Open Educational Resources (OER) are openly-licensed educational materials which can be used by anyone, shared freely, improved/adapted/repurposed, and redistributed. OER are commonly accessed online. In fact, you have most likely seen or used OER before! Online textbooks, as well as the popular educational website Khan Academy, are both examples of an open educational resource.
OER are sustainable and financially accessible alternatives to expensive, hard-copy textbooks and coursepacks. Over the last decade, textbook prices have increased by 88%, which is four times the inflation rate, and higher than the 63% increase in tuition. By the end of their undergraduate degree, the average student will have spent $4,000–$6,000 on course materials alone. Because of this, 81.5% of McGill students may opt out of buying course materials due to their cost and 23.5% of students may drop and/or not enroll in a course due to the cost of course materials.
OER also allow professors to customize the design and content of a course, rather than being restricted to a single textbook or a limited sample of resources. Using online, open, consistently updated resources allows professors to quickly integrate new developments and findings in their field into the content of their course(s). OER foster academic engagement because of their ability to cater to a wide range of learning styles. They allow access to a diversity of perspectives and approaches, and facilitate meaningful interaction with the course material. Moreover, the majority of open-textbook OER are created by academics in the relevant field and are peer-reviewed, meaning that the quality and rigour of an open textbook is often not far from a traditional, hard-copy equivalent!
Does your course have a paid textbook? Would your educational experience at McGill University be improved if you had free access to necessary resources? Use this form to let the Open Educational Resources (OER) Project of McGill University know! We are dedicated to making education financially accessible to all, and we would love to learn more about how we can help 🙂
Over the past few years, the SSMU has worked with instructors and student assistants to compile Open Educational Resources tailored specifically to a number of classes at McGill. Check out the list below to see if we’ve compiled OER for one of your classes!
Try searching one of these existing repositories:
For questions or more information, email ua@ssmu.ca.