What can OER do that AI and traditional textbooks can't?

<p dir="ltr">A session presented by Julian Pakay and Steven Chang at <a href="https://www.oeglobal.org/2024/12/17/oeglobal24-down-under-open-is-everyones-business/" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">OE Global 2024 Conference</a> in Brisbane.</p><p dir="ltr">The rise of generative AI has called into question many cornerstones of teaching, including the need for textbooks. Students increasingly use AI tools to efficiently find and collate information in lieu of both traditional and open textbooks. One argument for responding to this has been to embed AI within open educational resources (OER) or train AI using OER (Bozkurt, 2023).</p><p dir="ltr">Our presentation explains major advantages that OER have over both traditional textbooks and AI-centric retrieval and collation of information. This is based on our experiences of generating Third Spaces (Whitchurch, 2012) to co-create open textbooks through collaborative projects between STEM academics, the <a href="https://www.latrobe.edu.au/library/open-scholarship/ebureau" rel="nofollow me noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">La Trobe eBureau</a> (open education program), and more recently students themselves.</p>