Open Educational Resources Materials Research Articles

Assessing The Awareness and Perception of Open Educational Resources (OER) among Nigerian University Students: A Case Study

This study investigated Nigerian university students’ awareness and how this influences their perception and use of Open Educational Resources (OER). The study adopted a descriptive method of quantitative research. 4 research questions were developed and answered and a hypothesis was also tested to determine the relationship between students’ awareness of and their perceptions of OER. Percentage, frequency, mean, standard deviation and t-test were used for the analysis. A correlation coefficient was employed to test the hypothesis. The findings of the study were: Nigeria university students have a high level of awareness of OER; the most popular OER among the Nigeria university students were Coursera, EdX, and OpenStax; OER are generally well-perceived by Nigerian university students; lack of digital literacy skills and lack of adequate knowledge to determine the quality assurance of OER are the only challenges hindering the effective use of OER among the students, and there is a significant relationship between awareness and the perception of OER by the students. The study concluded that the majority of Nigerian university students are familiar with OER and have positive perceptions of OER. The research recommends that educational institutions provide training on digital literacy skills for students to access and effectively use these OER. Also, efforts should be made to improve the quality assurance mechanisms for OER, including the involvement of educational experts in reviewing and curating OER materials. Lastly, universities, lecturers and librarians should continue to promote OER usage in teaching and learning activities to promote its adoption.

Supporting Instruction in Cell Biology Using No-Cost Open Educational Resources

To reduce the cost of educational materials needed by students, we generated a no-cost open educational resources (OER) textbook for an undergraduate level cell biology course. Cell biology is part of the curriculum in various undergraduate degrees for science, technology, engineering, and math majors, therefore generation of OER targets a large population of students. In addition to cost reduction, we unified the textbook content with course learning outcomes to ensure that the students have a clear understanding of course goals. To assess student perceptions of OER materials and their experiences related to learning outcomes, surveys were administered to students enrolled in sections of cell biology using a traditional textbook and those enrolled in sections using the OER. Data showed positive student attitudes about learning, accessibility, and cost of OER, supporting the use of no-cost OER in undergraduate classrooms and beyond.

RESEARCH ON EFL STUDENTS’ AWARENESS AND PERCEPTIONS TOWARDS THE UTILIZATION OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES IN VIETNAM

The adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education has been extensively studied worldwide, but there is a lack of research on OER awareness and usage among university students in Vietnam. This study used both quantitative and qualitative approaches to investigate students' awareness of OER and their perceived benefits and challenges when using OER materials. Participants were students in the English Language Teaching Program at UD-UFLS, who were randomly selected to participate in semi-structured interviews through focus groups. The study collected data from 80 questionnaire responses and interview transcripts. Marcus's Theory of Technology Adoption provided a framework for the investigation of OER use. The study identified several benefits of OER utilization, including increased access to materials, cost-effectiveness, flexibility, and autonomy in learning. However, limited knowledge of OER and a lack of support from faculty were identified as barriers to the use of OER among students at UD-UFLS. The results of this study can inform stakeholders about the potential benefits of OER and encourage the promotion of OER in higher education institutions in Vietnam, including UD-UFLS.

Undergraduate nursing student satisfaction with open educational resources in a professional communication course

Open educational resources (OER) are emerging as reference materials in nursing. The purpose of this study was to explore undergraduate nursing students' experiences with OER and the relationship with demographic variables. Findings from this descriptive survey study reveal that the quality of OER materials and learner experience were highly correlated. Integration scores for the youngest cohort was significantly lower compared to other age groups. The integration of quality OER is correlated with positive student experience.

Partnering Higher Education and K–12 Institutions in OER: Foundations in Supporting Teacher OER-Enabled Pedagogy

Open educational resources (OER) are disproportionately created and/or accessed by institutions of higher education as compared to K–12 even though teachers confront the challenge of outdated teaching materials or, worse, an increasing trend by school districts to discontinue textbook adoption altogether. In this paper, we describe a sustainable and innovative example of OER-enabled pedagogy (OEP) that partners teachers and students across institutional boundaries to address these problems. The Pathways Project (PP) is a higher education and K–12 community of 350 world-language teachers, students, and staff that engage in the 5Rs (retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute) of OEP with a repository of more than 800 OER ancillary activities that support standards-based pedagogy for 10 world languages and cultures. The PP is innovative because it fosters renewable assignments for the entire disciplinary ecosystem unlike most OEP studies that discuss renewable assignments limited to a single course. Teacher education is one of the best places to engage OEP because teachers are trained to personalize and contextualize OER materials for their local classroom needs. In so doing, the PP community receives timely discipline-specific professional development that is in high demand, especially in rural communities where teachers are isolated. Higher education-K–12 OEP partnerships are rare, and yet teacher education programs exist in most universities and can be a logical place to start. This paper provides concrete examples and practical steps that are transferable to other disciplines looking to engage in similar types of OER-OEP collaboration and community engagement.

Open Educational Resources Adoption Reduces Textbook Costs without Sacrificing Student Performance in Business and Economics Courses at a Community College

This study analyzed the possibility of saving on textbook costs without sacrificing student performance by using Open Educational Resources (OER) at no cost to students as a replacement for high-priced commercially printed books. Approximately two hundred students enrolled in business and economics courses at Kingsborough Community College of the City University of New York from Fall 2016 to Fall 2018 were assessed in this study. Using summative assessments and course grades as a measure of students' performance, the findings showed that students in courses using OER as compared to students in the same subject area using traditional textbooks perform equally well. Therefore, OER materials that are available to students at no cost alleviate the higher costs that students incur for the purchase of traditional textbooks without a sacrifice or loss of student performance. These findings suggest that adopting open educational resources, even if no positive effect can be detected, can be used because they save students money on textbook costs, especially financially struggling students, without negatively affecting their learning and performance in the course.

The Experiences of Community College Faculty Using Open Educational Resources versus Publisher Textbooks

ABSTRACT A promising solution for reducing costs for students, especially textbook costs, is Open Educational Resources (OER). We explored community college faculty members’ perceptions of using OER compared with publisher textbooks. In this comparative context, we investigated how OER impacted faculty, their instructional decisions, and their students as well as other aspects of OER faculty considered beneficial. The data is from a larger mixed-methods research study conducted in one large community college with multiple campuses in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS). Interviews were conducted with four faculty members who taught both an OER and non-OER section of the same course in the same semester. Three interconnected themes emerged from faculty responses. The first theme was the customizable content and format of OER facilitated access to and for diversity. The second theme was the ease of access with OER supported student engagement with the content and with each other. The third theme was faculty engagement with OER promoted transformative and reflective pedagogies. Findings provide important insight into the contribution of OER materials to equity, diversity, and inclusion beyond the barrier of financial costs. Practitioners should be encouraged by OER’s potential benefits to students and instructors.

Are There Enough Open Educational Resources Dealing With Social Science Research Methods? Insights From the D-A-CH Region

The D-A-CH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland) region has traditionally been skeptical toward open educational resources (OER) materials. Despite being strong partners for the open science community, the three German-speaking countries in Europe did not embrace wide-reaching OER policies in the past and offered only a limited number of incentives for supranational or nationwide genuine German-language OER. These missing national initiatives can also be seen in the field of social science research-related materials. As the domain gained much public interest during the COVID-19 pandemic, where attitudes, values, and societal changes—traditionally the domain of social scientific inquiry—were spotlighted in the media and public discourse, it fell to individual universities, organizations, and people to provide free online education materials—be they true OER or at least quasi-OER—that could help people within and outside of academia to understand and gain insights into the statistics and data presented and distributedviavarious channels. However, mapping the OER materials in this field during the summer of 2021—1 year after the pandemic had begun and the accompanying stream of data had started—revealed that the educational resources covering social science research methods that are offered in the German language are sparse, and those that are available are mostly quasi-OER, not fulfilling all the typical OER criteria. Thus, they have limited application scenarios. If the region wants to truly embrace an open science policy, it needs to strengthen OER in future.

The Aesthetics of OER, Deaf Pedagogy, and Curriculum Design Contra the “Wicked” Policy of Deaf Education

Designing inclusive education for deaf learners is a complex dilemma affecting multiple spheres and agents. In the US and Canada, despite considerable work by students, parents, educators, school administrators, curriculum developers, and lawmakers to address education policy about deaf bilingual literacy, the provision of deaf education through open access educational resources is a wicked problem exacerbated by gaps in curriculum and pedagogy. Despite increasingly hypermodern technologies and mandated early assessment, most deaf high schoolers in North America have unsatisfactory literacy skills (Qi & Mitchell, 2012). To better manage this “wicked problem,” involving policy, pedagogical methods, and curriculum design, we explore how aesthetic forms of knowledge and deaf positive design operations are used in conjunction with Open Educational Resources (OER). We reviewed the literature and constructed a novel framework about OER and e-books in deaf education. The synthesis generated three key takeaways that assisted our understanding of the complex issue. We presented our new framework alongside structured questions to 382 attendees hailing from 20 nations at the WUN/UNESCO Conference (2021, October), focused on inclusive and open access education technologies. We empirically analyzed this rich corpus using qualitative coding and represented our findings using a multipart Ecocycle Model. Following basic analysis, we describe four broader implications for deaf education research about teaching and curriculum using OER and e-book materials. Our analysis shows that deaf curriculum design is an educational problem embedded in a larger policy debate concerning methods and philosophies of pedagogy.

Teaching German as a Foreign Language with Open Educational Resources (OER)

The focus of this research is to find OER to be used in learning German as a foreign language levels A1 to B1 of the The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) standards and to implement in teaching at University of Malang (Indonesia). An overview of the OER will be given, which was categorized language learning level, themes, among others level and themes. From the implementation in university classes with about 19-21 years old, our interviews with five lecturers and their answers in an online questionnaire showed that the OER material in learning did provide many benefits for lecturers and students, including the variety of materials, the forms, and the economic aspect. However, the existing OER still have some downsides, like their suitability to the needs of lecturers and students, in terms of their themes, the technical requirements and levels of difficulty.

Factors affecting student educational choices regarding OER material in Computer Science

The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in course settings provides a solution to reduce the textbook barrier. Several published studies have concluded that high textbook costs may influence students' educational choices. However, there are other student characteristics that may be relevant to OER. In this work, we study various factors that may influence students' educational choices regarding OER and their impact on a student’s perspectives on OER use and quality. More specifically, we investigate whether there are significant differences in the frequency of use and perceived quality of the OER textbook based on gender, prior academic achievements, income, seniority, sentiment about online format, and motivation to learn. Our study involved students enrolled in the “Data Structures” course at Columbus State University (N=61) and analyzed students’ feedback before and during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide insights that can inform the decision of adopting OER in higher education settings. The results indicate that there is no significant difference between most of the students’ characteristics and the perception of the quality and use of the OER textbook. However, two student characteristics presented significant differences. Students who used the OER textbook more frequently were more likely to have a less positive attitude towards the online format of the textbook. Also, students with higher motivation to learn perceived it as a better resource than the traditional textbook compared to students with lower motivation to learn.

Open Educational Resources for Neuroscience.

Open educational resources (OERs) promise to play an increasing role in making educational materials such as textbooks available to all and in helping to (slightly) mitigate exorbitant costs often associated with post-secondary education. True OERs provide the ability to use, distribute and even adapt available resources to fit with the needs of the user. Many other free resources often get lumped in with OERs but may have restrictions prohibiting specific forms of use, modification or distribution. In neuroscience, there is a growing collection of OER and open-access materials for instructors to consider incorporating into their courses, ranging from textbooks and other books to entire courses, a single lecture or videos and animations. This paper briefly reviews two free online textbooks for neuroscience. Further, the available platforms for organizing and distributing OERs are outlined and briefly discussed, with an emphasis on their usefulness at the present time for neuroscience education.

Creating Open and Free Medical Education Resources.

Purpose: Open Educational Resources (OERs) are published in public domains or permissively licensed (i.e., Creative Commons [CC]) materials that allow for open sharing and free accessibility. 1 The absence of a common structure for OER materials has been identified as a barrier to collaboration among educators and a source of inefficiency. 2 Both MedEdPORTAL and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC)’s Clinical Teaching and Learning Experiences 3 collection of educational materials lack a standard format that would allow resources to be directly integrated into medical school curricula without significant modification. The rise of virtual education with COVID-19 has made OERs more pertinent and accessible. Transition to Residency (TTR) courses have become increasingly popular as they seek to improve skills just before the increase in responsibility seen when students become first-year residents. 4 TTR courses should work toward common content between institutions because most students matriculate to residency programs outside of their medical school alma mater. Approach: We sought to create an OER collection specific to TTR courses containing standard formats, allowing course directors to interchangeably use materials and more easily share materials between institutions. Keywords of “Transition to Residency,” “bootcamp,” “internship preparation,” and “capstone” were used in multiple searchable collections of OERs (BCcampus, Oasis, OpenStax, MERLOT, and MedEdPORTAL) to search for existing TTR-related materials. Few resources were identified and either required significant modification to be used in a TTR course or were specific to 1 specialty. 5 A 12-participant convenience sample from 8 different medical schools and the AAMC MedBiquitous program used consensus discussion to draft a set of standards for faculty guides and teaching materials. A website (www.ttreducators.com) was created as a hub for collaboration and a platform for future distribution of materials. A pilot conversion of 10 existing materials from our local TTR course uncovered key considerations and process steps needed to create TTR OERs. Results: A standard structure for faculty guides (i.e., title structure, learning objectives, MESH terms, etc.) was identified. Five specialty groupings were selected for specialty-specific material: Emergency Medicine, Internal Medicine, Obstetrics–Gynecology, Pediatrics, and Surgery. Ten different educational delivery formats were identified as commonly adopted in TTR courses: “long-case” and “short-case” case-based learning, lecture, panel discussion, game, workshop/procedural skills training, peer role-play, simulation – standardized patient role-play, simulation – manikin/low-fidelity, and simulation – manikin/high fidelity. Each type was assigned a standard duration (1 or 2 hours), ideal group size (3, 4, 10, or infinite), a facilitator/student ratio (1/4, 1/6, 1/10, 1/infinite), and an ideal learning setting (classroom, virtual, simulation center). The “game” delivery format was not assigned standards due to the variability and complexity of games being delivered in TTR courses. Pilot conversion of local materials identified numerous key steps for ensuring compliance with CC licensing and OER best practices: ensuring web accessibility for the disabled, reverse image searching to ensure embedded content from external sources is open access, and documenting a CC license. 1 Additionally, an author consent was created and reviewed by our institution’s legal team. Discussion: A draft set of standards was created for TTR course curricular materials that will help ensure OERs are more easily usable by courses from different medical schools. We feel this approach was successful due in part to similar TTR course goals across schools, ensuring OERs can be freely modified after dissemination, and openness of educators to relinquish some personal control for the greater good. Our approach could be adapted by other educational domains in both undergraduate and graduate medical education, potentially saving a significant amount of time from teaching faculty. Significance: Creating standardized formatting of TTR course materials will make OER distribution, implementation, and exchange easier and more widely adopted.

A Comparison of Academic Outcomes in Courses Taught With Open Educational Resources and Publisher Content

What difference do open educational resources (OER) make compared with publisher content (non-OER) when costs and instructors remain constant? A total of 215 community college students enrolled in online, introductory courses were randomly assigned to OER or non-OER sections and compared on retention at the tuition drop date, completion with a C or better, course completion, and mean final exam scores. Students in the OER sections were retained and persisted at a statistically significant higher rate, lending credibility to the findings of former studies regarding retention and persistence rates in courses taught with OER materials. No statistically significant differences were found on completion rates or final exam scores. OER course materials should be considered in broader initiatives for student success in community colleges.

Rethinking the Traditional Textbook

As college costs have continued to rise, textbooks now average more than $1,200 per student per academic year as of 2020. Traditional textbooks are not only expensive, but also have fixed and frequently outdated content. In this study, we compared pre-service teacher-student outcomes and perceptions of a traditional textbook versus no-cost, online materials such as open educational resources (OER) in an undergraduate Foundations of Education course. Outcomes were measured by comparison of final course grades. Perceptions were determined through quantitative and qualitative survey questions added to existing end-of-course evaluations. Results revealed students found OER and no-cost online materials more useful to their success in the course and more engaging than a traditional textbook. Qualitative analysis further revealed that while students appreciated there was no cost for the online materials, they preferred them to a traditional textbook because of the customized content. Results suggest students find instructor-curated, no-cost online readings more useful and preferable to a traditional textbook without compromising student academic performance.

Open Educational Resources in Business Law: Notes from the Field

Open educational resources (OERs) are an alternative textbook to publisher materials used by colleges and universities. OER materials have a cost advantage for students; many are published as free or cost-reduced textbooks for students. The authors developed and piloted an OER textbook for Business Law I in the Management program of the School of Business, Technology and Law. Over 800 Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) students enroll in this course each academic year. The authors evaluated the cost savings for students compared to traditional publisher materials, and also examined student success rates in OER courses compared to traditional publisher courses. The authors’ assessment is that OER materials can save students substantial costs to attend college, and though there is some difference in student success between OER and traditional publisher courses, this variation is likely explained by other independent variables such as the course teaching modality. The process for receiving funding, developing OER-based materials on a publicly available and no-cost website, and distributing the materials to students is also discussed.

Opening up Educational Practices through Faculty, Librarian, and Student Collaboration in OER Creation: Moving from Labor-intensive to Supervisory Involvement

This article presents a case study for transitioning library-led open-educational resources (OER) initiatives away from labor-intensive activities to a model where library personnel focus on project management responsibilities. This shift from labour-intensive activities, such as workshops and training sessions, led to more collaborative partnerships with faculty and students to produce OER projects. In particular, we focus on labour implications for the various stakeholders involved and the sustainability of these initiatives. We describe several initiatives undertaken by the Ohio University Libraries to encourage open educational resource adoptions and projects, including a grant-funded initiative to provide support services for faculty creating OER. That funding, which was awarded to enhance undergraduate education, has been used to support the development of five OER projects that have directly involved students in the creation of those materials. We provide an overview of the various ways in which students have become involved in OER creation in partnership with faculty and librarians and discuss the impact these partnerships have had on student-faculty-librarian relationships and student engagement. Among these projects are an Hispanic linguistics open textbook created using only student-authored texts, student-generated test banks to accompany existing OER materials for a large-enrollment art history course, and several other projects in which hired student assistants are helping faculty to develop content for open textbooks. This article helps to address a gap in the literature by providing transparency regarding the personnel, costs, and workflow for Ohio University Libraries’ OER initiatives and addressing potential areas of concern surrounding student labour.

Using Open Educational Resources at Viterbo University: Faculty and Student Feedback

This study evaluated a coordinated and collaborative pilot implementation of open educational resources (OER) across multiple disciplines including nursing, accounting, environmental science, religious studies, and finance. Participating faculty were qualitatively surveyed regarding their experience creating and implementing OER in a course. Students were surveyed on their perceptions of OER quality, cost savings, and ease of use. Faculty had an overall positive experience with OER, believing there was a significant benefit to students in cost savings while maintaining learning quality. Faculty felt the OER implementation process took a significant investment of time and recommended that faculty should be compensated for creating and implementing OER materials in future courses. Students overall showed positive responses to using OER in their course; the majority of students agreed with the OER cost savings, quality of OER resources, ease of using OER, and they trusted the use of OER materials. Older students (over 30 years) were more likely to state they would print out OER materials rather than read them online (as compared with students 30 and under). Senior-level students agreed significantly more than did freshman-level students that OER presented a cost savings. Faculty recommendations from this study included focusing on courses with very high textbook costs and courses that would impact the greatest number of students. Additionally, faculty recommended a follow-up revision process to keep OER materials current after implementation.

The Effectiveness of Open Educational Resources to Improve Access and Learning in an Electricity Course

A primary motivation for using Open Educational Resources (OERs) is to increase access by reducing students’ financial burden. While this was a motivating factor in this study, the authors also were interested in understanding OER’s impact on student learning. Therefore, this study describes the adaption process for an OER textbook used in a junior-level undergraduate electricity course and evaluates this OER’s effectiveness to increase student access and improve learning over the baseline textbook. A quasi-experimental, non-equivalent design collected exam scores, and self-reported survey responses from n=144 students in a comparison (non-adapted OER; n=83) and treatment (adapted OER; n=61) group was used. Based on Student’s t, Kolmogorov Smirnov, and Chi-square (?2) tests, the adapted OER was effective at improving access and learning while also saving enrolled students an average of $8,000 per year, collectively. A brief background of OER databases, materials, and methods used to develop the OER and the intellectual contribution of the newly adapted OER, and lessons learned are included in the study.

OER AWARENESS AND USAGE AMONG OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING STUDENTS IN SOUTH-WESTERN NIGERIA

This study assessed Open Educational Resources (OER) awareness level and usage among Open and Distance Learning (ODL) students in South-western Nigeria. A descriptive research design was adopted for the study. Three ODL institutions (University of Ibadan Distance Learning Centre, National Open University of Nigeria, Ibadan Study centre and University of Lagos Distance Learning Institute) were purposively selected. A structured questionnaire titled "OER awareness and usage Questionnaire" with a Cronbach alpha coefficient of .954 was used as data collection instrument. Data collected were analysed using frequency count, simple percentages, mean, standard deviation and Pearson Product Moment Correlation. Results of the study revealed that OER awareness among ODL students was on the average while OER usage was high. Lack of orientation on the availability and use of OER and insufficient ICT facilities in the school to access OER materials, amongst others were challenges ODL students faced using OER. It was, therefore, recommended that there should be conscious efforts by ODL institutions to devise means to increase the level of OER awareness among students and sensitise them on the inherent benefits in OER usage.Corresponding author:Sunday Abidemi ItasanmiDOI: 10.24071/ijiet.2020.040216