The worldwide OER movement is rooted in the human right to access high-quality education. This shift in educational practice is not just about cost savings and easy access to openly licensed content; it’s about participation and co-creation. Open Educational Resources (OER) offer opportunities for systemic change in teaching and learning content through engaging educators in new participatory processes and effective technologies for engaging with learning.

Why do educators use OER?

There are many reasons to use OER. Here are just a few:

Student success - Open Nebraska courses have seen improved student success
Availability - every student has access to the material on the first day of class
Greater faculty freedom - adoption of Open Educational Resources allow faculty to customize their course schedule and content to more closely align with desired learning outcomes
Flexible - redistribute, remix and reuse content
Up to Date - add the latest research, events, information as you customize material and your course
Accessible - can be more accessible than print copies

Here is some more detailed information from SPARC:

Textbook costs should not be a barrier to education. The price of textbooks has skyrocketed more than three times the rate of inflation for decades. College students face steep price tags that can top $200 per book, and K-12 schools use books many years out of date because they are too expensive to replace. Using OER solves this problem because the material is free online, affordable in print, and can be saved forever. Resources that would otherwise go to purchasing textbooks can be redirected toward technology, improving instruction, or reducing debt.

Students learn more when they have access to quality materials. The rapidly rising cost of textbooks in higher education has left many students without access to the materials they need to succeed. Studies show that 93% of students who use OER do as well or better than those using traditional materials, since they have easy access to the content starting day one of the course.

Technology holds boundless potential to improve teaching and learning. Open Education ensures that teachers, learners and institutions can fully explore this potential. Imagine an American History textbook with the latest news from the 2016 election, or a math tutorial that incorporates local landmarks into word problems. Imagine a lecture attended by hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, or a peer-to-peer exchange between Canadian students learning Mandarin with Chinese students learning English. All of this and more is possible when the pathways for technology in education are fully open.

Better education means a better future. Education is the key to advancing society’s greatest goals, from a building a strong economy to leading healthy lives. By increasing access to education and creating a platform for more effective teaching and learning, Open Education benefits us all.

Attributions:

Adapted from OER Commons & Open Education, Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License.

Video: The Council of Chief State School, Why OER? Video: CC BY 4.0

Adapted from SPARC, Open Education, SPARC, Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.