Open Education Resources

Open Education Resources are teaching and learning materials that aspire to be accessible to anyone, whether it be the teacher, student, or even those just interested in the subject.  This concept of OER has a number of Pros and Cons; however, the immediate benefit to OER is its accessibility and lack of cost (usually).  College students pressured into buying hundreds of dollars of books for their classes will be most directly affected as classrooms hopefully incorporate these free resources into the curriculum.  Yet, it has been noted that these resources cannot be as fully trustworthy as published textbooks and definitive resources.  So, my stance is: every OER must be evaluated separately.

1. Summary:

OERs give an opportunity to drastically reduce cost of the college level or high school level books, most of which are even free.  OERs can be used in an online setting, or if an outdated book already exists, in tandem with that existing curricula.  Perhaps a shift in teacher recommended books would see a larger use of OERs.  If college professors begin to explore OERs as potential learning materials for their classrooms, the typical $150 book could be avoided.

Due to the vast amount of OERs available, it also increases the usefulness of those free resources in the classroom.  With a simple search on the website, I was able to find dozens of different physics textbooks and practice problems.  OERs can are easily malleable to the classroom and present a wide angle on the subject at hand.

As mentioned above, dozens of physics results came with a basic search.  Thus, the sheer quantity of OERs continues as a surprise.  If they are all as malleable as the initial ones I found, I can use a variety of sources for different teaching styles: if one resource includes laboratory work, or one has practice problems and the other has more in-text visuals and tables, then those resources become much more valuable and integrated into the classroom.

Yet, there is a problem with OERs.  Many OERs are user-created and are not as reliable as published books.  There is no definitive scale for evaluation; I compare this to the issue of Wikipedia.  Although Wikipedia is bountiful with raucous information, since it has the capability to be user edited, it loosens the credibility and becomes rather useless.  I personally love Wikipedia (and by extension, OERs) but I cannot use them as sole resources, but rather a jumping off point in my lessons.

2. Exploration and Concerns:

I explored the possibilities of Physics with the OER website and found a supplement to introductory Physics courses at the Undergraduate level.  The resource is most commonly used in conjunction with Carnegie Mellon University Physics courses.  The resource is a workbook that provides numerous tutorials on physical concepts and gives over 500 practice exercise problems.  It is a tremendous resource that is completely free and undoubtedly helpful.


However, I do have a number of concerns with OER resources; as a Physics teacher at the high school level, I can only imagine students will not have a working knowledge of Physics at the time of teaching.  Thus, tackling such an enormous and complicated subject without direct guidance will be difficult.  It's difficult to learn Physics from multiple resources because there is so much more complexity than what is taught in high school.  Thus, working out of a book is narrowly focused to that curriculum.  Yet, if I can guide the OERs to my classroom, not only would the curriculum be accessible to everyone, but relevant as well.

3. Moving Beyond:


 









This resource is an online copy of a textbook on Newtonian Physics: the first half of a typical Physics course.  I would use this is conjunction with my curriculum and use the provided images or points in order to well round the lesson plan.

This resource has immediate free access to AP Physics resources, including numerous links to videos and lecture notes.  I would use this to provide students with informative videos and possibly upload them to a classroom website for viewing.

This resource is a collection of articles and experiments that give insight into teaching Physics in the 21st century.  I would use this resource as a guideline for teaching each chapter; it gives specific hands-on examples that will undoubtedly keep the class interesting.

I can only speculate that I would use OERs as jumping off points in my classroom; unless I find THE perfect OER, I doubt that it would be as reliable as the typical high school set of physics books.  However, they are no doubt useful and interesting.  Perhaps if the high school I wind up working at does not have physics text books, then I will integrate the OERs.  But that also raises the question of is it fair to only provide an online resource?  Maybe some kids don't have Internet, or some work full-time jobs immediately after school.  It raises a number of concerns but I can only speculate.