John B. Cade Library OER Learning Modules: Module 2 OER Benefits

One of the first aspects of OER to be praised by the general public was the cost savings that they could bring to students. As Figure 1 shows, the price of college textbooks has risen greatly over the past 35 years, outpacing all other consumer goods in the Consumer Price Index by a great margin.

The cost of textbooks has a profound impact on college students, many of whom must wait to purchase their course materials until well into the semester or choose not to purchase them at all.^[1]

The cost of textbooks might not be a major issue on its own, but it can be an insurmountable hurdle for students already struggling to get by. As a recent survey found, 36% of college students are food insecure. This number is even higher for community college students, 42% of whom reported food insecurity.^[2]

The problem of food and housing insecurity among college students cannot be fixed by adjusting the price of textbooks alone. There are a wide variety of reasons why these problems are in place.^[3] However, the unexpected additional cost of textbooks can make the difference between a student persisting in college or dropping out.

When you choose to share course materials openly, you are providing students with the opportunity to engage with your content before, during, and after your course. Because OER are always free to access online, students who are interested in taking a course you teach can read up on the course ahead of time and ensure that they are ready and interested in the material. Moreover, students who have already taken your course can be safe in the knowledge that their course materials will not evaporate at the end of the semester and that they can continue to review the materials you provided to them for years to come.

The students who benefit from access to OER are not just the ones in your classroom. Unlike affordability initiatives like course reserves, OER are free for anyone in the world to access, whether they have a college affiliation or not.^[4] This encourages aging learners and students in the Global South to explore educational content without having to commit the time and money they might not have to attend college.^[5]

1. Florida Virtual Campus. 2018 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey: Executive Summary, 2018. 
2. Romo, Vanessa. "Hunger and Homelessness are Widespread Among College Students, Survey Finds." NPR: The Two-Way, April 2018. 
3. Goldrick-Rab, Sara and Cady, Clare. Supporting Community College Completion with a Culture of Caring: A Case Study of Amarillo College, 2018.https://hope4college.com/supporting-community-college-completion-with-a-culture-of-caring-a-case-study-of-amarillo-college/ ↵
4. Although OER are free for anyone to access, this access is still limited by who has access to the Internet. Still, since OER can be freely redistributed, some individuals have printed OER for dissemination in areas that do not have Internet access as well. ↵
5. Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl and Arinto, Patricia B. Adoption and Impact of OER in the Global South. Cape Town & Ottawa: African Minds, International Development Research Centre & Research on Open Educational Resources, 2017. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.1005330 ↵

• Knowledge of course objectives 

• Understanding of student needs and learning styles 

• Expertise in evaluating resources for use and application in a course 

• Experience in constructing and authoring instructional materials 

• Expertise in various pedagogical approaches and curriculum implementation 

Although cost savings are a major talking point in favor of adopting open educational resources, instructors can utilize OER effectively without replacing paid resources at all.^[1] In fact, the freedom to adapt OER to instructional needs is often the most attractive aspect of OER. Since OER are openly licensed, educators are free to edit, reorder, and remix OER materials in many ways. See common use below.

• Adapt and revise resources that have already been created to fit your course syllabus. 
• Provide students with culturally relevant and responsible classroom materials in which all students see themselves reflected.
• Create an updated second edition of an existing OER.
• Tailor resources to fit your specific course context (e.g., translation, local examples).

• Access educational resources that have been peer-reviewed by experts in your field.
• Create a new open educational resource with a team of your peers.
• Explore user reviews for a more in-depth understanding of the resources available.

• Enable all students to have equal access to your course materials.
• Provide students with the opportunity to explore course content before enrolling.

In the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast below, Dr. John Stewart, Assistant Director for the Office of Digital Learning at the University of Oklahoma, talks about his experience with OER.

Attribution: The Benefits for Instructors section of this chapter was adapted from the SUNY OER Community Course, licensed CC BY 4.0. ↵

Attribution: The OER Starter Kit by Abbey K. Elder is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

Click on the link below to view 

 There are many benefits to using OER in the classroom; however, there are also some drawbacks. The biggest challenge that instructors face when adopting OER is best encapsulated by the phrase "availability may vary."

Many of the largest OER projects funded over the past fifteen years targeted high cost, high impact courses to save students money. Because of this, most of the OER available today are for general education courses.

This does not mean that there are no OER available for specialized subject areas or graduate-level courses; however, there are more resources to choose from for instructors who teach Introduction to Psychology than for those who teach Electronic Systems Integration for Agricultural Machinary & Production Systems.

Note: This is beginning to change as more institutions begin publishing OER through regional and institutional grant programs.

As with subject availability, the format and types of OER that has been developed over time have largely been targeted at high enrollment courses which could see substantial cost savings for students. There are many open textbooks available today, but fewer options for ancillary materials. You can find lecture slides, notes and lesson plans online, but ancillary content such as homework software and test banks are harder to find.

Although the other challenges to OER use are inherent to the resources themselves, this final drawback is a concern for you as a user and creator. It takes time and effort to find OER that might work for your course, and if you want to create and publish new resources, that takes exponentially more time. 

Time constraints are always going to be an issue for instructors who want to try something new in their course. Luckily, there are resources available to help you locate, adopt, and implement OER. 

Video Attribution: "AIM Highlight Reel" by San Francisco State University is licensed under CC BY 4.0