Looking at the plusses and minuses of using Open Education Resources

1. Open Education
Resources
Should I learn to use them?
by Leo Hopcroft

2. Textbook prices
My students are paying way
too much!
Money Hand Holding Bankroll Girls by Steven Depolo is licensed under CC BY

3. But traditional textbook publishers
provide a lot for all that money
publishers have a huge variety of ready-made
textbooks for all kinds of classes
textbooks are reviewed by many experts and
editors
publishers provide websites, power points, and
resources matched to the textbook
publishers provide test banks

4. On the other hand, there are many sources of open
educational resources available to help you
customize your classes and make them your own

5. But choosing and gathering
resources from among so
many sources can be
overwhelming
Outtake - Nooo! by Andrés Þór is licensed under CC BY NC SA

6. Open education resources do not yet
live up to the hype.
Designing your course will be a huge amount of work, and it
will probably take a lot longer than you expect
You may not even find exactly what you are looking for
Many “open” sources link to material that isn’t open

7. On the plus side, the wide array of OER materials means
you can include a variety of media in your courses
What is Multimedia? By Kevin Jarrett is licensed under CC BY

8. Your can integrate open
education resources into
your course material to
make online, interactive
lessons available to your
students without having
to ask permission
Laptop by Max is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

9. Creating and using OER makes you a part of
an unlimited community of teaching and
learning
Extended Community Circle by josephluis is public domain clipart