Awareness and Use of OER by Higher Education Students and Educators within the Graphic Arts Discipline in Greece

Alexandra Christoforidou,Elissavet Georgiadou

doi:10.3390/educsci12010016

Abstract

In recent years, Open Educational Resources (OER) have gained significant reach globally as a means of facilitating free and open access to educational materials. However, most of the empirical research on the adoption of OER in higher education is conducted in the US, while Europe and other countries, including Greece, fall behind. To that end, this research focused on the awareness and use of OER by higher education students and educators within the Graphic Arts discipline in Greece, to provide evidence regarding the adoption of OER to university administrations and libraries and encouraging their use across campus. The findings suggest that awareness is low, especially among undergraduate students, despite the fact that educators are aware of OER and already share their work as such. This paradox is probably related to students’ vague knowledge of what OER are and how to use them for learning. Therefore, actions are required from educators, university administration and librarians to inform students of the benefits of OER adoption in the educational process as well as to communicate educators’ OER efforts to students. Moreover, participants identified as the biggest obstacle for adopting OER in Graphic Arts the lack of a portal that accommodates OER for this discipline, which lays the groundwork for further research.

Highlights

In recent years, Open Educational Resources (OER) have gained significant reach globally as a means of facilitating free and open access to educational materials, mainly due to increasing possibilities of digitization, greater access to the Internet and new flexible intellectual property licenses
Eight out of nine participants stated that they were aware of OER and they usually used for teaching open textbooks, open access journals and digital learning objects such as videos, images, and audio files
The results of the study cannot be generalized, as the research was conducted for a short time and the sample is limited, they provide evidence to university administration and libraries for encouraging adoption of OER across campus

Summary

Introduction

Open Educational Resources (OER) have gained significant reach globally as a means of facilitating free and open access to educational materials, mainly due to increasing possibilities of digitization, greater access to the Internet and new flexible intellectual property licenses. Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning and research content that is ‘libre’ (openly-licensed content) and at the same time ‘gratis’ (free of charge). OER need to carry a visible open license, such as a Creative Commons one, or an explicit acknowledgment that the educational resource is free of charge and free to be used, shared, remixed, adapted, and distributed by others with no or limited restrictions, depending on the type of open license chosen. OER can have different granularity, varying from a learning object (e.g., a picture with a specific teaching purpose) to a full course (e.g., a MOOC or an open-libre and gratis-online course) [1]. The basic types of OER include open courseware, learning modules, open textbooks, streaming video, open-access journals, online tutorials and digital learning objects [2]

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Methods

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Conclusion