Benefits and challenges of OER

1. OER
open educational
resources
By Laura Klaus

2. Open Educational
Resources
Repository of . . .
shared
teaching,
learning,
and
research
resources
available under legally
recognized open licenses
free for
people to
reuse,
revise,
remix, and
redistribute

3. Benefits
 Save time and monetary resources, for both
students and instructors/schools (decreases
costs of textbooks, etc.)
 Increase innovation in teaching
 Students gain inspiration from others in field
 Breaks down barriers to learning
~as learning can occur anywhere, for anyone
 Increase lifelong learning

4. Additional benefits for
institutions:
 Little/no cost to distribute
 Supplemental or stand-alone
 Showcases talent/expertise
 Dialogue across global market substantially
increased
 Marketing and branding potential increased
 Circulation spanning ~ global
 Increased scalability

5. Challenges
 Internet access and speed not a viable option
for many geographic locations
 Quality of work is unknown
 Timely updating of materials may not occur
 Students may miss out on human interaction
& dialogue

6. Challenges in higher
education
 Resource overload
 Continual revisions, based on subject matter
 Changing mindset of instructors and
administration
 Time constraints to create, find & modify
existing OER
 Professional development needed

7. Pitfalls of oer
 Saturation over time, however for the present,
can be a useful marketing tool for institutional
programs.
 Initial time, technical & personnel
investment, however, over time a monetary
savings is recognized.
 Competing repositories will make OER more
difficult to locate.
 Quality of materials available may not share
the same standards.

8. The greatest form of flattery . . .
annotated list of websites with OER
(Open Educational Resources)
 http://www.ocwconsortium.org
 http://www.academicearth.org/
 http://www.oercommons.org/
 http://www.ted.com/
 http://www.free.ed.gov/index.cfm
 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk
 http://www.open2.net
 http://creativecommons.org/
 http://creativecommons.org/videos
 http://edutechwiki.unige.ch
 http://www.q4r.org/
 http://www.oerrecommender.org
 http://www.doaj.org
 http://www.citeulike.org
 http://www.edlproject.eu
 http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
 http://www.wikieducator.org
 http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu
 http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/index.htm
 http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm
 http://oyc.yale.edu
 http://cnx.org
 http://www.openarchives.org
 http://sofia.fhda.edu/gallery
 http://blendedlearning.wikispaces.com
 http://www.dmoz.org
 http://solr.bccampus.ca:8001/bcc/access/home.do?
 http://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning
 http://openeducation.zunia.org
 http://freelearning.bccampus.ca
 http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu
 http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk
 http://www.montereyinstitute.org/nroc/index.html
 http://nsdl.org/
 http://ocw.usu.edu/
 http://www.jorum.ac.uk
 http://edtechpost.wikispaces.com/OER+Dynamic+Search+Engine
 http://www.curriki.org

9. references
 http://abccollector.com/
 http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2012/06/
26/4-Challenges-for-OER-in-Higher-Education
 http://libguides.umuc.edu/content.
 http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Are-the-Benefits-
and-Pitfalls-of-Open-Educational-Resources
 http://college-
education.tumblr.com/post/62479102245/list-of-
open-educational-resources-websites