Open Educational Resources

The use of OER has tremendous potential to change education.  Advocacy is a core process for addressing this change, bringing the issue to the forefront of the agenda for decision-makers. 

The Why for Senior Leadership

Senior leadership plays a pivotal role for open educational resources at an institutional level.  Implementing OER in a course takes time and resources, so understanding the value of OER at a senior leadership level is beneficial to ensure the time and money is allocated in support of implementation.  When it comes to a cultural shift at the institutional level, senior and institutional leadership and action is necessary.

1. Using OER can reduce costs to students, which is beneficial to institutions as a whole
2. By participating in the OER movement, the institution is raising its reputation
3. Using OER brings in different perspectives and provides more variety for student

The Why for Faculty, Librarians, and Instructional Designers

Faculty, librarians, and instructional designers are key to successful implementation and adoption of OER.  These are the key stakeholders.  These individuals are potential champions themselves, and, they are the change makers among us.  Without this stakeholder group educated, engaged, and empowered, interest in OER will only stay as an observation and not an action.

1. OER supports innovation, exposure, and reputation
2. OER improves learner understanding and drives engagement with open content
3. OER can increase student accessibility

The Why for Students

Students are the primary stakeholders in open educational resources.  Students will receive the value of OER adoption, and, students are at the core purpose of global open educational resource development.  The re-use of OER to replace paid resources directly saves money for students, and, models the philosophy of open access.

1. Using OER results in direct cost savings to students and/or institutions
2. Using OER brings in different perspectives and provides more variety for students

To learn more, please visit "The Champions Toolkit"

The University of Alberta's "The Champions Toolkit" is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

View this clip for insights on how library staff can impact faculty around OER.  From the Association of Research Libraries Leadership Fellows Institute, Brigham Young University.

View this clip to find ways to tap students as partners in your advocacy work.  From the BC Open Textbook Project.

                                                             Clint Lawrence - History and Art History instructor at MHC

"With the increasing costs of education, I felt that I had a duty to find and adopt, whenever possible, robust, high-quality OER to lighten students' financial burden. In addition, there is a great deal of effective material publicly available and these sources give me flexibility to curate course content to support course objectives. There are several advantages to adopting OER. On Day One of the course, students have access to every resource that they need.  Students can customize the sources: download an electronic copy or print the entire work or just print certain parts. The sources are flexible so that I can easily add or exclude content. As the instructor I can use the parts I like from different sources, without incurring extra costs."