OSCQR – Standard #32

Where available, Open Educational Resources, free, or low cost materials are used.

Review These Explanations

SUNY/SUNY Online is committed to using low cost instructional materials wherever possible in order to reduce the financial burden on learners. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are educational materials that are considered to be in the public domain, or have an open use license. This means that anyone can legally use and in some cases adapt and re-share these resources.

OERs are available to support a wide range of disciplines and can take the form of complete textbooks, lectures, assignments, labs, simulations, interactive modules, projects, exams, animations, videos, games, and other course support materials.

There are more than one billion distinct pieces of OER content available (McShane, 2017), so learning how to search and find appropriate resources is key. SUNY OER Services offers a ready-to-adopt course catalog, facilitates the seamless integration of openly licensed content into learning management systems, and assists SUNY faculty, librarians, and staff in the remixing of openly licensed content from various sources, and provides access to the offline (print) production of learning materials.

References:

Mcshane, M. Q. (2017). Open Educational Resources. Education Next, 17(1), 18-24.

Refresh Your Course with These Ideas

General Suggestions

Check with your campus librarian to see what OERs might fit best with your course curriculum.
Explore the MERLOT repository (https://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm) for learning material and interactive lessons to include in your course.
Explore related Open Educational Resources at OER Commons (https://www.oercommons.org/) to include in your course.

Explore More Refreshing Ideas from the Teaching Online Pedagogical Repository (TOPR) at the University of Central Florida (UCF)

This Pedagogical Practice from TOPR explores methods and approaches to integrating OERs into your online course content to benefit learner success.

Open Educational Resources: A Significant Movement in Education

The global movement of utilizing Open Educational Resources (OER) to enhance or build course content is rapidly growing amongst educators (Hilton, Wiley, Stein & Johnson, 2010). Faculty are using OER to provide access to educational materials at little to no cost, allowing for up-to-date, relevant and accessible content to students. (Read more …)

Explore Related Resources

Dreon, O., & Szczyrbak, G. (2017). Understanding Open Educational Resources. Online Classroom, 17(2), 3-7.

Welcome to Understanding OER.

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OSCQR has been developed by a community of online practitioners interested in quality course design. There are numerous opportunities for community members to offer suggestions, donate resources, and help with future development.

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