The 4th to 8th March 2024 is Open Education Week, an annual celebration of open educational practices. Flinders University Library is championing the use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in teaching. OERs are educational resources in any format, digital or physical, that have no copyright restrictions or were published under an open licence that allows for free access, use, adaptation, and redistribution. View more information about OERs at Flinders.
There are many benefits to using OERs in teaching, including:
- equity: OERs are available with no or very little cost and offer a solution for financially stressed students without compromising the quality of the education students receive.
- flexibility: OERs can be used, remixed, and edited to suit learning outcomes and student needs in individual topics.
- inclusivity: because OERs can be freely adapted, they can incorporate more culturally relevant and inclusive examples, language, and other content to be responsive to individual cohorts and communities.
- creativity: students can contribute to the development or adaptation of OERs.
If you are interested in using OERs, the library can assist in selecting a suitable OER to use in your topic, just place an Online content for topics request via Service One. Academics at Flinders can also author an OER textbook which the library can publish on the Pressbooks platform, making it freely available to students and educators worldwide. If you’d like to explore authoring an open textbook, email the Library Education Engagement team.