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Benefits and Challenges of OER
This document discusses the benefits and challenges of open educational resources (OER). The benefits include students saving money on textbooks, increased access to course materials, longevity of accessible materials after a course ends, assurance that content use is legal, and reducing the dominance of textbook publishers. The challenges include difficulty finding appropriate sources, the time needed to adapt sources, lack of public understanding of OER, uncertainty around long-term funding for sources, and remaining copyright issues with some desired course content.
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Benefits and Challenges of OER
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- 2. Benefits 1. Students savemoney – in addition, it often means students take your class who wouldn’t otherwise. 2. Increased access – your carefully chosen or adapted materials are available to anyone. 3. Longevity – your materials remain accessible to students after the course. 4. Assurance of legality – freedom from worry about the legality of using your content. 5. Reduction of textbook hegemony – for too long, what we call knowledge has been given to a few publishers. In the spirit of not offending anyone, the result is often a whitewashed and neutralized content.
- 3. Challenges 1. Difficulty inlocating appropriate sources (level, content, quality) 2. Time and effort required to adapt sources to one’s satisfaction 3. Lack of widespread public understanding of what OER is 4. Uncertainty around funding for long-term maintenance of sources 5. Remaining copyright issues (often the work one wants for a course is simply not available)