Open Educational Resources (OER)

"Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public

domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions." [The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation]

The Open Education movement is built around the 5Rs of Openness [opencontent.org]

• Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content
• Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways (e.g., in a class, in a study group, on a website, in a video)
• Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself (e.g., translate the content into another language)
• Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content to create something new (e.g., incorporate the content into a mashup)
• Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or your remixes with others (e.g., give a copy of the content to a friend)

Image: Flickr user KarenSeptember. Click the image to view it larger.

Open Educational Resources can include many types of materials, including:

• Textbooks
• Animations, simulations, lectures, or other instructional videos
• Images
• Interactive materials
• Lesson plans
• Entire course content (open courseware)

Affordability

• Textbook prices rose 82% between 2002 and 2012 - three times the rate of inflation [Government Accountability Office]
• Students report spending anywhere from $600 to $1200 on textbooks annually. [College Board] 
• In a study of 22,000 students at public colleges and universities in Florida, students reported that they purchased between 2 and 3 textbooks that were never used during their full course of study. [2016 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey]
• Faculty don't have much say over tuition or fees, but their textbook choices can have a direct and significant impact on a student's cost of college attendance.

Flexibility

• Customize content to suit your learning outcomes
• Use only the content you need
• Develop materials that uniquely suit your students' needs

Student Retention & Success

• In the Florida study, nearly 48% of students indicated that textbook cost influenced how many or which courses they took. [2016 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey]
• In the same study, 38% of students reported that they earned a poor grade because they were unable to purchase the textbook; nearly 20% failed a course. [2016 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey]
• In a recent large-scale study at the University of Georgia, courses that converted to OER saw an increase of A and A-minue grades by 5.50% and 7.73%, respectively [University of Georgia] 
• ALL students will have access to the textbook on the first day of classes - no more waiting for textbooks to arrive in the mail or to receive financial aid disbursements

Accessibility

• Online materials are often easier for students with print disabilities to use, including the ability to change the text size and use a computer to read the text
• They provide more versatility for all students, as many allow for the digital copies to be downloaded or printed out

Innovation!

• Get out of the "teaching from the textbook" rut
• Discover new materials, resources, and strategies for teaching your content
• Flex your pedagogical muscles
• Involve students in the selection of materials or development of open content

This material was created by David Wiley and published freely under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license at http://opencontent.org/definition/.