Explore the benefits and challenges of open educational resources (OER).

1. Open
Educational
Resources
(OER)
Benefits and Challenges of OER
by Audrey Roggenkamp

2. What are Open Educational Resources?
• Open Educational Resources (OER) are free, open licensed media,
text, and other digital assets that are accessible for teaching, learning,
and assessing as well as for research purposes.
• OER material can be used, mixed, improved, and redistributed under
some licenses.
Source: “Open educational resources,” Wikipedia.com. Accessed November 15, 2020.

3. Benefits of OER
Cost effective for students
• Many OER are free or reduced in price from the more expensive
textbooks that many courses require students to purchase. This is
helpful for students where textbook and material costs may prevent
students from taking a course.
Continually updated and improved resources
• OER can be updated as frequently as a user or instructor deems
necessary, unlike textbooks that are static. Online OER that are
updated can then be distributed immediately for use by others. This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-NC

4. Benefits of OER
Allows students to access the course
content long after the course is completed
• Typically, once a course is completed, students no
longer have access to the online content. Because
OER are open, students can continually access the
course content to study, relearn, refresh their
knowledge, or remind themselves of their learning.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY

5. Benefits of OER
The variety of resources available
• With the increase in popularity of OER, more content is becoming available in most topics of
study. These resources are also available to students all around the world.
Content can be used to enhance current coursework
• Even if instructors are tied to a particular curriculum and/or textbook, OER are still available for
instructors to use as supplements to enhance and enrich student learning. This is especially
useful when adapting content to meet the needs of all types of learners.

6. Challenges of OER
Time consuming
• It may take instructors time to review the resources
available to them with OER and determining what
works best for their courses. The amount of
material available can be overwhelming as one first
learns how to locate the necessary content.
Outdated material
• Because creators and authors of original content
are generally not paid for the work they provide as
OER, there is not a high incentive to update work.
This requires instructors to take the time to wade
through the more outdated work.
"Clocks for Den" by robstephaustralia is licensed under CC BY

7. Challenges of OER
Missing ancillary resources
• OER may lack the ancillary resources such as lesson blueprints, quizzes, test banks, and
materials that publishers provide with paid materials.
Accessibility with OER
• Accessibility has become even more important in today’s learning. It may be challenging to
locate OER that has passed accessibility checks, which may put the responsibility on the
instructor to make necessary changes or accommodations.

8. Challenges of OER
Quality assurance
• As instructors, how do we know that the materials we
locate are high quality resources? So much digital
content is available for learning, but it’s important to do
the research to determine the quality of the content.
Thankfully, most OER will go through a review process
and peer review before being posted.
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC

9. Final Thoughts
Open Educational Resources are excellent options for instructors to enhance their current curriculum and/or to
help offset the costs to their students. As a current textbook author, I plan to continue learning more about how I
can play a part in OER. As an instructor, I am thrilled to learn so much from this course and to know how to
access and cite materials I locate and use in my courses.
Audrey Roggenkamp, Pierce College
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY