a brief look at the pros and cons of Open Educational Resources

1. B Y J E R E M Y K O Z I O L
A few benefits and challenges of
OER

2. Benefits
 Low cost to no cost educational resources
 The whole global community has increased
opportunity for learning. Specifically for students
who do not have access to quality education, OER
may allow them to learn in spite of their geographic
location

3. Benefits cont.
 OER is an educational product that mirrors the
societal trend of increasing online presence (OER
tends to be stored and access online)
 OER allows educators to better customize content to
their classes and students since obtaining permission
to use/change has already been given
 OER can allow for greater collaboration in resource
sharing and development since it is open for
everyone to use

4. Challenges
 Accuracy and trustworthiness. How does the user
know the information is accurate or trustworthy?
 Accessibility without internet. Since OER seems to
be a movement driven online, what if people do not
have access to the internet, how can they still access
OER?

5. Challenges cont.
 No monetary incentive to produce content. This may
hurt productivity and quality. You have heard the
adage, you get what you pay for… does this apply to
OER?
 Legitimacy. There does not seem to be a global
standard to determine OER quality (e.g. some sort of
review process)
 Acceptance. Will people think that a class using OER
is somehow “inferior?”