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Implications of Open Educational Resources for Higher Education

As many universities and colleges enter the Open Educational Resources (OER) market, Thille’s work serves as an early warning how to approach open educational learning, as well as implementing third-party adaptive learning software.

Thille and other educators still have a great deal to learn from private enterprise. Data on students must be properly gathered and used from a learner standpoint, not from a consumer standpoint.

Higher education institutions that implement OER systems into their databases should know which systems best suit their students. Applying one large database across the board is not necessarily applicable throughout the university.

Steven Bell, associate university librarian for research and instructional services at Temple University, told Inside Higher Ed that many faculty members are not fully aware of the in-depth process involved in the adoption process of OER material. Nor do they know how OER material differs from the traditional textbook.

Faculty members might initially resist online OER because they lack supplemental material that commercial texts offer, like quizzes or test prep. Bell says those supplemental materials are likely to emerge in the future.

Institutions are able to implement various online resources like College Open Textbooks or the World Digital Library (WDL). They can also use third-party vendors like Lumen Learning that offer databases of OER material and can also build out curriculum for a variety of courses.

Some faculty members worry the OER material in their library is not applicable or is too outdated for their students. Ideally, they should work with their librarians or do research on their own to find the information they desire and bring it back to their universities.