The Need and Use of Open Educational Resources in Fisheries, Environmental Education, and Conservation

By Gary D. Grossman and Kirill Y. Chernoff

Open educational resources (OERs) encompass a broad class of pedagogical resources that, by definition, are available to any user group, typically via the World Wide Web (Parisky and Boulay 2013; Islim et al. 2016). These resources range from electronic texts to raw data, to Web‐hosted videos, to preformulated class exercises. The vast majority of OERs are free, although some may be held behind a pay wall such as the Teachers Pay Teachers Web site (www.teacherspayteachers.com). Given that OERs may be raw data or unedited video, they provide an excellent resource upon which inquiry‐based learning exercises may be based. Our purpose herein is to describe the potential uses of OERs in fisheries education, research, and management and to encourage the American Fisheries Society to consider establishing a video library of OERs for current and future use.