OER Matter!
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 ove...