“Four Reasons to Consider Using Open Education Resources (OER)”

Open Education Resources (OER) are shared on-line educating assets, sometimes free and licensed underneath Creative Commons. OER are normally used as a complement to or full alternative for conventional textbooks.

OER have come a good distance prior to now few years. Once I first began utilizing them within the fall of 2018, the databases accessible resembled one thing from the final century. In actual fact, open content material for educating is nothing new. Dr. David Wiley started the Open Content Project again in 1998. Right this moment there are new, easy-to-navigate web sites, similar to https://www.oercommons.org/. The positioning may very well be a superb place to begin. Although the quantity of fabric might be overwhelming, they do provide coaching in how to analysis and use OER.

Listed here are a couple of of the explanations it’s your decision to think about using OER on your lessons.

Save College students Cash

Textbook publishers are for-profit companies. OER tends to be non-profit (like OER Commons). Being for-profit gives motivation for steady updates to textbooks. That makes it more durable for college kids to purchase used books. It is also extra work for college by having to assessment and replace a lot of their supplies. Given the price of textbooks immediately, utilizing OER to exchange textbooks can save college students some huge cash.

Whereas official definitions of OER sometimes contain supplies being freely open and accessible to anybody, I embrace free supplies that could be restricted to a subset of scholars, similar to college students at a selected college and even simply these enrolled in a particular course. The important thing differentiator is that the supplies ought to be free to the coed.

A method to get supplies that are not already on a inventive commons license is to use your (division or college’s) library finances. At my earlier establishment, there was a library finances for every division. Typically this cash could be unspent. So, asking the library to spend a portion of the finances to purchase a license for a digital copy of a ebook was straightforward. Test along with your library liaison or a librarian who covers your discipline to discover out if there’s any finances for getting digital licenses. I used to be in a position to get 4 books with no drawback. Two of the books required year-round licenses, for the reason that course was taught all year long. Some licenses might be bought on a part-year foundation. Should you solely use a ebook one semester or quarter per yr, this can be an choice and enhance your likelihood of getting the acquisition authorized.

You Can Have Better Management Over Content material

OER offers college extra management over the particular content material. School can pull collectively a wide range of supplies that higher match what they’re making an attempt to educate. Whereas with textbooks, the content material is decided by another person. In fact, for these not wanting to put a lot effort into educating, that is smart. However for these extra dedicated to designing and delivering the most effective course doable, then OER is best suited.

There are some drawbacks, after all. Using OER requires effort and time to discover supplies. They usually could not include any supporting materials like slides and exams. However you may work along with your librarian to assist analysis and discover such supplies contributed to the commons by fellow college.

There May Be Some Cash in It for You

Earlier than you leap into utilizing OER for the primary time, examine for incentives. For a number of years, my earlier establishment supplied a small stipend to college to check out utilizing OER supplies. I feel it was $100, which was a pleasant reward for one thing I used to be wanting to do anyway. In case your college does not provide this, put in a suggestion to accomplish that.

College students Recognize It

Ever since I began utilizing OER instead of textbooks, college students have made it a degree to thank me particularly for it. Whereas the price of textbooks is a drop within the bucket in contrast to tuition, housing, and meals, each little bit helps. College students have instructed me that the truth that I made an effort to save them some cash confirmed that I cared about them. Not that it was the one factor I used to be doing, however this was one factor that caught out for a lot of college students — particularly the scholars who’re meals and/or housing insecure. The $100-200 saved by not shopping for a standard texbook can go in direction of meals, lease, or fuel. Whereas this would possibly not do a lot to increase your pupil analysis scores, it’s good to get thank yous from college students.

A further profit is that college students can “maintain” the books after the category is over. If they’re true OER and completely free, college students can entry them anytime, anyplace, since they’re digital. This may be an added worth for college kids in that they will refer again to materials, maybe years, later (which is likely to be after they lastly understand the worth of the fabric). If the fabric is one thing that was acquired by means of a library license, college students ought to nonetheless have entry to the fabric after class, so long as they’ve entry to the library.

You probably have used OER in your programs, what has been your expertise? If you have not but used them, what questions or issues do you have got? Be at liberty to share within the feedback part beneath.