Pros & Cons of OER

Cherl Lovseth

Librarian, Shoreline Community College

Pros of OER

• Free for students who are already facing education cost increases.

• Encourages lifelong learning and learning for learning’s sake.

• Creates a culture of knowledge sharing.

• Opens up our world through international exchanges of information.

• Obtaining access to a caliber of university that wouldn’t otherwise be possible.

Cons of OER

• Students still report a preference of print.

• It’s time-consuming to navigate the vast OER portals.

• If gathering from multiple OER sites, constant checking of date and relevance needs to occur.

• Adapting OER to fit a specific course is tricky and impossible without the right licensing.

• Students need to understand that citation needs to happen for everything, even OER.