Open Educational Resources

for empowering student success

Mark McClure - Mathematics

What is OER?

  • Open Educational Resources
  • Freely available educational materials
  • Modeled after the open source software movement - i.e. "free" as in speech

Examples in computing

  • The World Wide Web
    • From the HTTP protocol,
    • to the Firefox browser,
    • to Javascript
  • More programming languages and computational tools
    • C, Python
    • R, Sage, Jupyter

Traditional teaching tools

  • Textbooks
  • Online HW
  • Reference material - like Wikipedia
  • Presentation tools - Like this one!

How can OER empower users?

Let's not ignore the obvious

$

In just the Math/Stat department

  • 566 students could spend a total of $132650 for an average cost of $234 a book this semester.
  • 385 students are spending a total of $54000 for an average cost of $140 for access to online homework this semester.

According to bkstr.com new prices like this and this

How else?

Openness provides level of interactivity that the commercial model can't easily provide.

  • Like this
  • Teachers can write, modify, or appropriate materials
  • Students can get involved in development too

What resources are available?