Open Educational Resources (OER)

Robert Hoople is an adjunct instructor for various Psychology courses offered at SUNY Oneonta. Robert has been innovating with his teaching style through the incorporation of Open Educational Resources or OER into his classes. He has always been a tech-savvy individual and he began his teaching career as an instructor for online courses. His adoption of interactive courseware for his students started with openly licensed content from Carnegie Mellon. His first introduction to Carnegie Mellon’s platform and free to students content was when he was asked to fill in for an absent colleague’s class who had been using online software. This colleague’s inspiration got Professor Hoople to evaluate the materials himself, integrate them into his own classes, and become an advocate for openly licensed material. Recently, Robert was an invited speaker at the SUNY FACT2 Symposium for Open Education and Adaptive Learning and will present again at the SUNY Conference on Instructional Technology (CIT).

Robert expresses his want for other instructors to adopt this style of learning for several reasons. The largest benefit being cost efficiency.  

“OER is information in academia that could be shared with each other and created to help eliminate the cost of textbooks for students. I chose OER to first off save students/families money, but also provide a classroom experience and external source that allows the student to further prosper within an Introductory Psychology course and allows for review from a textbook the student will access due to this lowered cost. SUNY Oneonta faculty could very easily access the information that I use through oli.cmu.edu and the process would be approximately 2-3 days for access to the course, and then the professor is set.” 

If any questions, faculty here at SUNY Oneonta can reach Robert via email at Robert.Hoople@oneonta.edu