And how to fix them

So, you’ve decided to move toward Open Educational Resources.

Maybe you’re excited about lowering costs for students. Maybe you want faculty to have more freedom to adapt materials. Maybe you see OER as part of a larger commitment to access, equity, teaching, learning, and institutional change.

And then reality shows up.

The materials do not quite fit the course. Faculty are overwhelmed. The “free” resource takes hours to evaluate, revise, or rebuild. Licensing gets confusing. Someone finds a great open textbook, but there are no slides, test banks, labs, examples, or assignments to go with it. The project starts with enthusiasm, but then the support structure disappears.

That messy middle is where OER implementation actually happens.

At The Open Practice Academy, we believe OER work is not just about finding free materials. It is about helping people move from an idea to a usable, sustainable practice. That means supporting the educators, staff, librarians, instructional designers, department leaders, and students who are doing the work inside real systems with real constraints.

Open education can have a real impact. OpenStax reports that its resources have helped 43.4 million students save $3.4 billion in educational costs since 2012, including $450 million in student savings in AY25 alone (OpenStax, n.d.-a). But savings alone do not make implementation sustainable. Sustainability comes from the structures around the resource: the planning, support, maintenance, accessibility, licensing clarity, and human care that make the work usable over time.

Here are seven common mistakes that can make OER implementation harder than it needs to be, and how to fix them.

Mistake 1: Treating OER as a “One-and-Done” Project

It is tempting to think of OER implementation as something with a clear finish line.

Find the resource. Adopt the resource. Celebrate the savings. Done.

Except open resources, like all learning materials, need care over time. Links break. Platforms change. Content ages. Student needs shift. Course outcomes evolve. What worked beautifully one semester may need revision the next.

A recent review of OER barriers identified social, economic, and technical challenges across the OER lifecycle, including adoption, use, maintenance, sustainability, accessibility, and institutional support (Valle et al., 2026). In other words, implementation does not end when the material is adopted. That is usually where the real work begins.

The Fix

Treat OER as a lifecycle, not a one-time adoption. Build in a maintenance plan from the beginning. Decide when materials will be reviewed, who will check links and accessibility, how updates will be documented, and where faculty can go when changes are needed.

A simple review rhythm, even every two years, can keep open materials alive, useful, and aligned with the course.

Try This

Create a simple OER maintenance plan with four columns:

Resource to Try

The OER Starter Kit⁠ by Abbey Elder is a practical starting point for understanding OER adoption, adaptation, creation, and implementation workflows.

Mistake 2: Assuming “Free” Is Enough

Cost savings matter. A lot.

Students should not have to choose between buying a textbook and paying for groceries, transportation, childcare, or rent. Affordability is one of the most visible and urgent reasons institutions invest in OER.

But “free” is not the same thing as “good fit.”

A free resource that does not align with course outcomes, represent students well, support learning, or make sense for the instructor’s teaching context can still create frustration. Sometimes it quietly shifts the cost from students to educators, who then spend unpaid hours patching gaps, rewriting sections, or building missing materials.

Research on OER has generally found that open textbooks and open resources can reduce costs while producing learning outcomes and user perceptions comparable to traditional commercial materials (Hilton, 2016; Clinton & Khan, 2019). That is good news. But it does not mean every OER is automatically the right OER for every course.

The Fix

Move from “Is it free?” to “Does it fit?”

Use a review process that considers more than just cost. Consider alignment with learning outcomes, accessibility, cultural relevance, readability, adaptability, licensing, and the amount of labor required to make the resource usable.

The goal is not just free materials. The goal is learning materials that work.

Try This

Before adopting an OER, ask:

1. Does this resource align with the course learning outcomes?

2. Is the content accurate, current, and appropriate for the level of the course?

3. Can students access and navigate it easily?

4. Does the license allow the kind of use, adaptation, or remixing we need?

5. What would need to be added, removed, revised, or contextualized?

6. Whose labor will that require?

Resources to Try

The Open Textbook Library Review Rubric⁠ includes review criteria such as comprehensiveness, content accuracy, relevance/longevity, clarity, consistency, modularity, organization, interface, grammar, and cultural relevance. The rubric itself notes cultural relevance as part of the review process, including whether examples are inclusive of varied races, ethnicities, and backgrounds.

You can also use OER Commons⁠ to search for open materials and review descriptive information such as conditions of use, education level, subject, material type, and standards alignment.

Mistake 3: Leaving People Alone in the Discovery Process

There are a lot of OER repositories out there.

That sounds like a good thing until someone is staring at 37 browser tabs, trying to figure out whether a resource is current, credible, properly licensed, aligned to their course, and worth adapting.

Discovery can be exciting, but it can also be exhausting. The abundance of open resources can create decision fatigue, especially when faculty are asked to evaluate quality, scope, license permissions, accessibility, and fit without enough support.

This is where librarians, instructional designers, OER specialists, and experienced faculty can make a huge difference. Discovery is not just a search task. It is an interpretation task.

The Fix

Do not send people into the OER wilderness with a link list and good wishes.

Create curated starting points. Offer shortlists by discipline or topic. Bring in people who can help narrow the search. Teach teams how to evaluate metadata, licensing, authorship, accessibility, and fit.

Discovery is not just finding materials. It is building the confidence to make informed choices.

Try This

Instead of giving faculty a long list of repositories, create a curated “first search” guide with:

• 3–5 recommended places to search first

• Search terms or keywords to try

• Notes about which repositories are strongest for that discipline

• A simple way to track possible resources

• A place to note license, format, gaps, and next steps

Resources for Discovery:

• OpenStax⁠

• Open Textbook Library⁠

• OER Commons⁠

• MERLOT⁠

• LibreTexts⁠

• Pressbooks Directory⁠

• OASIS⁠

A good discovery process should reduce overwhelm, not add to it. If the search process makes people feel lost, the implementation model needs more structure.

Mistake 4: Treating Licensing Like an Afterthought

Creative Commons licenses are powerful, but they can also be confusing when people are new to open education.

Can this be remixed? Can it be used in a paid course platform? What does NonCommercial actually mean? What happens when two resources have different licenses? How do you give attribution without making it weird or clunky?

When licensing is ignored or rushed, people can accidentally misuse resources or become so nervous that they avoid adapting anything at all.

The Fix

Normalize licensing support from the start.

Give people simple tools, examples, and language they can reuse. Teach the basics of Creative Commons permissions and restrictions. Help teams understand attribution using TASL (Title, Author, Source, License). Build license checks into the workflow before materials are adopted, adapted, or shared.

The Creative Commons License Chooser⁠ walks creators through decisions about attribution, commercial use, remixing, ShareAlike requirements, and CC0 public domain dedication. It also reminds users that they need to own or have authority to license the work and that CC licensing is not revocable.  

Try This

Use this simple licensing checkpoint before adopting or adapting a resource:

Resources to Try

• Creative Commons License Chooser⁠

• Open Washington Attribution Builder⁠

• Creative Commons Licenses⁠

• Creative Commons Best Practices for Attribution⁠

Licensing should not feel like a trapdoor. It should feel like part of the design process.

Mistake 5: Forgetting the Ancillary Gap

This is one of the big ones.

An open textbook might be strong, relevant, and beautifully aligned. But then the instructor realizes there are no slides, no quizzes, no test banks, no discussion prompts, no labs, no lecture notes, no case studies, no grading rubrics, and no ready-to-use activities.

That does not mean the OER is bad. It means the implementation plan is incomplete. Traditional textbook packages often hide much of the instructional labor within publisher-provided ancillaries. When those disappear, someone has to rebuild that support.

This is also where it is important to name that some OER providers are doing this well.

OpenStax is a strong example because its textbooks are not just free PDFs floating around online. OpenStax describes its textbooks as “peer-reviewed,” “openly licensed,” “100% free,” and “backed by additional learning resources” (OpenStax, n.d.-b). OpenStax also notes that its textbooks meet standard scope-and-sequence requirements and are designed to be adaptable to existing courses.  

That said, not every open resource comes with the same level of support, and even when ancillaries exist, they still need to be reviewed for course fit. The implementation step matters: check the specific book page, confirm what instructor resources are available, and determine what still needs to be created, adapted, or replaced.

The Fix

Plan for the ancillary gap early.

Before adopting an OER, ask:

1. What supporting materials are needed for this course to function well?

2. What already exists?

3. What can be adapted?

4. What needs to be created?

5. Who will do that work?

6. How will that labor be recognized?

7. Where will the materials live so they can be reused or revised later?

Try This

Create an ancillary inventory before the adoption decision is final.

Resources to Try

• OpenStax Subjects and Textbooks⁠

• OpenStax Instructor Resources⁠

• LibreTexts⁠

• OER Commons⁠

• MERLOT⁠

• PhET Interactive Simulations⁠

• Pressbooks Directory⁠

The ancillary gap is not a failure of openness. It is a planning issue. Open implementation gets stronger when we name the hidden labor rather than pretend it is not there.

Mistake 6: Waiting Too Long to Think About Accessibility

Accessibility cannot be the final polish at the end of an OER project.

Many open resources are shared as flat PDFs, scanned documents, poorly structured files, or web pages without accessible formatting. Even when the content is strong, the format may create barriers for students using screen readers, captions, keyboard navigation, mobile devices, or other access tools.

Accessibility is not extra. It is part of whether the material works.

The BCcampus Accessibility Toolkit⁠ was created to help content creators, instructional designers, educational technologists, librarians, administrators, and teaching assistants create open textbooks that are free and accessible for all students.   The toolkit includes guidance on organizing content, images, links, tables, multimedia, formulas, font size, color contrast, and accessibility statements.

The Fix

Design for access from the beginning.

Use structured headings. Add meaningful alt text. Check color contrast. Avoid relying only on images or color to communicate meaning. Choose platforms that support accessibility. Use clear formatting. Make documents navigable. Caption videos. Test materials before students are using them under pressure.

Try This

Add an accessibility checkpoint to your OER workflow:

Resources to Try

• BCcampus Accessibility Toolkit – 2nd Edition⁠

• WebAIM Contrast Checker⁠

• WebAIM Introduction to Web Accessibility⁠

• W3C Web Accessibility Initiative⁠

• Accessible U⁠

Accessible OER is not just a compliance issue. It is a care issue.

Mistake 7: Forgetting to Support the Humans

Institutions often focus on the visible parts of OER implementation: platforms, repositories, savings numbers, adoption reports, and completed resources.

Those things matter.

But OER work is done by humans.

Faculty are often trying to redesign materials while teaching full course loads, supporting students, serving on committees, responding to institutional demands, and managing their own lives. Staff and librarians are often coordinating programs, troubleshooting systems, translating policies, and holding together the invisible infrastructure that makes change possible.

When we ignore the human side, even good projects can become unsustainable.

OER research continues to identify barriers related not only to resources themselves, but also to the broader social, institutional, technical, and economic conditions that shape whether OER can be created, used, maintained, and sustained over time (Valle et al., 2026). Put plainly: the human and institutional infrastructure is not separate from OER work. It is the OER work.

The Fix

Build care into the implementation model.

Give people time, structure, examples, feedback, and realistic expectations. Create spaces where faculty can ask questions without feeling behind. Recognize the labor involved. Make room for uncertainty. Celebrate progress, not just finished products.

OER implementation works best when people are not just handed a resource. They are supported through a process.

Try This

Build human support into the project plan:

Resources to Try

• Open Education Network⁠

• SPARC Open Education⁠

• Rebus Community⁠

• OER Starter Kit⁠

• Creative Commons Certificate Resources

⁠The Bigger Shift: From OER Projects to Open Practice

OER implementation does not have to be perfect. It does need to be intentional.

The strongest open education work happens when we stop treating OER as a quick replacement for a commercial textbook and start treating it as part of a broader teaching and learning practice. That means thinking about access, design, sustainability, student experience, educator labor, institutional support, and long-term care.

Open education is not only about what materials we use. It is about how we build learning environments where more people can participate, contribute, revise, question, and belong.

That is the work of open practice. And it starts in the messy middle.

Quick Resource List for OER Implementation

Want help moving from OER idea to sustainable open practice?

The Open Practice Academy helps educators, librarians, instructional designers, departments, schools, and mission-driven organizations build human-centered approaches to open education, curriculum design, and implementation support.

Whether you are choosing your first open textbook, building a faculty cohort, designing a support model, or trying to make sense of the messy middle, you do not have to figure it out alone.

Explore the work at The Open Practice Academy⁠.

References

Clinton, V., & Khan, S. (2019). Efficacy of open textbook adoption on learning performance and course withdrawal rates: A meta-analysis. AERA Open, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419872212

Coolidge, A., Doner, S., Robertson, T., & Gray, J. (2018). Accessibility toolkit – 2nd edition. BCcampus. https://opentextbc.ca/accessibilitytoolkit/

Creative Commons. (n.d.). Choose a license for your work. https://creativecommons.org/chooser/

Hilton, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: A review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64, 573–590. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9434-9

OpenStax. (n.d.-a). Impact. Rice University. https://openstax.org/impact

OpenStax. (n.d.-b). All available subjects for our free textbooks. Rice University. https://openstax.org/subjects

Open Textbook Library. (n.d.). Open textbooks review criteria. University of Minnesota. https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/reviews/rubric

Valle, P. H. D., Capilla, R., Santos, V. dos, Feitosa, D., & Nakagawa, E. Y. (2026). Open educational resources: Barriers and open issues. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.10013

AI Use Disclosure

This post was developed with AI-supported assistance for brainstorming, organization, drafting, revision, editing, and/or source-note synthesis. I use AI as a thinking and accessibility tool, not as a replacement for human judgment, lived experience, professional expertise, or ethical responsibility.

The ideas, interpretation, framing, source selection, final language, and editorial decisions are my own. When this post includes research, reports, or external sources, I review source material directly and connect claims to cited references rather than treating AI-generated text as evidence.

Nothing in this post was published AI verbatim, unchecked, or uniterated. I reviewed, revised, reshaped, and approved the final version before publication.

For more about how The Open Practice Academy uses AI, see my site-wide AI Use Acknowledgment.