Faculty and students can benefit from using Open Educational Resources (OER). For faculty, OER allows more flexibility in choosing course materials and encourages innovation. It also helps keep courses up to date by exposing faculty to new materials. For students, OER lowers costs and makes materials more accessible anytime online. However, OER does pose some potential difficulties such as the time it takes for faculty to find appropriate materials and uncertainty around quality and peer review. Overall, OER is a positive change that provides more opportunities for teaching and learning.

1. How Open Educational Resources can
Improve Teaching and Learning
Opportunities
Presented by: Janie Burlingame
CC BY-SA

2. Faculty can benefit from OER in several ways :
o The ability to choose from a variety of
resources not just those of a textbook company.
o Can be more creative in developing courses
which could improve instructor satisfaction.
Gives the instructor the opportunity
to sh to share with peers.
Exposes the instructor to new
materials materials which can keep the course
u up-to-date.

3. Students can also gain benefits from OER.
o Using Open Resources can help to lower the
cost of taking courses.
o Many of today’s students prefer to get their
material in a computer based format.
o Material is accessible any time of day or night
for the student to study on their schedule.
o OER gives students the opportunity
to learn in a variety of ways.

4. There are some possible difficulties that OER poses.
These potential problems include:
o It can be time consuming for instructors to find
appropriate material.
o The quality and the variety of material might be
limited.
o Not all students might have the tools to access the
material.
o Are the materials truly peer reviewed? This might
be difficult for an instructor to know.
o Instructors need to be willing to share their created
materials with others.

5. Open Educational Resources are a positive change
whose time has come. We have the opportunity
to continue to learn and explore this relatively
new tool. Take time in your busy schedules to
continue to explore the various resources.
Whether you choose to use OER for your courses,
share the concept with your colleagues so that
they also can learn about this
new wave of the future.