OER: Making Learning Accessible and Affordable
Open education resource (OER) materials have increased access to high-quality curriculum for millions of students—and for good reason. These materials can often be published digitally and affordably for all students, and OER curriculum provides instructors the ability to quickly and easily share best practices and build educational communities. Through the work of organizations such as LibreText and OpenStax, hundreds of instructors have been able to lower the cost of their courses for their students.
Catalyst Education shares this vision for open, accessible learning materials. Our OER lab library provides instructors with over 100 distinct experiments and more than 300 different versions. All experimental procedures and backgrounds are freely available on our website.
To help educators quickly find materials that they need, we have organized our library so that it is sortable by course, topic, or analysis option.
The backgrounds contain in-depth explanations to help students learn both lab techniques and the chemical concepts behind the techniques. You can be confident that your students will have the support they need to prepare for class.
If an institution chooses to adopt Labflow in addition to using our OER experiments, instructors will have access to an extensive catalog of conceptual and technique videos to wrap digital learning around their in-person instruction. Students are able to watch a technique carried out in front of them prior to stepping foot in the lab, helping them build confidence and improving their performance. Many universities have transitioned from requiring students to purchase an experimental and technique manual to using our OER experiments and Labflow. This saves students hundreds of dollars and improves their learning in the course.
Catalyst Education’s OER library and Labflow prepare students to confidently engage in the lab, reducing student frustration and anxiety. In addition, Labflow provides auto grading of reports as well as insights into both the learning performance of students and the grading of TAs. This increased transparency saves instructors time and promotes consistency. Interested in learning more? Demo Labflow with our experts!
The experiments in our library have been donated by institutions that are using Labflow, so instructors can be confident that the procedures have been thoroughly tested. In addition, each experiment has been linked to learning objectives and laboratory skills.
