Open Education Resources

Open Education Resources (OER) are teaching, learning and research materials in analog, digital and interactive formats that allow faculty the ability to customize course materials, including through the publication and adoption of open textbooks. Among the benefits of OER are that:

• Students have access high-quality information, a diversity of viewpoints, and materials in a variety of formats.
• Instructors may find increased flexibility in using course materials which may be customized for a specific topic, offer diverse perspectives, and provide for increased access to affordable course materials.
• Faculty can publish textbooks and other teaching material under an open license and contribute their expertise to scholarly communities around the world.

Open textbooks can help alleviate the burden of textbook costs for students and provide faculty with content that can be customized for their course. Open textbooks are full, real textbooks, used by many faculty across the country, and licensed to be freely used, edited, and distributed.

• Colvard, Nicholas B., Watson, C. Edward, & Park, Hyojin (2018). The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30(2), pp. 262-276.
• Gallant, J. and Lasseter, M. (2019). 2018 USG Survey Report on Open Educational Resources. Affordable Learning Georgia.
• Grimaldi PJ, Basu Mallick D, Waters AE, Baraniuk RG (2019) Do open educational resources improve student learning? Implications of the access hypothesis. PLoS ONE 14(3): e0212508. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508
• Hilton, J. and Mason, S. The Review Project: Review of Empirical Research on the impacts of OER adoption. (Open Education Group, Updated as new research is published.)
• Jhangiani, R. S., Dastur, F. N., Le Grand, R., & Penner, K. (2018). As Good or Better than Commercial Textbooks: Students’ Perceptions and Outcomes from Using Open Digital and Open Print Textbooks. The Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 9(1).