According to the Creative Commons Wiki, OER, or Open Educational Resources, are “teaching, learning, and research materials that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits their free use and re-purposing by others.”
To simultaneously offset cost to students and take advantage of the wealth of credible learning materials available online, the last decade or so has seen a significant rise in the use of OER materials.
Integrating OER materials offer several benefits for both students and instructors. For students, not only are there significant cost savings, but studies have also shown that courses that leverage OER content have lower DFW (D, F, or Withdraw) rates. For faculty, OER materials provide a great deal of flexibility and customization. Rather than being “limited” to the materials within a standard textbook, an instructor can curate all of their learning materials using OER content. In doing so, instructor can also ensure that all of their learning materials are up to date.
At NYU A&S, there are countless instances of OER in action.
- In the Expository Writing Program (EWP), they use the Digital Anthology. This is a curated anthology of texts housed in Zotero that is freely available to all EWP students.
- The Italian Studies department created its own textbook, including recorded multimedia elements that are housed in NYU Stream.
- To support instruction, Liberal Studies created the Global Image Gallery. This is a faculty curated collection of images and resources used to teach visual cultures throughout time and around the world.
Are you interested in learning more about OER? Or are you considering how you might integrate OER content in your course(s)? Feel free to reach out to your Office of TEI liaison. We’re always excited to advise and partner on these types of projects.