This document discusses the benefits and challenges of using open educational resources (OER) in education. The benefits include more equitable access for students through low-cost or free materials, allowing instructors to contribute to improved resources, creating a sharing community, and allowing for more current information. However, challenges include the time needed to find and verify quality resources, issues around copyright and attribution, difficulties providing printed materials, and ensuring accessibility when combining multiple formats.

1. Using OER
Sherry-Anne McLean

2. Benefits of OER
• More equitable access for students (low/no cost; access to materials
for all students on day 1)
• Allows a mechanism for instructors to contribute to a pool of improved
resources (i.e. add videos, solutions manuals, activities to support an
OER text)
• Creates a community and culture of sharing (education for all)
• Allows access and integration of current information (news events,
scientific discoveries, etc.) without waiting for a publication cycle
• Gives instructors better control of the curriculum (gather/collect
resources to support course objectives, instead of allowing a textbook
to dictate what gets covered in a particular unit…)
• Current, affordable opportunities for professional development

3. Challenges of OER
• Takes a lot of time to search for/verify the quality of the resources
• Use/integration of OER requires a high-level of attention to copyright,
attribution, etc. which is intimidating to many faculty
• Getting printed materials for students can be a challenge (textbook
costs are generally associated with students, whereas copy costs
associated with more limited school budgets; sometimes commericial
printers will not make copies with NC license restrictions)
• Rarely find a single resource that meets all the needs of a course.
Pulling together too many materials in too different of formats can
create a lack of cohesiveness/disorganized feel to a course
• Difficult to adapt/remix materials in a DSS “accessible” format (videos
not captioned, inconsistent formats for screen readers, etc.)