Open Educational Resources (OER) is a broad term that links concepts of openness to materials used for instruction and teaching.
At BCOEL, we use OER when referring to open resources such as journal articles, books, associated course materials, and AV materials such as streaming audio and video.
Benefits
There are many benefits of using Open Educational Resources in teaching practices, from saving students money to adding diverse perspectives to course content.
One of the most important reasons for using Open Educational Resources is the cost savings to students. Traditional textbooks can cost up to $200 – $300 in some disciplines, beyond the budget of many students and their families. Students who are unable to afford the course textbook will often fall behind and have lower levels of achievement. Open Educational Resources are free and can help students succeed.
OERs can also save time and add different voices to the classroom. The internet doesn’t just have cat videos; there are great lectures and podcasts by scholars in their fields. Using those as OERs in the classroom can provide another perspective on the topic for students and save time writing up and delivering another lecture. Learn from the work of colleagues and implement new resources knowing that they worked well for others.
Challenges
The biggest challenge to using OERs in a classroom is finding resources that are of high relevance to the topic being studied. Most OERs should be discoverable on the internet using online guides. That’s where we librarians come in as expert internet searchers with experience in matching information needs with available information resources.
Another challenge for using OERs is that they can be time-consuming to create. While this is definitely true, you don’t need to start from scratch. Try adding an existing resource that someone else has already created (adopting). Or if you feel even more ambitious, take an existing OER and tweak it to match your specific needs (adapting).
Adopting OER
Using OERs in the classroom doesn’t mean starting from scratch. Instead, you can adopt an existing resource of high quality and relevance.
You can search resources like SOL*R, OER Commons or Merlot, or even popular sites like Youtube, which contain a great deal of scholarly content — if you know how to uncover it. You can also explore the OER repository rubric and other OER finding tools.
Be sure to tell others about your experience and share your story about saving students money and improving their learning outcomes.
Adapting OER
Adapting is a great way to save yourself time, by building on the work of others to customize a resource to meet your needs.
For example, there may be an excellent resource, but all of the references and measurements are in imperial. You can adapt it by replacing the examples with metric measurements. Or, you could take an open resource with an American focus and make it relevant for Canada or BC specifically.
Be sure to share out your adaptation, as others will undoubtedly be able to make similar use of your work.
Creating OER
You may also wish to create your own OER if is no relevant, high-quality resource already exists. If this is the case, and you decide to create a new OER, your efforts will not only be of value to yourself but to other librarians, instructors, and students around the world.
There are hundreds of tools available to help you create your own OERs, many of which are free and open source. We’ve created a list of free resources to help you get started.
Be sure to talk to your local Teaching and Learning Centre, for recommendations, training opportunities, and access to some of the more expensive applications.