Open Educational Resources – OER for short – are free and easily accessible academic course materials. OERs range from open-sourced textbooks to PowerPoint presentations, exams, homework assignments, and scholarly articles. And, unlike their more expensive cousin – the traditional textbook, OERs are funded and published under a creative commons license.
Available in the public domain, OERs afford faculty the freedom of use, adaptation, and distribution with few restrictions; for students, OERs are a no-cost alternative to pricy books pushed by publishing companies.
In Minnesota, the state legislature approved funding of grants to be administered through the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system office to encourage broader use of OERs. Across the campuses of Minnesota State Community and Technical College, Minneapolis Community and Technical College, Central Lakes College, Riverland Community College, and South Central College students have been able to save upwards of over $220,000 in would-be textbook costs due to OERs.
To supply faculty and teachers with OERs, the University of Minnesota maintains the Open Textbook Library, which houses 170+ high quality, peer reviewed textbooks available for use. Other OER resources include Open Commons, Open Stax Connexions, and Merlot. Each of these portals provides faculty and teachers the necessary tools in order to utilize OERs to their fullest.
And finally, some campuses have gone even further in utilizing OERs by offering z-degrees, which allow students to complete an entire program without accruing textbook debt. Taking the lead with z-degrees, Central Lakes College-Brainerd offers courses from Communications to Fitness to Biology all while wholly utilizing OERs. So, as awareness and understanding of OERs expands, so too will that of their real-world, positive impact.