Benefits and challenges of using open educational resources

Maria Kelly Edmonds Community College

Benefits of using open educational resources

Maria Kelly Edmonds Community College

Reduce cost to students – with rising tuition, concerns about the economy and student debt, OER is one way faculty can help students

Contribute to a global community of learners – By using, creating and making material available you can contribute to a global effort to make knowledge more available.

Keep up to date – Using OER forces faculty to continue to update their own education and facility with technology.

Keep teaching interesting – It is fun to check out OERs in your field.

Be the boss – Instead of relying on textbooks to decide what content to cover, you are now curator, author and editor.

Challenges of using open educational resources

Maria Kelly Edmonds Community College

Significant extra and often uncompensated work for instructors – using quality OERs as your major/only ‘textbook’ requires a tremendous amount of time and effort by faculty.

Editing concerns – Textbooks are expensive but they also have editors and paid authors and the best ones are updated in meaningful ways.

Quality concerns - The quality of OERs varies wildly and often the instructor may be the only one to decide which OERs to use.

Technology Concerns – OERs come in all sorts of technical formats. Images, videos and various software programs are great the instructor needs to make sure they will be compatible with the various and always changing devices students will use to access them.

Unknown Unknowns - Radical changes are always fraught with unintended consequences.