What is OER or Open Educational Resources?

WHAT IS OER OR OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES?: This short video by John Bond of Riverwinds Consulting discusses OER. FIND OUT more about John Bond and his publishing consulting practice at www.RiverwindsConsulting.com

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   • Open Educational Resources  

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TRANSCRIPT

Hi there. I am John Bond from Riverwinds Consulting and this is Publishing Defined.

Today I am going to talk about OER or Open Educational Resources. OER is an umbrella term for freely accessible, openly licensed text, media, and other digital assets that are useful for teaching, learning, and assessing as well as for research purposes. The movement is an outgrowth of the open access, open science, and open education movements.
The term OER got started in the late 90’s or early 00’s and is usually credited to David Wiley, MIT the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, who all played separate roles in launching the valued movement.

OER material is usually digital, and carries a broad level of openness with ready access with no restrictions on reuse, usually using a Creative Commons license. In fact, many times the material can be personalized to an institution or school. The material comes in the form of student textbooks or workbooks, faculty resources, supplemental content, videos, worksheets, software, and other materials.

The digital and open nature of the material means easier revising when errors are found or the content becomes outdated content, with reduced time for these revisions. The obvious benefit is very low or no costs to the student or the school/institution.

The initial focus of the OER movement was on K to 12 education, but it quickly expanded to higher education including highly academic fields. Higher education is a natural place for OER to blossom and succeed as course materials continue to rise in price.

OER faces a few challenges. First there is no universal open file format for OER materials. Second, the perception still exists that free means lower quality or unreliable quality. Expanding acceptance of open access journal articles may be helping to change that. Also, efforts such as Center for Open Education at the University of Minnesota to have faculty around the country review and rate the material will help ensure quality and reliability with this content.

There is a lot going on in this area. An organization such as OER Commons (at oercommons.org) is leading the way. They “offer a comprehensive infrastructure for curriculum experts and instructors at all levels to identify high-quality OER and collaborate around their adaptation, evaluation, and use to address the needs of teachers and learners.” Major institutions such as MIT, Google, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, many of the other major foundations, and many state and national governments are investing heavily in developing and promoting OER.

I look forward to reporting back on OER’s headway into higher education, particularly STEM education, very, very soon.

Well that’s it. I’ve released a new eBook called, “The Request for Proposal in Publishing: Managing the RFP Process.” It is a short, focused guide to this essential business task that associations or societies use to find potential publishing partners. See the link in the notes below for more information on the book or how to purchase it.

Hit the Like button below if you enjoyed this video. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel or click on the playlist to see more videos OER.

And make comments below or email me with questions. Thank so much and take care.