What are Open Educational Resources?

Teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, and use the five R’s

Why OER?

Organizational Benefits 

• Promotes innovation
• Increases faculty engagement and development opportunities
• Contributes to collaborative working relationships                              

Faculty Benefits

• Gives departments/faculty control over textbook content, not the publishers, giving more pedagogical freedom
• Able to customize existing materials to improve content for localized teaching context
• Can lead to better student outcomes and class retention rates
•  Faculty can encourage student engagement by facilitating their participation in OER development

Student Benefits

• Low or no cost to students with no expensive fees to access the materials
• Provides students with access to course materials from the first day of classes
• Helps ensure that all students with access to the internet have equal access to the textbook
• Can be tailored to students' learning needs making education more accessible to students
• Students can keep copies of OER materials
• Students can print, cut, paste any parts of OER and share them with friends.

Adapted from Why OER?, a chapter from Open Educational Resources: Basics & Beyond, which is written by Oklahoma Council for Online Learning Excellence (COLE) Member Volunteers and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.