Open Educational Resources (OER)

Open Educational Resources, or OER, are resources that are available at little to no cost that is used for teaching, research, or learning. OER's enable teachers and students a gateway to unlimited information to use in research and the classroom. OER's are found online in digital formats and thus can be accessed anywhere whether at school or home. OER's were developed by leading research universities and some of the most used are OpenCourseWare (MIT), Connexions (Rice), and Open Learning Initiative (Carnegie Mellon). This is significant for educators because it gives a database of trusted sources and documents in which we can use in the classroom. For example, it gives an AP history teacher access to documents to use in the classroom to formulate essays prompts or to analyze the time period. Some downfalls of OER's are that the quality can be uneven and incomplete depending on the sources of the materials. Some databases have out of date sources which deludes a person's research without updated statistics.

The first resource I looked at was entitled, "Teaching with Documents: The 1897 Petition Against the Annexation of Hawaii." This source would help me in the classroom in a discussion on the McKinley Administration and the push to annex Hawaii. I would be able to point the differences politically at the time of annexation as the previous administration had opposed it. This document would highlight the Democratic parties arguments against the annexation as well as the attitudes of the native Hawaiians living on the island. The second resource I looked at was entitled, "The Battle of Gettysburg, July 1-3, 1865." This source would help me highlight the overall statistics of the battle itself. It references how many soldiers died on both sides, the number of forces, and the main commanders. The source also helps give an brief summary on the battle itself. I could use this source to introduce or conclude a lesson on the battle of Gettysburg. The third resource I looked at was entitled, "Bill of Rights." This source would be a great resource to use to highlight the process of the Bill of Rights to a middle school social studies student. It gives an overview of the whole adoption process of the Bill of Rights.

The first OER I checked out was the MIT OpenCourseWare. This website was very easy to use and was full of updated resources. The site was broken down by either courses by field or a category of new courses/translated courses offered by MIT. The second OER I checked out was the Utah State University OpenCourseWare. Again this was a very easy site to use. Utah State had it broken down into the available departments that used the database. Comparing the two sites, Utah State had more resource categories to offer than MIT did on their OER. The third OER I checked out was the Tufts University OpenCourseWare. On the Tufts site it took me awhile to find the courses option as the font was small and the font color was not much darker than the background color. Tufts offered much more centralized and specialized categories than the other two sites. Tufts seemed more geared toward graduate students.