Moving Towards an Open Educational Resources (OER) Pedagogy: Presenting Three Ways of Using OER in the Professional Writing Classroom

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) are changing the face of education. This paper offers some locations where OER may be found before discussing the challenges of using OER in writing courses. An outline of OER's pedagogical use, best practices, and possible parameters for OER evaluation are proffered. After offering a proposed checklist/rubric to aid educators in deciding on the usefulness of OER, the article describes three ways of interfacing with OER in writing classes in general, and business and technical writing classes in particular. Based on teaching experiences at three institutions, the paper is an expansion of my 2019 presentation at the New Jersey Writing Alliance conference.