Abstract
<p>The open educational resources initiative has been underway for over a decade now and higher education institutions are slowly adopting open educational resources (OER). The use and creation of OER are important aspects of adoption and both are needed for the benefits of OER to be fully realized. Based on the results of a survey developed to measure the readiness of faculty and staff to adopt OER, this paper focuses on the measurement of OER use and creation, and identifies factors to increase both. The survey was administered in September 2012 to faculty and staff of Athabasca University, Canada’s open university. The results offer a snapshot of OER use and creation at one university. The survey tool could provide a mechanism to compare and contrast OER adoption with other higher education institutions. Forty-three percent of those in the sample are using OER and 31% are creating OER. This ratio of <em>use</em> to <em>creation</em> is introduced as a possible metric to measure adoption.</p>
Highlights
Open educational resources (OER) can be defined as “materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone” (Downes, 2011)
The survey was based on the Open Access Textbook Task Force Final Report (OATTFF) (2010) and adapted with permission
The data collected from the OER Readiness Survey tool concurs with Pawslowski (2012) that creating OER leads to higher emotional engagement than using OER
Summary
Open educational resources (OER) can be defined as “materials used to support education that may be freely accessed, reused, modified and shared by anyone” (Downes, 2011). Wiley tackled the definition of learning objects in 2000 and offered the following: “any digital resource that can be reused to support learning” Compare this to Downes’ 2011 definition of open educational resources above and they have similarities: Wiley (2000) suggested the critical attributes of learning objects are “reusable”, “digital”, and “resource”. Downes (2011) included these attributes in his definition of OER – digital is not mentioned it could be construed as implied in this digital age. The term “learning object” could be considered a formative definition preceding OER
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