Open Educational Resources (OER), can be defined as materials intended for educational purposes that are freely available for use, sharing, and/or modification by anyone. OER includes a wide range of resources, such as textbooks, lecture notes, videos, quizzes, and interactive modules, that can be used to support teaching, learning, and research. These resources are typically released under an open license, such as Creative Commons, which allows users to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute the content.
A recent report by Nagle and Vitez (2021) examined the results of survey on textbook use during COVID. While their results immediately convey how students were negatively impacted by COVID. They believe their data reflects “more long-term problems that institutions and national leaders must work to solve related to the textbook market”(p. 2) when also considering previous studies on textbook affordability. One key finding explained that using OER materials may increase access for students with economic difficulties. Food insecure students skip buying course materials at significantly higher rates. Students who can’t afford books due to economic insecurity will miss out on key aspects of the course due to access despite concerns it will impact their grade.
This OER Starter Kit provides a large amount of information related to locating and teaching with OER materials and attempts to address some of the concerns related to OER, such as:
- Is the content accurate based on your expertise?
- Are there any factual, grammatical, or typographical errors?
- Is the interface navigable for students?
While this OER Research Hub provides research to examine many beliefs widely held regarding the benefits of OER by examining hypothesis (such as “Use of OER improves student performance”).
This page list several places where you can locate OER resources, including Green Tea Press Textbooks which focuses in on: Computer Science, Programming (Bayes, Python, MATLAB, Java, DSP)
There are two conferences coming up related to OER
- October: Open Education Global (OEG) is a global, members based, non-profit organization supporting the development and use of open education around the world.
- November: The Open Education Conference (“OpenEd”) is an annual convening for sharing and learning about open educational resources, open pedagogy, and open education initiatives.
I want to acknowledge Erin Milanese at IUI who shared many of these resources with me.
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