Challenges and

Benefits of Open
Educational Resources
(OER)
Dennis Gorsuch
Challenges:
 1. Accessibility to computers and online resources
 2. Quality control of resources
 3. Time intensive to find quality repositories
 4. Compiling and maintaining content from many
different sources
 5.
Difficulty standardizing courses from amongst
OER institutions
Benefits:
 1. Saves money for students
 2. Allows for collaboration amongst faculty and students
 3. Allows for unique and creative curriculum development
 4. Open access to a variety of resources
 5. Improves student and faculty content navigation skills
Challenge 1: Accessibility to computers
and online resources
Many locations with poor resource availability and
connectivity may not benefit from the implementation
of this technology until this problem is solved
Challenge 2: Quality control of resources
 Committees are needed as safeguards to ensure the
authenticity and accuracy of content found within
repositories
Challenge 3: Time intensive to find quality
repositories
 Untilwe find a solution to challenge 2, prolonged
searches may be necessary to vet the content within
repositories
Challenge 4: Compiling and maintaining content from many
different sources

 Sincemany fields require updates based on current

research findings and new technology, especially in
STEM fields
Benefit 1: Saves money for students
We can reach a much wider population of students
with this option when compared to the costs of
traditional textbooks
Benefit 2: Allows for collaboration amongst
faculty and students
 OERs provide opportunities for faculty members and
students of distant institutions to work together on
shared research
Benefit 3: Allows for unique and creative
curriculum development
 Due to the abundant content within repositories, there
are many opportunities to customize course content
and cater to specific classes
Benefit 4: Open access to a variety of
resources
 Having diverse input of content removes the risk of
bias that may be encountered in some textbooks