Why OER? (And How It May Benefit You!)

This coffee break activity focuses on “Why OER?” and “How may OER impact or benefit me and my role at TCC?”

Understanding the WHY behind adopting OER

This open educational movement continues to gain momentum — including here at TCC, as seen here in the TCC OER Year in Review 2023-2024! — and the community of open education practitioners continues to expand. Educators around the world are increasing their use and creation of openly licensed and freely accessible resources in their teaching and learning.

Before we discuss the benefits of OER in detail, please take a few minutes to watch this video (3:47 mins), which provides a broad overview of why OER can be an effective solution in addressing student barriers to high-quality learning materials. The video also provides examples of how faculty can use OER to enhance their teaching and improve student learning.

This infographic visually helps summarize several motivations for OER adoption and use, including:

• the rising cost of traditional textbooks
• increase access to course materials
• opportunities for creativity and collaboration
• openly licensed resources that can be revised and contextualized to your needs

Benefits for students

Students are key stakeholders in the OER conversation, as they are not only primary users of OER textbooks and materials, they can also play a significant role in creating and improving OER ─ from simple assignments to full textbooks. (We will explore open pedagogy in a future OER coffee break!)

The cost of textbooks can be a huge financial burden on students, which not only affects student success, but could also delay graduation for students who are taking fewer classes per term because of that cost, further increasing financial costs for students over time. OER materials provide students with day-one access to free course materials.

A 2018 survey of over 10,000 Washington community and technical college students conducted by the Washington Community and Technical College Student Association (WACTCSA) and the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC), revealed that the cost of commercial textbooks continues to negatively impact student access, success, and completion:

• • • 18% of students statewide have dropped or withdrawn from a specific class
    • 37% of students statewide have taken fewer classes
    • 38% of students statewide have not registered for a specific class
    • 44% of students statewide have gone without the required materials
    • 57% of students statewide borrow the required materials from someone else

Using OER can both provide tremendous cost savings for students AND positively impact student success and completion rates.

Benefits for faculty

Faculty are also key stakeholders in the OER conversation. Many faculty already use OER in smaller ways in their classes — for example, showing an openly licensed course video or using worksheets created and shared by other faculty. Faculty can use, create, and share syllabi, lesson plans, and even entire textbooks for their courses.

Imagine being able to edit, modify, update, and improve your course materials so the learning outcomes are met and the course material’s content is “exactly the way you want it.” OER allows for this!

The TCC faculty members in this short video (2:27 mins) share their experiences and reasons for choosing to adopt OER. Can you relate? 

Other key benefits to faculty can include:

• Reducing the cost of course materials
• Enabling all students to have equal access to course materials
• Saving time and energy by adapting or revising resources that have already been created
• Tailoring resources to fit specific context within your courses and research
• Expanding interdisciplinary teaching by integrating resources from multiple disciplines
• Opportunities to network and collaborate with peers in your field also working on OER projects

You can see additional ways that TCC faculty are contributing to OER efforts here in the TCC OER Year in Review!

Benefits for staff & institutions

Staff members are also key stakeholders in the OER conversation. TCC staff members incorporate and support OER in varied ways across the campus, from Advising to Entry Services to the Bookstore — and beyond! — as seen here in the TCC OER Year in Review.

The decision to use OER can occur via a single departmental adoption, or it can happen on a college or university-wide scale. Both require support and investment at an institutional level. This commitment has benefits to institutions as well. For example, OER can increase student retention, progress, and completion by decreasing student costs. Additionally, a 2020 report from Achieving the Dream, “OER at Scale: The Academic and Economic Outcomes of Achieving the Dream’s OER Degree Initiative” reveals that when institutions strategically support and provide OER courses for students there is opportunity for financial return on investment for the institution. Students who enrolled in OER courses tended to enroll in more course credits than students who enrolled in non-OER courses, thus generating additional tuition revenue.

The OER movement is maintaining its momentum, and the community of open education practitioners is consistently growing. Educators globally — and locally! — are increasingly utilizing and developing these resources in their teaching and learning processes.

References & Attributions

• Content & activity adapted from “Why OER?” from Open Educational Resources: Basics & Beyond by Oklahoma Council for Online Learning Excellence (COLE) Member Volunteers, licensed under CC BY 4.0
• Video & infographic sources from:
  • “An Introduction to Open Educational Resources” by Abbey Elder is licensed under CC BY 4.0
  • “Tacoma Community College & Canvas – Open Educational Resources for All” by CanvasLMS, used under fair use guidelines
  • Infographic created by Council for Online Learning Excellence (COLE) member volunteers, CC BY 4.0
• Additional content sources from:
  • “Leveraging the Benefits of OER” in Understanding OER by SUNY OER Services is licensed under CC BY 4.0
  • “OER at Scale: The Academic and Economic Outcomes of the OER Degree Initiative” report by Achieving the Dream, 2020
  • “OER Year in Review 2023-2024” by Jennifer Snoek-Brown and Sheila Northrop, Tacoma Community College, 2024 (content available to TCC staff and faculty via log-in credentials)
  • “Open Education” by SPARC is licensed under CC BY 4.0
  • “Research Brief: Affordable Cost for Course Materials: 10,000 Washington Community & Technical College Students Have Spoken,” Washington Community and Technical College Student Association (WACTCSA) and Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC), Feb. 2018, CC BY 4.0.