In this chapter, we will introduce you to the concept of OER and the benefits and challenges of using them.

Attribution: “OER Basics” from Open Oregon [Youtube] is available under a Creative Commons Attribution License

Background

The open education movement was originally inspired by the open source community, with a focus on broadening access to information through the use of free, open content. As Bliss & Smith (2017) explain in their breakdown of the history of open education:

Much of our attention focused on OER’s usefulness at providing knowledge in its original form to those who otherwise might not have access. The implicit goal was to equalize access to disadvantaged and advantaged peoples of the world – in MIT’s language, to create ‘a shared intellectual Common.’^[1]

Following the rise of open education in the early 2000s, growing interest in open courseware (particularly open textbooks) catapulted the movement to new heights; however, the movement toward greater OER awareness among instructors is growing at a slow and steady rate. In a survey done in the U.S. in 2018 indicated that 47% of instructors had never heard of OER, whilst the remaining instructors had some degree of familiarity with the concept. There is still quite a large number of instructors are unaware of OER, but the percentage has shrunk by 19% since 2014, showing that awareness is growing. ^[2]

What is an OER?

Open educational resources (OER) are openly-licensed (or public domain), freely and easily accessible educational materials that can be adapted and redistributed by users. While many think of OER as referring predominantly to open textbooks, OER includes a vast variety of resources, such as videos, images, lesson plans, coding and software, and even entire courses. In order for a resource to be considered open, it must fulfill the following criteria:

• Openly-licensed: The resource must explicitly state that it is available for remixing and redistribution by others. Some open licences may include restrictions on how others may use the resource. You can read about this more in the Copyright & Licensing chapter.
• Freely Available: The resources must be available online at zero-cost. Physical OER may be sold at a low cost to facilitate printing.
• Modifiable: The resource must be made available under an open license that allows for editing. Ideally, it should also be available in an editable format.^[3]

The most comprehensive definition of OER available today is provided by the Hewlett Foundation:

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.^[4]

With a definition so broad that it includes any educational material so long as it is free to access and open, it might be easier to ask, “What isn’t an OER?”

What is Not an OER?

If a resource has restrictive licensing or requires a fee to be accessed, it is not considered an OER. For example, most materials accessed through your library’s subscriptions cannot be altered, remixed, or redistributed. These materials require special permission to use and therefore cannot be seen as “open.” Table 1 below explains the difference between OER and other resources often mislabeled as OER.

Note: Although some materials are free to access for a library’s users, that does not mean that they are free to access for everyone (including the library). Similarly, while some open access resources are made available under a copyright license that enables modification, this is not always the case. Open access articles may also stray from the definition of OER as they tend to be focused more on research, rather than teaching and learning resources.

Benefits of Using OER

Benefits for Students

One of the first aspects of OER to be praised by the general public was the cost savings that they could bring to students. Tuition fees in Canada are continuing to rise by about 3% every year, but alongside this, compulsory fees can set students back nearly $1,000 a year, and are often not covered by student loans. According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian undergraduate student will pay approximately $1,286 in compulsory fees during the 2022/2023 school year. The price is 23.8% above the Canadian average, and the graduate students will pay 16.9% higher than the national average. ^[5] Alongside rising tuition and compulsory fees, students at the University spend an estimate of $1750 per year on textbooks alone. ^[6]

The cost of textbooks has a profound impact on university students, many of whom must wait to purchase their course materials until well into the semester or choose not to purchase them at all.^[7]

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. A recent study at the University of Manitoba indicated that 35.3% of students experienced some degree of food insecurity throughout their degree.^[8]

The problem of food and housing insecurity among college and university students cannot be fixed by adjusting the price of textbooks alone. There are a wide variety of reasons why these problems are in place.^[9] However, many students cited the inaccuracy in cost-of-living estimates on student loan applications as a major reason for running out of money near the end of the semester. ^[10] The unexpected additional cost of textbooks can make the difference between a student persisting in university or dropping out.

Access to a Quality Education

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 rely on the fact 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. With an increase in “inclusive access” models from major publishers, temporary access of educational materials are becoming more common. This type of access may reduce the entry cost for students to access a textbook for one semester, but, access to the resource is revoked after the term completes.

The students who benefit from access to OER are not just the ones in your classroom. OER are free for anyone in the world to access, whether they have a university affiliation or not.^[11] This encourages learners and students to explore educational content without having to commit the time and money they might not have to attend post-secondary.^[12]

Benefits for Instructors

Although cost savings are a major talking point in favour of adopting open educational resources, instructors can begin to integrate OER into their courses without removing the paid resources they find useful. ^[13] While creating an entire OER textbook can seem like a daunting task, the gradual integration of small OER as supplementary resources can be built up over time. Over a few years, instructors may find that they have tailored so many small OER to their course content that these resources are more effective in supplementing the course than the paid resource they were previously using. 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 a variety of ways.

Use, Improve, and Share

Many instructors report that they use their required course textbooks in different orders than suggested, or skip entire portions of the textbook altogether.^[14] The use of OER allows instructors to adapt and revise existing versions of openly-licensed textbooks in order to better fit their course material. Supplementary resources may be easily added directly to the text, streamlining resource access for students, and giving a clear course outline that aligns with the syllabus. Instructors may also easily update an existing OER to provide modern and culturally relevant examples.

Network and Collaborate with Peers

A major worry with open resources is that they may be seen as less reliable than traditionally published materials that go through rigorous editing processes. However, by opening up resources, it makes it easier for peers across universities to review and edit another instructor’s work. The ability for others to edit and re-share work also allows you to explore the reviews and gain a deeper understanding of the available resources. Not to mention, creating open resources is a great chance to build a team of peers to help build a new and valuable learning tool.

Lower Costs to Improve Access to Information

One of the most popular reasons for creating and reusing OER is that it allows every student to have easy access to course resources. This, in turn, benefits instructors, for all of their students will have all the tools needed to succeed in the course, regardless of financial or accessibility barriers. Open course resources may also lead to more passionate and engaged students; as students will have the chance to explore course material before enrolling in the course.

Challenges of Using OER

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.”

Subject Availability

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 such as Psychology, Biology, and Calculus.

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 Machinery & Production Systems.

While this remains an issue, the increasing awareness surrounding open education has lea to a greater production of materials across all subjects. See our Finding OER chapter for more resources.

Format & Material Type Availability

As with subject availability, the format and types of OER that have been developed over time have largely been targeted at high enrolment 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.^[15] 

Time & Support Availability

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. The University of Alberta has a wide variety of resources can help you find and create OER, such as subject librarians, who can help you find and create OER, expertise from the Centre for Teaching and Learning, and free Pressbooks access and publishing services from the Library.

This chapter has provided a brief overview of what OER are, why they are used, and the movement surrounding them. In the next chapter, we will review some items you should keep in mind when adopting or creating an OER for the first time.