OER: Providing Students with an Interactive, Engaging Learning Experience

Abstract

Open Education Resources (OER) are educational materials that are freely available for use, reuse, and adaptation. They have been shown to improve educational outcomes and reduce disparities (Feldman-Maggor et al., 2016), and can also be used to support teachers in creating effective and engaging learning experiences for their students (Harvey et al., 2022). H5P, a HTML5 package program, was used to digitize key concepts covered in introductory chemistry. By digitizing chemistry materials, educators can provide students with more dynamic and interactive learning experiences, increasing student engagement and understanding of complex chemistry concepts (Feldman-Maggor et al., 2016). Additionally, OER study tools have been developed to help students further their study without the financial burden of purchasing closed-source resources. These interactive modules, created in this project, provide students with study materials that can be accessed remotely, with laptops, cellphones, or tablets. 36 individual modules/tools have been created, including interactive presentations, memory-matching quizzes, question sets, informative hotspot images, etc. These interactive modules provide students with an engaging study process and accompanying each study tool is a question-answer based module, directing students to the areas that require more study. With the increasing costs of closed-source learning materials, the creation and variety of open educational resources continues to become increasingly valuable. The digitization of introductory chemistry courses also aims to exemplify the ease at which these materials can be created, used, and shared among educators and students looking for sustainable learning materials to help further their education or practice.

Faculty Mentor: Dr. Kaitlyn Towle-Straub