Perceived Usefulness of Open Educational Resources Between Full-Time and Distance-Learning Students

Abstract

Open educational resources or OER have been recognized as a major source of learning materials for university students. This paper investigates the students’ perception on the usefulness of OER with a focus on comparing the perceived usefulness between full-time and distance-learning students, based on a survey carried out at the Open University of Hong Kong in the academic year 2017–18. It is found that both full-time and distance-learning students generally consider OER useful for learning purposes, especially for using the resources to supplement the existing course materials and to get more resources for doing assignments and projects. On different types of OER, open courseware, course materials and e-books are mostly perceived as very useful or useful by both full-time and distance-learning students, while more distance-learning students than full-time students also consider open online courses, tutorials, and open online learning tools and platforms very useful or useful. For both full-time and distance learning students, accuracy and comprehensiveness are key concerns of using OER for learning purposes.