Are you ready to transform your curriculum with high-quality and robust resources created by top-notch educators from around the world? Open educational resources (OERs) offer teachers and students access to vetted and proven course materials and assessments. OERs are any educational materials that are freely available in the public domain under open licenses (such as Creative Commons). OERs can include textbooks, lecture notes, syllabi, assignments and tests.
By accessing the OER Commons, you can search for any topic, any type of resource, any grade level, and instantly be brought to a huge variety of educational materials. It’s that simple! OERs are wonderful resources that can be highly beneficial for your class – here are five reasons to make the shift:
- You can expand students’ access to learning: OERs can be accessed anywhere, by any student, at any time. As education has shifted to remote learning in many parts of the world, ensuring ease of accessibility to learning resources is essential for your students. Instead of having to worry about buying a specific textbook or printing a handout, students can access all OERs from any electronic device of their choosing. The OER Commons has created a Remote Teaching and Learning Guide to further help educators excel at teaching from a distance!
- You can customize OER materials to fit your teaching needs: Much OER content can be revised to suit your specific course needs. By starting with OER material and modifying it to match the specificity of your course, you can easily tailor content to support your curriculum.
- You can use OERs to enhance existing course material: Since OERs encompass such a wide variety of materials, they cover a tremendous number of educational topics in a range of modes and formats. The sheer variety of these formats can allow multiple modes of representation for key concepts, which supports diverse learning strengths and styles. This aligns with the Universal Design for Learning guidelines which aim to make learning accessible to all students, no matter their learning style.
- OERs Are Often Cutting Edge: Textbooks change every year. New discoveries are made. Progress moves forward. For typical academic material, this means rapid turnover, and the continual need to update (often expensive) textbooks and other material. By using OERs, you will find that scholars and teachers are collaborating on cutting edge topics with innovative practices. Due to the collaborative nature of OERs, materials are continually and expertly updated by a community of dedicated educators.
- OERs save (lots) of money for your students: Textbooks are expensive! The typical college student spends over $1,200 on textbooks per academic year. This cost can be prohibitive for many students. Making the shift to OER teaching removes a costly burden from your students and may make a crucial difference in their quality of life.
OERs give educators an opportunity to browse, customize, and apply educational materials that are innovative, accessible, and affordable. By decreasing the costs associated with higher education, we can create a more equitable and sustainable future that enables an ever-widening community of learners to reach their academic, professional, and personal goals.
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Reference herein to any specific commercial products, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not constitute or imply an endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by Touro College.