Open Educational Resources: For Faculty

Students care about affordability, too. Read this article from Findlay's The Pulse to find out why.

"This article reports the results of a large-scale study (21,822 students) regarding the impact of course-level faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Results indicate that OER adoption does much more than simply save students money and address student debt concerns."

"Research examining whether OER provides learning benefits have produced mixed results, with most studies showing null effects. We argue that the common methods used to examine OER efficacy are unlikely to detect positive effects based on predictions of the access hypothesis. The access hypothesis states that OER benefits learning by providing access to critical course materials, and therefore predicts that OER should only benefit students who would not otherwise have access to the materials."

"The results of the first cross-campus survey of student opinions on Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses are in: City University of New York (CUNY) students like their ZTC courses, primarily for the cost savings and ease of access. The survey results yield rich data about how positively students feel about their Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses as well as ways to improve the design and delivery of Zero Textbook Cost courses to make them more beneficial for student learning."

"It's time to move the OER conversation beyond the cost of course materials to focus primarily on the quality of OER course resources."

As the COVID-19 pandemic put additional stress on college students, many libraries and their institutions leveraged open educational resources (OER) to address the sudden disruption in learning environments across the country. OER are learning materials that are designed to be flexible, customizable, and always free to the student.

As part of its third annual OhioLINK Membership Summit, OhioLINK recently hosted the “What COVID-19 Taught Us About Affordable Course Materials” panel, which discussed lessons learned about using affordable course materials in the rapid transition to online learning during the pandemic.

Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials openly licensed so that others may retain, reuse, revise, remix or redistribute (the 5Rs) these materials. This paper aims to raise awareness of OER by providing a rationale for using these learning materials and a strategy for educators to get started with OER during the collective crisis and beyond.

The purpose of this article is to go further into the post-pandemic landscape and explore how increasing OER and OA and removing access barriers could increase equity by establishing the ability for teaching/learning to continue for all, regardless of the ability to attend a brick-and-mortar building and regardless of socio-economic status.

This article aims to reveal the essence of initiatives of international organisations in educational institutions in Ukraine and around the world during the COVID-19 period, and to examine the perception of teachers and students of the process of online learning and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.