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Open Educational Resources: OER & OA Benefits for Students & Faculty

OER & OA Benefits for students

Well documented advantages of OER for students include:

  • Affordability: OER greatly reduce (often to zero!) the cost of education materials such as textbooks, labs, and other course materials. 
  • Accessibility: OER are available online in the great majority of instances, along with the low cost, this greatly reduces the barrier to entry for students. 
  • Flexibility & Customization: OER allow faculty and students to customize learning materials to meet their specific needs. The “one size fits all” approach need not apply. 
  • Engagement: Students are actively learning as they can actually participate in designing learning materials. 

5.2 OER, Open Textbooks, and Open Courses by  Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0 

 

Open Access materials offer a wide range of benefits for students:

  • OA allows students to access research, content, and knowledge in multiple formats for no cost.  
  • Releasing materials freely allows more equitable access to students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds and circumstances.  
  • Open Access opens the door to innovation and education to a much wider student population. 

The academic, economic, and societal impacts of Open Access: An evidence- based review. By Tennent, Waldner, Jacques, Masuzzo, Collister, & Hartgerink. CC BY 4.0 


Decorative OER graphic

OER Logo by Jonathasmello. CC BY 3.0

OER & OA Benefits for Faculty

Faculty benefits from OER creation, adoption, and usage:

  • Innovation: Based on the “5 Rs” faculty can remix, adapt and share course materials that they have control over. 
  • Professional Development: Faculty that consistently create or remix/adapt their course materials are often on the cutting edge of their discipline. 
  • Collaboration: The principles of OER (accessibility, sharing, remixing/adapting) encourage faculty working together across institutions, fields and disciplines. 
  • Course Content: Faculty have greater control of their course content when using OER resources. Their expertise can be brought to course materials in a very hands-on way. 

5.3 Finding, Evaluating, and Adapting Resources by  Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0 

 

Faculty benefits from using Open Access resources and community:

  • OA publishing provides faculty research with a larger audience and impact as OA journals do not have associated costs and paywalls for readers. 
  • OA materials can provide faculty with opportunities for collaboration across academic disciplines and institutions as scholarly research is more readily available. 
  • Faculty can use and share OA materials for teaching and course development freely. The OA designation eliminates any worries about copyright and cost to students. 

5.1 Open Access to Scholarship by  Creative Commons. CC BY 4.0 


Decorative OA graphic

A montage of the of the logs of Wikipedia and the Open Access Movement by Pete Forsyth CC BY 3.0