Students’ Awareness and Use of Open Educational Resources (OERS) in Selected Universities: Implication for Policy Studies

Abstract

Open Educational Resources are technology-enabled open provisions of educational resources for consultation, use, and adaptation for non-commercial purposes. At the moment in Nigeria, OERs are the reality for an increasing number of universities. They are distinctively made available without restraint over the Internet or the Web. The adoption has been on an increased level; hence, this study presents the key findings of a survey about the awareness and use of OER among students in selected Universities. A structured questionnaire was distributed to 600 respondents. The findings revealed that the majority of the students were males between the ages of 20-25. It was also revealed that students were aware of OER in their universities. Besides, the study established a positive correlation between students' awareness and the use of OER. On the use of the resources, it is revealed that the majority of the students use theses/projects, journal articles, lecture notes, courseware, and books while video contents, inaugural lectures, and Conference proceedings/presentations were among the least used resources as indicated by over 50% of the respondents. 80% of respondents perceived that the resources are useful and improved their retention, and 89.3% find downloading the materials easy the barrier to the use of OER among the population studied includes inadequate skills, little knowledge of the courseware, and power supply. The study recommended, among other things, the need for students and staff training and retraining to guarantee the required threshold in ICT literacy skills and competency for maximum OER use and exploitation. Also recommended was the need for the universities in conjunction with librarians to develop a standard procedure to mainstream OER into teaching, learning, and research processes to promote their practical use Keywords: Higher education, ICT skills, Learning materials, Open Education, Open Educational Resources, Use of OER, Undergraduate Students.