Open Educational Resources (OER) Considerations

Considerations of Open Educational Resources (OER).

1. Open Educational Resources (OER ) Considerations Neil Duldulao Green River College Auburn, WA OER 101, July 2024 “Stack of Old Books” by Austin Kirk is licensed under CC BY 2.0

2. Why incorporate OER in our classrooms? Increased access to learning Responsive to student and faculty needs Potential for continual improvement Save time and effort Encourage lifelong learning

3. Benefit: Increased access to learning Reduce costs of instructional materials to increase access for students Students can access OER repeatedly, and at any time, without worrying about purchasing access that eventually expires

4. Benefit: Responsive to student and faculty needs Faculty have more control over both the content of OER, and how the content is presented or explained OER can be used within a variety of different learning contexts, or aimed at students with special educational needs OER can be used to complement other instructional material, e.g. simulations

5. Faculty have more control over the quality of the OER, and when or how often the resources are updated User feedback can be solicited and incorporated in the OER, allowing for rapid development and improvement of the OER. Especially important for rapidly-evolving fields. Benefit: Potential for continual improvement

6. OER can be adapted and modified, so materials do not have to be developed from scratch Promote ease of collaboration in developing OER Benefit: Save time and effort

7. Wide variety of high-quality OER in many subjects readily available for traditional and nontraditional students alike, and this variety is only expanding Benefit: Encourage lifelong learning

8. Ongoing OER Challenges Searching for desired OER Outdated OER Quality control Different OER formats Variable OER “openness”

9. Challenge: Searching for desired OER Many OER available to sift through Search results for OER in OER collections/databases can be very similar, but already tailored for specific learning contexts and special instructional needs

10. Many OER were made available online or last updated up to 20 years ago Some OER is not current, requiring time and effort to bring up to date Challenge: Outdated OER

11. Quality of existing OER may vary OER may not be regularly “peer reviewed”, if at all Review information or ratings for a certain OER can be either difficult to find or possibly unavailable altogether Challenge: Quality control

12. OER can sometimes be found in a format that might not be desired PDF Website Microsoft Word Microsoft PowerPoint Simulation And many more! Challenge: Different OER formats

13. Some OER are in the public domain and are the most open Other OER are still under copyright, with all rights reserved Several Creative Commons open licenses exist with different license elements Challenge: Variable OER “openness”