OER Matter!

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Welcome to Open Up! a blog for faculty about open education with a special focus on open educational resources (OER).  Why do OER matter?  Here are my thoughts on the issue.

Three Reasons Why OER Matter

1
Students and their families are struggling under the burden of college costs and resulting debt.  News media headlines lament rapidly rising college tuition and fees at both public and private colleges and universities.  For example, just this summer, USA Today College ran a headline that read “Private college tuition is rising faster than inflation….again” (Bancalari 2017).  Many of these recent news articles retrieve data from a recent College Board report on the rising cost of college for students enrolled in all types of post-secondary institutions (College Board, 2017).  Unsurprisingly, it’s not just tuition and fees that are rising, textbook costs have skyrocketed as well. In 2015, NBC news reported on that textbook costs had risen over 1000 percent since 1977 (Popken). If we (YOU) can do something to help ease this struggle we (YOU) should! OER matter because these resources can help alleviate and/or reduce the cost of course materials for students. 

2
Choosing to use an OER in a course allows faculty to shape courses the way they want to shape them.  For example Virginia Commonwealth University French professor, Kathryn Judy-Murphy became increasingly frustrated by the dated pop culture references in intermediate textbooks.  Because of this she began to work with colleagues and students to create and curate up-to-date primary resources in a variety of languages (Lieberman 2017). OER matter because they empower faculty (YOU) to teach what they (YOU) want to teach, the way they (YOU) want to teach it, with what they (YOU) decide is the best course content, not what publishers decide is best. 
3
The production and updating of a print textbook can often take years and for some subjects a printed presentation of material is not the best method for teaching learners.  This video (Blake 2012) illustrates the nature of traditional educational sharing through the publication of printed resources and its limits. OER let educators and students take advantage of the technology available today by giving them quick access to resources from all over the world. OER creators can take advantage of the power of technology by using open platforms and tools to create, collaborate, and share course material that can easily be edited in the present, not when the publisher decides it’s time for an edit.  OER matter because creators (YOU) and adopters (YOU) can produce, revise, re-mix, adopt, adapt and update educational materials in a fraction of the time it takes publishers to update textbooks, for a fraction of the cost so that they can  be used by instructors (YOU) who want to implement the resources in courses.

References
Bancalari, Kellie.  9 June 2017. “Private college tuition is rising faster than inflation .... again.”  USA Today College.com.  Retrieved from http://college.usatoday.com/2017/06/09/private-college-tuition-is-rising-faster-than-inflation-again/
Blake, David.  (2012). “Why Open Education Matters.” YouTube.  https://youtu.be/gJWbVt2Nc-I
College Board. (2017) “Tuition and Fees and Room and Board over Time, 1976-77 to 2016-17, Selected Years.” Retrieved from  https://trends.collegeboard.org/college-pricing/figures-tables/tuition-and-fees-and-room-and-board-over-time-1976-77_2016-17-selected-years
Lieberman, Mark.  19 July 2017.  “What Does Madonna Have to Do With French?” Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved from https://www.insidehighered.com/digital-learning/article/2017/07/19/updating-language-course-contemporary-oer-content
Popken, Ben.  (2015)  College Textbook Prices Have Risen 1,041 Percent Since 1977.  NBCNews.com.  Retrieved from https://www.nbcnews.com/feature/freshman-year/college-textbook-prices-have-risen-812-percent-1978-n399926










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