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Open Educational Resources (OERs)

Why Use or Modify an OER?

 

Benefits for Faculty Benefits for Students

Relevance and Currency: OERs can be updated and revised more quickly than traditional textbooks. This means that they can provide more current and relevant information. For subjects that change rapidly, such as technology or current events, this can be a significant advantage.

More Access: OERs are typically available online and can be accessed by anyone with an internet connection. This means that they can be used by a larger number of students, regardless of their geographical location or financial status. This increased accessibility can help to democratize education and reduce disparities in access to high-quality learning materials.

Academic Freedom: OERs allow faculty to tailor their teaching materials to their specific needs and the needs of their students. They can select, modify, and combine resources in ways that best support their teaching goals. This freedom can lead to more effective and engaging teaching and learning experiences.

Cost Savings: Traditional textbooks and other educational resources can be expensive. OERs, on the other hand, are usually free or low-cost. This can result in significant savings for students, making education more affordable.

Efficiency: Using OERs can save faculty time and effort. Instead of creating all their teaching materials from scratch, they can adapt and build upon existing OERs. This can free up time for other important tasks, such as research or student support.

  

 

Testimonials & Stories
The Meaning of Life - PHL108 Creating OERs is essential for providing equal opportunities to all students, maintaining control over our teaching content, and sharing knowledge globally. As a fortunate individual, I have ensured funds from SELS, eCampus Ontario and Seneca Grants to create and promote OERs. My students always ask me if they can keep the eBook after the semester is over, and I answer “Of course, just save the link.” Let’s embrace OERs; they empower us all! 
- Ana B. Gonzalez Perez

 

Technical Writing Essentials: Introduction to Professional Communications in the Technical Fields                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Learners genuinely appreciate textbooks that are informative, current, well designed, and affordable. Knowing this helped fuel my work in adapting Suzan Last's Technical Writing Essentials for Seneca's diploma and degree level technical communication subjects. Then, seeing how faculty and learners found this text to align with our curricula and address learners' needs, I further adapted this version for our business communication subjects - see Communication Essentials for Business. The process of adapting a text is more than making a few tweaks; it involves a creative revisioning of existing content, integrating materials specific to the curricula including the remixing of existing OER learning objects, as well as researching and writing new content. Having someone like Tricia Hylton add interactive elements has extended the learning value of the texts. These efforts have resulted in two customized texts that are open for further adaptions and that are free for our learners to use, thus contributing to the open educational resource economy. 

- Robin Potter
Introduction to Business In class, when I assigned a case or referred to something from the textbook, only about half the students participated – the ones that have purchased the textbook. Now, all my students will have free access to the text which will lead to better classroom discussions and homework completion rates.
- Michael Wade, OER Stories

 

Organizational Behaviour

I have 4 main pieces of advice regarding adapting an open text:

  1. Be sure to get all the core faculty on board who teach the course. Without faculty buy-in and support, the project will not succeed.
  2. Ensure to properly draw out a project plan. In my experience, the work to adapt the open text took more time than I originally anticipated. The questions above are critical to ask before the project starts.
  3. Do not forget that one of the beauties of an open text is that they can continue to be adapted! Do not worry about perfection of all ancillary resources, for example. The test bank, for example, can be an ongoing work-in-progress as the project unfolds.
  4. Pilot test the open text, ideally within one school. There will be lots to learn and you want to ensure you have built in the opportunity to make adaptations based on lessons learned from the implementation.
    - Melissa Warner, OER Stories

 

Literature Review

 

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