Considerations

A common assumption is that because OER are free, they are lower quality than commercial content. Although there are examples of low quality OER - just as there are poor quality commercial textbooks - there are many examples of high quality OER materials. Faculty give higher overall ratings to OER used as required materials than those published commercially (Seaman & Seaman, 2022). In addition to showing a measurable impact on student success, over 85% of students using OER developed by VIVA faculty rate their experience of using it as positive.  OpenStax, a leading OER publisher, is now considered a competitor to the three primary commercial publishers for high enrollment introductory course materials (Seaman & Seaman, 2022). While OER are typically free to students, competitive governmental, institutional, and/or foundation funding are often awarded to support authorship and creation. Many OER have undergone extensive peer-review and platforms such as VIVA Open and the Open Textbook Library publicly share reviews of materials. Ultimately, faculty determine the quality  and appropriateness of the materials they assign to their courses and OER are a strong option. 

Reference

Seaman, J. E. & Seaman, J. (2022). Open educational resources: Becoming mainstream. Bay View Analytics. https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/reports/reaserchbrief_becomingmainstream.pdf 

Using an OER is the same process as adopting any other course materials: search for and review available materials, select one (or more!) for use in class, and then integrate the resource into your syllabus. More and more, accompanying materials such as slide decks are available to further ease the adoption process of OER. There are also some emerging courseware options, either free or in partnership  with OER (e.g. OpenStax), to provide homework or testing for classes. If there aren’t any existing ancillary materials, consider sharing the materials you create as OER to ease the adoption process for future instructors. 

OER have open licensing, most often Creative Commons. These licenses function within the current copyright system, providing authors more autonomy over which rights they’d like to retain for themselves. Authors will always have the option to do what they wish with their materials, including creating updated editions and selling copies. Depending on the license they choose, however, others may not be able to do the same without asking the permission of the OER author. Except for CC0, which gives up all rights outlined in copyright, all creative commons licenses require users to attribute the original work, so the author will retain credit for the work they put into creating the original resource. 

When purchasing many digital resources, especially e-books, libraries are given options to purchase a certain license. In this context, a license functions the same as a print book, dictating how many “copies” the library owns of the digital resource. Typical licenses include 1-user, 3-user, and unlimited user. If the resource has unlimited users, there is no limit to how many users can access it simultaneously and make excellent course materials. Some library databases, like EBSCO and ProQuest, indicate how many licenses an e-book has on the resource page. If you are unsure about the license for a library resource, ask your local librarian.