Open Educational Resources (OER) for Faculty and Students

By Professor Emiliano Wass, Politics and Cultural Anthropology

Open Educational Resources (OER) provide a great opportunity to innovate classwork with little effort while saving students a lot of money. How can faculty members transition to OER? What are the many advantages for both faculty and students?

Richard Stallman, the father of the free software movement and an early copyleft activist, once explained what he meant by ‘free’: ‘free as in free speech, not free beer’. But what if you could get free stuff in every possible sense of the term, that is, both gratis and libre? And what if this stuff is the very raw material of the teaching profession, knowledge?

That’s what Open Educational Resources (OER) are: granular or composite content that can be freely and legitimately used, distributed, remixed. Think of that particular article that deals precisely with the topic of your interest; the images you want to include in your PowerPoint presentation; the documentary you want to show your students; the textbook you have so desperately sought for so many years. Even better: think of the course reader that you used to assemble for your students; that course reader that you were so proud of because it perfectly matched the needs of your syllabus; that course reader created by photocopying bits and pieces from different books and reviews, hoping that it would all fall under fair use and that you have not committed any copyright infringements.

Now, imagine the possibilities if you could only have access to unlimited free materials. Fortunately, more and more authors, publishers and scholarly reviews are releasing their work under open licenses - which is just fair if you consider that in most cases their research has been funded with public money. This means that such content can be remixed and distributed according to our own needs as teachers, providing us with a great opportunity to be more creative and innovative in our daily endeavors.

OER offer several advantages, for both faculty and for students. As a teacher, I enormously appreciate the fact that they allow me to break the stale monotony of old-fashioned textbooks and build my own course materials that not only fit students’ needs and my own research interests but that are a faithful reflection of the most recent literature. My field of study - politics and new media - is a constantly changing one, a fluid and magmatic landscape, and now more than ever we need updated tools to navigate the complexities of our times. Tools that we can modify if needed, without any fear of legal repercussions.

Students, on the other hand, are the ones that benefit from OER more concretely: they save money. A lot of money. Textbook prices can be a serious financial burden for students and are often seen not as an investment but as a waste: why would anyone want to spend tens of dollars for a book which we will become obsolete in less than a year? In addition, the adoption of OER “forces” us to become familiar with digital technologies and practices: from e-book formats to Creative Commons licenses, from on-line repositories to the software (ideally, free software!) one might need to modify content (word processors, photo and video editors, publishing tools). And that is a boost in our career a lot of us so desperately need.

FSU has a dedicated team among their librarians that helps faculty members to transition to OER: they can assist in locating, identifying, adopting, adapting and even publishing open educational resources. And, if this were not enough, FSU Libraries offer an Alternative Textbook Grant for those instructors who are willing to replace commercial textbooks with open alternatives or library licensed e-books. This is a great opportunity to become familiar with open licenses, digital technologies and content, and thus discover a world of possibilities and stimuli. OER benefit everyone, for faculty and students alike.