🌐Overview

OER benefits students, but it also provides a powerful tool to help faculty develop courses that align with their teaching style, course content, and student demographics. Faculty can design dynamic, culturally relevant content that speaks to their students’ lives and communities. OER can transform classrooms into vibrant, inclusive spaces where students aren’t just learning; they’re creating, questioning, and leading.

📖 Table of Contents

Expanding Pedagogy: From Cost Savings to Cultural Responsiveness
- OER creates opportunities for student agency and co-creation
Faculty Satisfaction with Course Materials
- Digital and OER Textbook Adoption Trends
Advocacy
- Additional Benefits of OER

✔️ Expanding Pedagogy

With OER, faculty are no longer limited to static, one-size-fits-all commercial textbooks. They can adapt and remix open materials to reflect their students' cultural identities, lived experiences, and local realities. This creates more relevant, inclusive, and affirming learning environments.

Textbook examples can feature communities and leaders that reflect the backgrounds of students on campus.
Assignments can include real-world issues tied to students’ local contexts such as environmental justice, immigrant rights, or Indigenous sovereignty.
Readings and case studies can highlight diverse and underrepresented perspectives, allowing students to see themselves as knowledge makers rather than just knowledge consumers.

📌 OER creates opportunities for student agency and co-creation

Students can author, revise, or contribute to course materials, shifting from passive recipients to active knowledge producers. This

Validates their lived experiences.
Amplifies voices historically excluded from traditional academia.
Develops 21st-century skills like digital literacy, collaboration, and critical thinking.

Faculty using OER can design content that encourage students to analyze real-world problems, question dominant narratives, and envision more just futures. This model directly supports California Community Colleges’ statewide commitments to

Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading.
Closing racial equity gaps and achieving equity in access, success, and support.
Advancing learner-centered, innovative teaching practices that build resilience for the future of work and learning.

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✔️ Faculty Satisfaction with Course Materials

Bay View Analytics Research Brief (2022) shows that faculty are often dissatisfied with commercial course materials. They point to problems like poor alignment with course goals, quality issues, and high costs.

Bar chart explained in caption — Figure 1: Faculty were asked about the overall satisfaction with textbooks; the responses indicate a higher satisfaction with OER than other publishers. OER and smaller publishers received more A ratings (45% and 47%) than the Big Three (29%). Both large and small publishers received more F ratings (18% and 14%) than OER (7%).

📌 Digital and OER Textbook Adoption Trends

While digital textbook adoption is rising, OER adoption lags behind commercial digital adoption. This is partly because faculty lack awareness of OER options or assume commercial eTexts are the only alternatives.

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✔️ Advocacy

Focus on raising awareness: many faculty would choose OER if they knew about high-quality options.
Differentiate OER from "digital-first" publisher products: OER offers freedom, adaptability, and cost savings.
Remind stakeholders that not all "digital" is affordable or open.
Tap into faculty dissatisfaction: many are unhappy but don’t know alternatives exist.
Frame OER as a way to reclaim academic freedom: allowing faculty to adapt and improve materials, rather than being locked into a publisher's choices.
Emphasize that switching to OER is not just about saving students money but teaching better.

📌 Additional Benefits of OER

Adaptability: Instructors can customize OER materials to align with course objectives, learning outcomes, and student needs. Faculty can modify examples, case studies, and activities to reflect local cultures, current events, or specialized fields. This creates a more relevant and engaging learning experience.
Sustainability: Once downloaded, OER materials remain permanently accessible without expiration dates, license renewals, or ongoing costs. This reduces dependency on expensive and restrictive commercial publishing cycles.
Accessibility: OER can be created and shared in formats that meet diverse student needs and support accessibility guidelines. Materials can be offered in multiple formats (HTML, EPUB, PDF, audio) and simplified language versions. This ensures that all students, including those with disabilities, have equitable access to learning.

🛠️Toolkit: An OER Myth-busting document addressing common myths and misconceptions.

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🖊️ Attributions

In addition to the studies cited directly in the text, content on this page is adapted from

The OER Starter Kit Copyright © 2019 by Abbey K. Elder, licensed CC BY 4.0, except where otherwise noted.
ASCCC OERI — OER Basics by ASCCC OERI, licensed CC BY 4.0
Defining the "Open" in Open Content and Open Educational Resources, David Wiley, licensed CC BY 4.0