to what is in a single textbook. Additionally, using OER increases student access to higher education by lowering textbook costs, which is a major barrier to attendance and degree completion. However, OER materials may have issues with quality, accessibility, and navigability that require extra time and effort from educators to evaluate and address.

1. By Kayleen Kondrack-Caranto

2.  Educators have more flexibility with the
resources that they incorporate into a
course curriculum when utilizing OER.
 With the use of OER, for example,
instructors are not stuck using a textbook
that has limited content, some of which
they may not use (or some different
material might be preferred in place of
certain textbook content).

3.  Student access to college can increase with
the use of OER in the classroom because
textbook costs can be a huge deterrent for
students attending and staying in college
until degree completion.
 This benefit has the opportunity to enhance
the equity and inclusion of higher education
institutions to provide greater access and
support for students to achieve their
academic and professional goals.

4.  Both students and educators can create,
share, and contribute materials.
 This provides excellent opportunity for
being an author and contributing to
others’ teaching and learning.

5.  Educators have more opportunity to
update the currency of their course
materials with the help of OER, as well as
to tailor their course materials more
readily to their course needs.
 In addition to increasing the currency of
instructional materials, such course
updates and redesigns (through using
OER) can also prompt more creativity in
course curricula.

6.  OER provides access to a variety of
resources, including videos, images,
course content, and textbooks.
 This multimodal variety can also help
instructors to diversify the types of
materials used in their classes in order to
enhance student engagement.

7.  Accessibility issues could be common or
frequent within OER materials.
 Some examples of accessibility concerns
may include locating a Creative Commons
licensed video that does not have
captions or an assignment sheet that has
readability issues for a screen reader.

8.  While students benefit from decreased
course cost, some students may prefer a
print textbook to OER material that they
are accessing digitally.
 Digital access issues could be a problem
for some students since many OER
materials may require an internet
connection. Or, some students may just
want the material all collected together
in a printed textbook that they can hold.

9.  There is some question of quality of
material for what is available as OER.
 Hopefully, the educator accessing the OER
material will assess its quality, but this
could be time consuming and/or the
educator may have difficulty in evaluating
quality (particularly if they are newer to
teaching the course content).

10.  OER materials can be difficult to navigate
and locate. There is an abundance of
resources (which is a good thing), but this
can also pose a challenge for educators.
 Educators tend to have demanding
schedules and working with OER materials
can be very time-consuming and
overwhelming.

11.  Understanding OER, including details on
Creative Commons licensing, can be
confusing and/or overwhelming.
 This is why it is so helpful to take a
course on learning more about Open
Educational Resources, Creative
Commons, and Public Domain resources!

12.  OER materials provide many beneficial
teaching and learning possibilities where
both educators and students can benefit!
 It can be helpful to consider and address
some potential drawbacks in order to
work to avoid such challenges (in order to
experience the many benefits of using
OER). The potential drawbacks can be
reduced and the challenges mitigated!