What are OER?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are educational materials shared under a license allowing for free use, alteration, and/or integration into new contexts. Many faculty are finding OER to be at least as effective as traditional publisher texts for their courses, and students are far more likely to acquire, use, and retain course materials when they are free or very low cost! Research is showing OERs positively benefit equity and student success by enabling more students to access and use course materials, and by enabling access to disciplines that students might previously have avoided due to a reputation for high textbook costs.

Zero-Textbook Cost (ZTC) classes and programs rely on OER and other online resources to eliminate textbook costs for students; Low-Textbook Cost (LTC) classes have materials costing $40 or less. ZTC and LTC classes have special designations in MiraCosta's class schedule. See details about the ZTC and LTC designations and learn how to mark your class as such in SURF.

Faculty interested in OER and/or ZTC course materials are encouraged to first discuss their interest with colleagues. You may discover that someone in your department is already using OER and/or has at least investigated some options. OER users are sharers! Also be sure to explore the disciplinary OER/ZTC page to see if materials for your discipline are listed there. For a broader search of excellent OER resources, start on MiraCosta's Open Textbooks & Course Resources page.

MiraCosta has received several OER-related state grants since 2016. Funds may still be available to help support faculty with OER discovery, curation, and course redesign to reduce textbook costs, and even potentially to hire an instructional designer to support such efforts. Contact Jim Julius if you are interested in exploring this possibility.

See Jim Julius's OER/ZTC Overview slides

Do OER Work?

Please watch the video below, which summarizes a meta-analysis conducted by John Hilton III. Hilton's work synthesizes the results of 16 OER studies that examined the influence of OER on student outcomes, or student and faculty perceptions of OER. Key findings include:

Students generally achieve the same learning outcomes when OER are utilized and simultaneously save significant amounts of money
Both students and faculty are generally positive regarding OER

Hilton III (2019) recently published a follow-up meta-analysis to include OER research conducted through 2018. This more comprehensive study came to the same conclusions:

Open educational resources, student efficacy, and user perceptions: a synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018

Video: "A Review of the Effectiveness & Perceptions of Open Educational Resources As Compared to Textbooks" by Research Shorts is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Hilton III, J. (2019). Open educational resources, student efficacy, and user perceptions: a synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018, Educational Technology Research and Development, 06 August 2019, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-019-09700-4 (CC BY 4.0)