OER Benefits (pdf)
Benefits of Open Educational Resources
Overview
Brief document targeted to educators and school districts on the benefits of OER.
Open Educational Resources (OER)
Open Educational Resources (OER) are freely available teaching and learning materials that can be downloaded, edited, and shared to better serve all students. OER include content such as textbooks, lesson plans, assignments, games, and other educational materials. They can be produced in any medium: paper-based text, video, audio, or computer-based multimedia.
Appeal of OER
Cost Shifting
By sharing and adapting educational materials, content acquisition costs can be cut dramatically, providing schools with flexibility to shift funds to other critical areas that support learning and teaching.
Freedom to Update Content
OER empower districts to make adaptations to support their students – localizing content or differentiating material to meet varied student needs. Adapted resources can be freely distributed without concern about copyright violations - promoting good digital citizenship
Equity of Access
Most importantly, OER have the capacity to provide equitable opportunities to access strong content materials for ALL students
OER can help school districts in their efforts to close elusive achievement gaps by providing resources that many educational institutions could not otherwise economically afford.
NAACP Endorsement of OER
Considerations About OER
Quality
The criteria used to judge quality and educational standards alignment needs to be the same regardless of whether the materials are print or digital, open, or all rights reserved copyright.
Access
Though print options are available for many OER, in order to take full advantage of digital open resources, a network and internet infrastructure is critical. As districts look to shift to a one-to-one computing environment, where every student has a tablet, laptop, or other device, OER is a cost-effective way to provide digital content.
Staff Capacity
Teachers need opportunities for sustained professional learning in using digital tools, locating OER, evaluating quality, understanding licensing, and adapting resources. Many online professional learning communities focused on OER are evolving to help meet this need.
Policies
Local districts and school boards often have existing policies and practices related to instructional materials adoption that need to be revised in order to encourage the use, adaptation, and development of open resources.
Attribution and License
Robot OER image by Annett Zobel from Pixabay
Except where otherwise noted, this work by the Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Logos are property of OSPI.