Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate faculty members’ usage of Open Educational Resources (OER) as well as the barriers to OER development and usage. 360 faculty members from Zhejiang University (ZJU) in China were randomly selected to complete a survey. The study found that: (1) most of surveyed faculty members rarely utilized OER, while they had some awareness of sharing educational resources; (2) the majority noticed online educational materials published for learning or reference, while they ignored open source software or licensing tools for sharing and reusing resources; (3) lack of time and skills were significant obstacles for faculty members to develop OER, while lack of incentives was a potential obstacle; (4) content, experience, and school factors affected faculty members’ OER usage; (5) online teaching experiences impacted incentive to develop OER as well as how to develop OER. It also played a key role in faculty members’ perceptions about the experience and habit factors as possible barriers to OER usage. Results of the study implicate that more serious efforts are needed to improve the awareness and development of OER in China.
Highlights
In 2001, the famous Open Courseware (OCW) project was launched by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), opening the worldwide Open Educational Resources (OER) movement
As to Objective 1, data analysis found that participating faculty members rarely used the resources of Chinese Quality Course (CQC) and VOC
About 40% of these Chinese faculty members were unfamiliar with OER and MOOCs projects that are quite popular in the West (e.g., MIT OCW, Connexions, etc.)
Summary
In 2001, the famous Open Courseware (OCW) project was launched by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), opening the worldwide Open Educational Resources (OER) movement. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation funded an initiative that UNESCO held a forum on the Impact of Open Courseware for Higher Education Institutions in Developing Countries [1]. As the primary champion in the OER movement, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation defined OER as “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-purposing by others,” including full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge [4]
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