Convincing faculty that
open educational resource (OER) content is of high quality continues to be a stumbling block for proponents of the alternative
course-material model. Providing better tools to find quality material is the
next big challenge.
Products are being
created to locate independent quality evaluations. More faculty members are
using products such as FacultyEnlight from Barnes & Noble College and Hero
from Sidewalk and helping to make them better.
“Being able to think
about, from a cost perspective, how one textbook compares to another, to be
able to see what peers are using the materials, what their reviews are of the
materials, and then being able to take those materials and adopt them,” Rich
Hershman, NACS vice president of government relations, said in a report on EducationDive, “that’s where I’m
really excited about where things are starting to develop in the future.”
The fact that OER
content is flexible and can be tailored to fit the needs of individual students
should encourage greater acceptance and growth, according to Tom Caswell,
director of learning engineering who served as the open education policy
associate for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges
during the development of its Open Course Library.
“The next step for OER
is to get away from flat resources and put OER in personalized spaces that
allow students to really benefit individually from those resources,” he said.
