Document Type
Blog
Publication Date
4-20-2022
Abstract
The use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) helps campuses meet a variety of goals. For many campuses, student affordability is a top institutional priority, and a mission-centric practice for all units in the organization. As of late 2018, leveraging OER in courses had reportedly saved students worldwide over $1B according to SPARC. For other campuses, critical goals have been established around enhancing access and working diligently to level the playing eld for all students. Using OER certainly helps institutions meet these objectives, as these free- and reduced-cost digital course materials are made readily available to students on the rst day of a course, which has been found to increase the quantity of A and A- course results by 5.5% and 7.73% respectively in a large study recently conducted in the State of Georgia. And nally, institutions have also begun setting goals around digital transformation, interoperability, and enhanced transparency for students and their families. Clever, collaborative teams including librarians, registrars, online learning staff, IT, bookstores, and student billing of ces have come together and done exciting work to seamlessly bring OERs into the learning management system, and have begun marking courses that are utilizing free- and reduced-cost digital course materials so that students can make informed decisions at the point of course registration.