Considering Cost, Creativity, and Convenience in the Creation of an Open Educational Resource

It is easy to become entrenched in our same old patterns as educators. In our physiology classrooms at Johnson County Community College (JCCC), we can even become entrenched with the same old equipment—like our pair of ancient hot plates that continue to survive because they actually do heat faster than the newer ones. However, “newer” sometimes really can be “better”. Open educational resources (OERs) are an example of a newer development that can be better (OER and Low-Cost Materials at Penn State, n.d.; UOW Library, n.d.). They are futuristic versions of academic textbooks present in our students’ reality. Over the past 2 decades, the nitty gritty details of OERs have been taking shape—e.g. licensing, copyrighting, types of resources, and initiatives. OERs truly are for educational purposes; they are teaching materials that exist in the open domain, with no cost for students, and are conveniently available and adaptable for professors. We wanted to join in the current OER movement, so we began to think with small steps. Research strongly supports the use of OERs in classrooms to increase student learning for a variety of reasons (Hilton, 2016). In addition to tangible student benefits, professors can customize their course content with OERs, built on a platform designed for flexibility, creativity, and opportunities for collaboration. The list is long for OER-related advantages that support both the educator and student. In our human physiology laboratory course, we found ourselves considering the creation of an OER laboratory manual with many of these outcomes in mind.