Why Should You be Using Open Educational Resources (OER)?

Have you checked out the price of textbooks lately? I remember being shocked at spending over $400 on textbooks for four classes my first semester of college and that was in the early 2000s. Now, depending on their major students would be lucky to pay only that much. Some say that renting, buying used, or skipping textbooks altogether is the way to go. But what if there was another option? 

Open Educational Resources (OER) has been a growing trend of late. You may have heard the term in passing, but what are OER exactly? George Mason University, one of the leading organizations in "the creation, curation, and use of Open Educational Resources (OER)" defines them as "freely-accessible teaching, educational, and research materials that either exist in the public domain or are available to users via an intellectual property license that permits their free use and re-purposing."

While freely-accessible sounds great, there are usually a lot of questions about the quality of these materials. There are several excellent repositories of these types of resources including OER Commons and George Mason University's Mason OER Metafinder (MOM) that searches through over twenty different OER sources to find resources that match your search. By starting with resources from reputable repositories, individual institutions, programs, and instructors can then choose a quality textbook in much the same way they choose a new "traditional" textbook--by reading and evaluating the options available. 

Instructors can also create their own OER textbooks by attending a March 6th workshop at the Earl Center. More information about this workshop can be found by perusing the workshop informational flier. Emporia State University also provides grants to help aid in this process. Recipients of this grant can take part in workshops provided by the Learning Technologies department where they can learn about Creative Commons licensing, how to use Pressbooks to assemble their own OER textbook, or how to find the best already-existing resources to supplement their courses. 

To sign up for the workshop or learn more about the OER grants, contact Learning Technologies!