Open Educational Resources: What is OER

 What are Open Educational Resources (OER)?

"Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions."

[UNESCO]

Why OER?

1. Textbook Prices

Textbook prices continue to rise at a significant rate over tuition and fees and more than four times faster than inflation.  Open Educational Resources are free of cost.

Bureau of Labor Statistics

2. Unbridled Pedagogy

OER enables pedagogy that traditional textbooks do not.  This enables instructors to stray from “disposable assignments” and instead invite students to become producers and communicators of knowledge.  Think “contributing to Wikipedia instead of response essays”.  OU Modern Languages professor, Julie Ward Ph.D., published Antología Abierta De Literatura Hispana, an OER funded by an OU Libraries Alternative Textbook Grant, that is comprised of her students’ writings.  This textbook and Dr. Ward's method of instruction have been recognized for their innovation and are in use at other institutions.

3. Student and Institution Performance

A multi-institutional study has shown that classes that employ OER have lower drop and withdrawl rates than those using traditional, costly, textbooks keeping students on track to graduate. Relatedly, student performance in classes using OER has been shown to be the same as or marginally improved over that in which traditional textbooks were used.

4. Societal Benefit

Though difficult to prove, it is easy to imagine that decreasing students’ debt while marginally increasing their performance might yield positive societal effects.