Test

1. Open Educational Resources:
their benefits and challenges
By
Dr. Siri Nimal Wickramaratne
Clark College, Vancouver, WA
swickramaratne@clark.edu
Image credit: UNESCO – Public domain

2. Introduction
• Open Educational Resources[OER] are materials available for
free use without copyright restrictions.
• They are available on the Web for learning, teaching and even
research.
• Any educational resource even in non-digital is form qualifies as
an OER provided its free to use.
• They are found in may formats; course material, course plans,
textbooks, videos and games to name a few.
• They also cover an extremely wide variety of subjects as well as
level from schools to graduate schools.

3. Cont’d
• OERs can either be in;
“the public domain or released with an intellectual property license
that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution”.
[UNESCO - Open Educational Resources. Retrieved from
http://www.unesco.org/new/en/communication-and-information/access-to-
knowledge/open-educational-resources//]
mage credit: UNESCO – Public Domain

4. Benefits of OER
OER has many benefits and some are:
• 1. Free availability without the need to worry about copyright issues.
• Even for-profit educational institutions will have access to most of
these.
• 2. Free availability without a financial cost.
• 3. Massive new information allows educators as well as students to
remain in the frontier of knowledge with continual updating.

5. Cont’d
• 4. Provide opportunity to combine data and information from many
sources to produce comprehensive and composite products.
• 5. Wide coverage for individual or inter-disciplinary subjects.
• 6. Openness helps elevate standards through peer-review.
• 7. OER saves time and energy and even trouble.
• 8. Flexibility and adaptability to different circumstances.

6. Challenges of OER
OER are not without challenges and some are:
1. The Challenge of selection from among many. [Decision making
challenge]
2. The challenge of searching. Wide availability poses a challenge as
to where to look for material that suits one’s needs.
3. Quality issue. As relatively new, quality of OER can be questionable.
[Question of acceptable academic resources. Usually, material from
universities/colleges and reputed agencies are beyond doubt].

7. Cont’d
• 4. Desired material is not plentiful for every subject. Some of my
colleagues found this challenge.
• 5. OERs are relatively new having [originated in 1994]. Therefore,
OER literacy is low and so is their credibility as of now.
• 6. At the college and research level new research findings are no
available as OERs. Peer-reviewed journal are not in the OER world.

8. Conclusion
OER is a relatively new concept.
People in every sphere of education will find them indispensable
in the years to come.
Thank you!
Image Credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration Public domain