Benefits & Challenges of Using Open Educational

ResourcesBY DEBORAH GOULD RDH, BSDH, MED

Benefit #1

Education Becomes Available Many cannot afford to attend a

university Some people live in remote areas

and cannot attend educational facilities

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Benefit #2

Cost Savings Free textbooks Free course materials The cost of these things can be

prohibitive to students education advancement. OER can remove this barrier.

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Benefit #3

Allows Access to More Quality Choices in Educational Material There are ever growing free

resources from well revered universities

Books, lectures, tutorials, and class materials are just a few of the offerings available

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Benefit #4

Helps With Course Preparation and Retention of Knowledge Prospective students can preview

course material Past students can reinforce learned

material by having access to course material to review concepts

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Benefit #5

Clear Rules for Reusing Materials Creative Commons licenses allow

materials that are not software code, such as blogs, photos, films, and books to be easily shared

Creative Commons licenses are in easy to understand language and the rules are very clear

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Challenge #1

Time It takes time to learn about OER

and how to use it It takes time to look up license

information

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Challenge #2

Difficult to Judge qQuality of Resources There are no set standards

available as to quality of available materials before they are licensed by Creative Commons

There is no reference point for relevance to a particular subject area

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Challenge #3

Funding for Sustainability Start up funding will go away Without maintenance funds,

many free OER will cease to exist

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Challenge #4

Educators Feel Threatened by OER People may feel OER threatens

ownership of ones materials OER is relatively new it takes

time to educate people about the benefits and myths of using something new

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Challenge #5

Non-Revocable Licenses Creative Commons licenses are

non-revocable Someone who has already used

your work under a CC license has the right to continue using it under the license agreement

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https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

HTTPS://CREATIVECOMMONS.ORG/LICENSES/BY/2.0/