Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore students and instructor perceptions of the concept of renewable assignments in the open educational resources (OER) movement. Mixed methods were used, with a combination of a survey and semi-structured interview, administered at George Mason University in the United States. Eleven graduate students enrolled in the Instructional Design and Technology program in the course Advanced Instructional Design were invited to complete an online survey. A face-to-face interview was conducted with the instructor of the course. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were used to examine the results of the study. The data analysis found that only a small number of students were knowledgeable about OER, but the majority of participants indicated that they were very satisfied with the concept of renewable assignments. The findings suggest further investigation of the pedagogical models that tend to support student-generated OER.
Highlights
The open educational resources (OER) movement is an established trend in the broader ‘open’ movement, based on the idea that knowledge is freely available on the internet and open for use with few or no restrictions
The study had only a small number of student participants who were knowledgeable about OER
Almost 50% of the student participants indicated that they were very satisfied with the concept and production of renewable assignments and the instructor endorsed renewable assignments as more pragmatic than disposable assignments
Summary
The open educational resources (OER) movement is an established trend in the broader ‘open’ movement, based on the idea that knowledge is freely available on the internet and open for use with few or no restrictions. Several scholars (e.g., Pitt, 2015; Wiley, Webb, Weston & Tonks, 2017) believe that OER might have other potential capabilities alongside the sharing of knowledge and providing cost-saving alternatives to expensive textbooks These capabilities, according to the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (2013), are: (a) to offer access to knowledge for everyone, (b) to reduce the cost of education, (c) to deliver greater learning efficiency, (d) to promote continuous improvement of instruction and personalized learning, and (e) to encourage translation and localization of content. These perceived benefits of OER cannot be robustly demonstrated without empirical evidence
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