5 Benefits and challenges of Open Education Resources - An assignment for a course I am taking on using OER Materials.

1. Benefits and Challenges
of Open Educational
Resources
Cathy Meier, PhD

2. Open Educational Resource (OER) Benefits
Benefit One
• Students can save lots of
money on textbooks! The
textbooks in the courses in
my Early Childhood
program typically cost
over $200.00 each.
• Student satisfaction is
high (Hilton, 2016)
Benefit Two
• Instructors can choose OER
resources to precisely meet
the course outcomes,
rather than try to make a
prepackaged text “fit” the
outcomes of the course.
(Hilton, 2016)

3. OER Benefits
Benefit Three
• OER resources are more
stable to access than items
one would find via Google.
Materials I have used from
Google tend to move urls or
disappear completely.
• OER resources can be
downloaded by the
instructor and hosted on
their site.
Benefit Four
• OER resources offer a rich
variation in type of resources,
including charts, tables,
drawings, photos, articles, audio,
video, course content, quizzes,
etc. Since not all students learn
the same way, OER helps
instructors provide more varied
course resources. (Weller, et al.,
2017)
•

4. OER Benefits
Benefit Five
• OER creators form a community of dedicated instructors,
openly sharing examples of their teaching practices.
This community and the materials available can help
instructors learn best practices in teaching that may
improve their teaching practices. (Weller, et al., 2017)

5. OER Challenges
Challenge One
• Money and Time: Funding for
extra course prep is difficult
with college budget
constraints. Instructors must
have the time to find the
materials, time to develop
them into course
assignments, and time to
maintain and update OERs.
(Hilton, 2016)
Challenge Two
• The age of the materials
can be a challenge. Good
research practice says
materials older than 5
years may not reflect
current trends in a field.

6. OER Challenges
Challenge Three
• Peer Review is an
important way to establish
appropriateness and
quality of scholarly works.
Although there are some
mechanisms for peer
review, it is not universal
in the OER community.
(Gurung,2017)
Challenge Four
• Some fields of study have
more OER resources to
offer than others. My field
is Early Childhood
Education, and so far, I
have not found a wealth
of OER materials that
would be suitable for this
field. (Weller, et al. 2016)

7. OER Challenges
Challenge Five
• Ever increasing demands for ADA accessibility can add a challenge
related to the use of OER materials. Materials not designed for
ADA accessibility are considered “not fully open content” (Bliss
and Smith, 2017), but not all content is fully assessable.

8. References
Bliss, T J and Smith, M. 2017. A Brief History of Open Educational Resources. In: Jhangiani, R S
and Biswas-Diener, R. (eds.) Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing
Education and Science. Pp. 9–27. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.b.
License: CC-BY 4.0
Gurung, R A R. 2017. Are OE Resources High Quality?. In: Jhangiani, R S and BiswasDiener, R.
(eds.) Open: The Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. Pp.
79–86. London: Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi. org/10.5334/bbc.f. License: CC-BY 4.0
Hilton, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research
on efficacy and perceptions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64(4), 573-
590.
Weller, M, de los Arcos, B, Farrow, R, Pitt, R, and McAndrew, P. 2017. What Can OER Do for Me?
Evaluating the Claims for OER. In: Jhangiani, R S and Biswas-Diener, R. (eds.) Open: The
Philosophy and Practices that are Revolutionizing Education and Science. Pp. 67–77. London:
Ubiquity Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bbc.e. License: CC-BY 4.0