Open Educational Resources Repositories Research Articles

Critical factors in the design of a CoP focused on promoting OER digital curation for K12 teachers

ABSTRACT Open Educational Resources (OER) are valuable tools for diversifying teaching practices, contributing to a quality, equitable, open, and participatory education. However, unlocking the full potential of OER requires overcoming challenges related to its widespread adoption. One key strategy is empowering teachers to actively participate in the collaborative construction of high-quality OER collections that directly address their specific needs. This paper presents the results of a survey (N = 84) and a semi-structured focus group interview (N = 5) designed to collect teachers’ perceptions of the critical factors to consider in designing a Community of Practice (CoP) focused on promoting sharing and digital curation of OER. The results highlight the importance of peer open review of shared OER, community-based evaluation based on pedagogical, technical, and scientific criteria, and the inclusion of OER metadata that mimics teachers’ natural thinking. Furthermore, participants believe private feedback should be prioritised within these systems, as they perceive publicly shared comments might discourage future contributions. Although an expert’s involvement in resource validation is prized, participants stated that this should not be limited to OER publication. Finally, the paper puts forward some recommendations regarding the design of digital platforms that support the work of a CoP focused on creating an OER repository.

The relevance of open educational resources for post-soviet higher education in the digital age

ABSTRACT The digital era has seen the rise of innovations such as online training platforms and digital toolkits for teaching and learning whilst at the same time open access initiatives are losing the attention of educators. The problem under consideration in this paper is the replacement of open educational resources (OER) with digital innovations in higher education (HE). The purpose of this study is to identify the relevance of OER to post-Soviet HE in the digital age. The research employed methods of descriptive analytics to process data on users’ activities extracted from OER repositories with web-analytic apps. The survey was conducted among 441 lecturers to elucidate their request for access to and patterns of usage of digital OER. The findings confirmed the relevance of OER in contemporary education through the similarity of lecturers’ experience worldwide. During the urgent transition to remote learning owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, OER helped lecturers access informed digital practices through appropriate methods and content. OER has thus retained its relevance against the backdrop of the emergence of digital innovations in HE. The international comparison of findings demonstrates the existence of a shared awareness of the importance of OER and similar drivers for OER production and usage.

Abrindo os horizontes para a educação: reflexões sobre repositórios de recursos educacionais abertos no ensino superior

Abstract The repositories of open educational resources have been expanding in various regions of the world, which leads to the need to reflect on the role of these repositories and their implications for teaching and research in higher education, which is the objective of this study. The qualitative exploratory research was adopted as a methodological approach, to compose the literature review on the phenomenon under study, seeking to support the discussions around it. Bibliographic searches in the Scopus and Web of Science databases were used as search strategies for data collection and analysis. According to the results obtained, it became evident that open educational resources and repositories, as sources of management and dissemination of the resources, brought a new perspective to education, in the sense of openness to access, reuse, and sharing and to encourage collaborative work to adapt, transform and create new content. However, there is a need to broaden the understanding of the limitations and barriers to the sustainability and utilization of open education resource repositories and how they can contribute to innovative practices in teaching and learning, from the perspective of the users of these systems, which requires further studies with this objective.

Parecer A de “Opening the horizons for education: reflections on repositories of open educational resources in higher education”

Parecer A de “Opening the horizons for education: reflections on repositories of open educational resources in higher education”

Recommender systems for teachers: The relation between social ties and the effectiveness of socially-based features

Open Educational Resources (OER) repositories provide teachers with a wide range of learning resources (LRs), enabling them to design various learning sequences. However, search & select in large OER repositories can be a daunting task for teachers. Incorporating peer recommendations, as is common in online marketplaces, is becoming a popular solution that seeks to exploit the wisdom of the crowd for this task. However, teachers are often reluctant to take a contributory role and provide social recommendations. In addition, little is known about the actual value of social recommendations as a search aid. In this research, we implemented a “light-weight” socially-based recommender system (RS) within a large OER repository that includes social network features. We examined two aspects of the socially-based recommendation mechanisms. First, their utility as search aids that assist teachers in searching and selecting suitable LRs, and second, their impact on teachers' incentives to share recommendations that can assist fellow teachers. To study these two aspects, we examined two science teacher communities using this repository. The results demonstrated the incentivising power of social rewards, and the value of social recommendations as means for search & select. However, we also observed a heterogeneous effect of social features on teachers' behaviour. To explore the factors that may explain these differences, we employed a mixed-method approach, combining qualitative, quantitative, and Social Network Analysis methods. Triangulation of the findings underline the relation between the strength of the social ties within the teachers’ community and the effectiveness of socially-based features.

Postgraduate Student‘s Open Educational Practices and Hurdles among Faculty of Science at Alagappa University during the Pandemic

This study aims to analyze the practices and hurdles of open educational resources (OER) among faculty of science postgraduate students at Alagappa University, Tamilnadu, India, during the pandemic period. The present study has employed the “questionnaire” as a tool developed by the investigator through a systematic and comprehensive approach in the research design of the questionnaire forms for the survey in various phases. The investigator conducted a pilot study in different Alagappa University, India, departments. The faculty of science students of Alagappa University, Tamilnadu, India, has been selected for the population of the study. A total of 396 postgraduate faculty of science students from the departments chosen at Alagappa University, Tamilnadu, India, were initially collected. However, 30 samples were excluded due to incompleteness. A simple random sampling method was employed to select 366 data for the study. All faculty of science students at Alagappa University, Tamilnadu, India were aware of OER. However, one-fourth of students rarely used OER per day, and only a few students used it monthly. OER was taught to students by faculty at Alagappa University, which created awareness and usage of OER. More announcements or news about OERs being posted on official university websites would increase student awareness of OERs. The significant hurdles shared by students in this study in using OERs are the low quality of OER, limited technology, the OER repository, and the time-consuming to download OER resources.

Produção científica sobre repositórios de recursos educacionais abertos no ensino superior em bases de dados

Within the scope of the open access movement, educational repository initiatives arise that propose the availability of open educational resources to support teaching and research activities, which requires studies to understand the modus operandi of educational repositories. In this sense, the aim of this study is to analyze the scientific production on repositories of open educational resources aimed at higher education, in the scientific literature, seeking to identify research trends and the aspects that should be considered in the development of an educational repository. The methodology is based on a bibliometric study on the Scopus and Web of Science bases and uses the qualitative approach to content analysis of 89 scientific publications. The results indicate that technological and technical aspects, including metadata, interoperability, use licenses, quality assurance, semantic web, recommendation systems and social and collaborative tools, in addition to pedagogical ones, tend to guide the studies on educational repositories, expanding the possibilities for their development. From this study, it is expected to contribute with new knowledge that can stimulate national scientific production and promote the advancement of knowledge in this theme, in addition to contributing to good practices in the management of open educational resources.

Analyzing repositories of OER using web analytics and accessibility tools.

Open Educational Resources (OER) provide learning opportunities for all. Usually, OER and links to OER are curated in Repositories of OER (ROER) for open access and use by anyone, including people with disabilities, at any place at any time. This study analyzes the reputation/ authoritativeness, usage, and accessibility of thirteen popular ROER for teaching and learning using three Web Analytics and five Web Accessibility tools. A high difference among the ROER was observed in almost every metric. Millions of users visit some of these ROER every month and on average stay 2–26 min per visit and view 1.1–8.5 pages per visit. Although in many ROER most of their visitors come from the country where the ROER hosting institute operates, other ROER (such as DOER, MIT OCW, and OpenLearn) have managed to attract visitors from all over the world. In some ROER, their visitors come directly to their website while in a few other ROER visitors are coming after visiting a search engine. Although most ROER are accessible by users with disabilities, the Web Accessibility tools revealed several errors in few ROER. In most ROER, less than one third of the traffic is coming from mobile devices although almost everyone has a mobile phone nowadays. Finally, the study makes suggestions to ROER administrators such as interconnecting their ROER, collaborating, exchanging good practices (such as Commons and MIT OCW), improving their website accessibility and mobile-optimized design, as well as promoting their ROER to libraries, educational institutes, and organizations.

The role of brokers in cultivating an inter-institutional community around open educational resources in higher education

Brokers are individuals who facilitate transfer of knowledge and resources, and coordinate efforts across boundaries of organizations. They are defined by their role rather than their organizational position. Brokers might be imperative for the formation and maintenance of inter-institutional relationship as they have the responsibility and the necessary structural position to connect otherwise separate groups. In the context of this study, brokers had the role to cultivate an inter-institutional community around open educational resources (OER) by connecting groups of teachers across higher education institutes. OER provide higher education institutes with an aid to face the challenges of improving teaching and learning. Yet most OER users encounter challenges that relate to finding resources that are relevant, up-to-date, and of good quality. Communities could minimize this issue, but many OER initiatives fizzle out as expanding their impact is an arduous task. This qualitative descriptive study draws upon cultural-historical activity theory to understand the complexities associated with the role of brokers in creating sustainable collaboration on OER across 15 higher education institutes in the Netherlands. Data was collected from project documents, process reports, reflections reports, and a retrospective focus group. The findings show that brokers engaged in a wide variety of actions but that a small-scale, personal, and content-oriented approach to encourage teachers to engage with the OER repository and the online community was perceived as the most valuable. Brokers also experienced conflicts due to the demanding context they were operating in, the ambiguity of their role, and the organizational constraints they were confronted with. Practical implications refer to supporting higher education institutes that wish to initiate sustainable collaboration across institutes.

The Interoperability of Learning Object Design, Search and Adaptation Processes in the Repositories

Learning environments ensure successful implementation of the learning process but not always the effective design of the e-learning objects (ELOs) and moreover, search and adaptation. A technological solution for the design of the learning objects, repositories, and the semantic web is needed. There are many open educational resources, but not many platforms assure the possibility to adapt learning objects. The existing developed multifunctional platforms do not ensure the effective ELOs adaptation as well as the process of design and adaptation in the multifunctional environment. They do not have an automatic search of ELOs in the semantic web, which is directly targeted to the specific objects in repositories of open educational resources and do not allow for adaptation of the already developed ELO by automatically assigning reusable objects. The structure of the papers consists of the literature review and overview of existing practices, research methodology, research results description and conclusions provided by authors. The objective of the research is to suggest, to teachers, a model for effective e-learning objects design, automatic search and adaptation processes in the multifunctional environment by developing a platform based on semantic technologies for e-learning objects design and adaptation.

Assessing Determinants of Lecturers’ Utilization and Attitude Towards Open Educational Resources in Universities of North-East, Nigeria

The study assessed the Determinants of Lecturers’ Utilization and Attitude Towards Open Educational Resources (OER) for Knowledge Sharing in Universities of North-East Nigeria. The population of the study was 632 lecturers drawn from Federal Universities of Northeast Nigeria. The sample of the study comprised of 338 lecturers purposively selected from three Federal Universities distributed within the three states (Adamawa, Bauchi and Borno State). The study adopted concurrent embedded mixed method research design in which four Quantitative and one qualitative (QUAN + qual) research questions guided the study. The instruments used for data collection are closed ended questionnaire and focus group interview protocol. The instruments were validated by experts and subjected to reliability test using Cronbach’s alpha. Mean (x) and standard deviation (SD) was used to answer research question one to four for quantitative variables. Thematic analysis was used to answer research question five for qualitative variables using Atlas ti. Version 9.1. The findings of the study revealed that Performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence and facilitating conditions variables collectively influence lecturers’ use of shared OER. The study recommended among others that the University management should build on the provisions of the construct by strengthening the culture of knowledge sharing on OER repository among faculties.

How Do Undergraduate Biology Instructors Engage With the Open Educational Resource Life Cycle?

Open Educational Resources (OER) are widely used instructional materials that are freely available and promote equitable access. OER research at the undergraduate level largely focuses on measuring student experiences with using the low cost resources, and instructor awareness of resources and perceived barriers to use. Little is known about how instructors work with materials based on their unique teaching context. To explore how instructors engage with OER, we surveyed users of CourseSource, an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that publishes lessons primarily for undergraduate biology courses. We asked questions aligned with the OER life cycle, which is a framework that includes the phases: Search, Evaluation, Adaptation, Use, and Share. The results show that OER users come from a variety of institution types and positions, generally have positions that focus more on teaching than research, and use scientific teaching practices. To determine how instructors engage throughout the OER life cycle, we examined the frequency of survey responses. Notable trends include that instructors search and evaluate OER based on alignment to course needs, quality of the materials, and ease of implementation. In addition, instructors frequently modify the published materials for their classroom context and use them in a variety of course environments. The results of this work can help developers design current and future OER repositories to better coincide with undergraduate instructor needs and aid content producers in creating materials that encourage implementation by their colleagues.

Measuring quality, popularity, demand and usage of Repositories of Open Educational Resources (ROER): a study on thirteen popular ROER

ABSTRACT Open Educational Resources (OER) could be used by educators and learners for online teaching and learning. All over the world, various OER repositories and directories curate OER in various subjects. However, little is known about their quality, popularity and usage. This paper investigates and analyses qualitatively and quantitatively 13 well-known repositories of OER (ROER) from the users’ point of view. The following web traffic analytics tools were used: Google MobileFriendly, Google PageSpeed Insights, OpenLink Profiler, SimilarWeb, and WAVE. Most of these ROER curate OER and links pointing to OER of multiple types, multiple languages, multiple disciplines (subjects), and multiple educational levels. Also, almost all of them provide mobile friendly design, some form of OER quality evaluation, and facilities so that anyone can search them for OER and their members can interact, communicate, and collaborate among themselves. However, most of them provide poor speed and their information about their OER does not always correspond to the reality. Most of these ROER have registered members and social media followers, and are well recognised by thousands of websites that point to them. Thousands of users visit these ROER. On average, visitors visit 3.6 pages and spend 2.6 minutes per visit in an ROER. .

Developing Institutional Open Educational Resource Repositories in Vietnam: Opportunities and Challenges

The introduction of open educational resources (OER) provides new opportunities for learners worldwide to access high-quality educational materials at the lowest cost. As a developing country, Vietnam is one of the countries that can most benefit from the OER movement. However, the concept of OER in Vietnam remains little known to the public, with few institutional OER repositories (IOER) developed. This study contends that IOER development in Vietnam is complicated and constrained by many contextual difficulties; it was designed to explore the challenges and opportunities. After a literature review, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders. Building on the findings from the literature, this study found that IOER development in Vietnam is constrained by five categories of challenges: (a) technological and infrastructure matters, (b) economic constraints, (c) sociocultural characteristics, (d) pedagogical concerns, and (e) legal limitations. Many of these challenges are not identified in the literature and provide insights into potential implications and solutions for future IOER in Vietnam and other countries.

Implications of the Delphi method in the evaluation of sustainability open education resource repositories

To better understand the sustainable development of open educational resources (OER), this paper aimed to break through the original ‘fixed’, highly structured evaluation system and develop an open and flexible “1 + X” evaluation framework of OER by using the modified Delphi method. “1” refers to the mandatory basic criteria that the repository must reflect essential attributes and core functions, which are consist of four components: information content, learning process, system technology, and user experience. “X” refers to optional distinctive criteria that the repository shall focus on one or more developmental orientations, which may include: resource evolution, international collaboration, inclusiveness and equality, open educational practices, and value-added services. Optional “X” criteria, in line with the criteria’s diversity aims, can lead to the sustainable development of OER and globalized lifelong learning. The framework of this study provides a basis for the evaluation and optimization of existing OER repositories, and also serves as functional scaffolding for the construction of new repositories.

Open Educational Resources Repositories

Open educational practices (OEP) are being enriched with many repositories to support teaching and learning activities in the modern era. Hence, the study aims to understand the trends of such repositories at global level by making analysis of 782 repositories categorized under learning object repositories (LOR) in directory of open access repositories (OpenDoar) with a focus on identifying open educational resources repositories (OERR) specifically possessing ‘open educational resources' for reuse, modification, and adaption. The authors looked into LOR under different facets like global distribution, operational status, interface language, etc. A total of 78 OERR identified from the LOR focus mainly on open teaching learning materials when their availability was ascertained by visiting each repository and browsing randomly through “collections and communities,” “content types,” “license statements,” etc. The results reveal that these hail predominantly from North America and Europe with different distribution patterns, while little visibility is evident among other geographical locations.

Examining the Usefulness of Quality Scores for Generating Learning Object Recommendations in Repositories of Open Educational Resources

Open educational resources (OER) can contribute to democratize education by providing effective learning experiences with lower costs. Nevertheless, the massive amount of resources currently available in OER repositories makes it difficult for teachers and learners to find relevant and high-quality content, which is hindering OER use and adoption. Recommender systems that use data related to the pedagogical quality of the OER can help to overcome this problem. However, studies analyzing the usefulness of these data for generating OER recommendations are very limited and inconclusive. This article examines the usefulness of using pedagogical quality scores for generating OER recommendations in OER repositories by means of a user study that compares the following four different recommendation approaches: a traditional content-based recommendation technique, a quality-based non-personalized recommendation technique, a hybrid approach that combines the two previous techniques, and random recommendations. This user study involved 53 participants and 400 OER whose quality was evaluated by reviewers using the Learning Object Review Instrument (LORI). The main finding of this study is that pedagogical quality scores can enhance traditional content-based OER recommender systems by allowing them to recommend OER with more quality without detriment to relevance.

Understanding K‐12 teachers’ intention to adopt open educational resources: A mixed methods inquiry

AbstractTeachers in K‐12 settings often teach out of textbooks in order to provide differentiated instruction. Open educational resources (OER) might be an effective alternative to traditional textbooks for K‐12 teachers because of a free access to a rich collection of open‐licensed educational materials. Understanding how to encourage teachers to accept OER is thus critical. However, existing evidence mainly concerns the advantage of OER in cost reduction but overlooks the merit of openness. To fill this gap, this mixed methods inquiry, implementing the technology acceptance model, integrated qualitative and quantitative findings to obtain a comprehensive understanding of teachers’ intentions of adopting OER in K‐12 settings. This study found that perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness predicted K‐12 teachers’ intention to adopt OER with attitudes toward OER as a mediating variable. Perceived ease of use also determined perceived usefulness. Teachers’ perceptions of OER adoption were also examined for additional insight into the quantitative findings. Practical implications of adopting OER in K‐12 curriculum were discussed. Practitioner NotesWhat is already known about this topic K‐12 teachers need to teach out of textbooks to provide differentiated instruction but publishers usually charge teachers high subscription fees without giving them permission to customize the resources. Open educational resources (OER) allow teachers to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute free open‐licensed resources. Teachers’ intention to use technology predicts their actual technology use, but evidence regarding reinforcing teachers’ intention to adopt OER is limited. What this paper adds This paper demonstrates the perceived ease of use of OER is a primary factor in how useful teachers consider them to be, how teachers feel about them in general, and how likely they are to use OER. This paper shows perceived usefulness of OER determines teachers’ attitudes toward and intention to use OER. This paper shows teachers’ attitudes toward OER mediate the effect of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness on their intention to adopt OER. Implications for practice and/or policy Simplifying the search process by improving the design of OER repositories to reinforce teachers’ perception that OER are easy to use. Establishing quality assurance of OER to strengthen teachers’ perception that OER are useful. Advocating open educational practices in K‐12 settings to engage students and teachers in the creation and curation of open content. Initiating nationwide campaigns (eg, #GoOpen) to engage school districts and teachers in producing and publishing high‐quality OER.

Automatic Syllabus-Oriented Remixing of Open Educational Resources Using Agent-Based Modeling

Rapid development of open educational resources (OER) is often motivated by a new educational paradigm. This paradigm tends to address current challenges such as reusing, goal-oriented remixing, revising, and redistributing OER. This paper proposes a system to automatically remix, which is a step towards automatic course generation. This system uses an agent-based modeling (ABM) approach to profile OER and simulate the process of selecting and linking the appropriate ones. Each resource profile provides us with metadata that shows its domain and is completed using an appropriate ontology before agents’ interactions. ABM enables cooperation between OER to satisfy requirements of the input syllabus. Using the interaction ability, the most compatible agents, which cover the concepts of the input syllabus, can be linked. The efficiency of the proposed method is evaluated through applying the implemented system on two datasets: ARIADNE and SlideShare. In our experimental results on OER related to the domain of e-learning, we report on the system precision and user satisfaction. Our approach is generic; it can be used with any OER repository and any content management system with a free reuse and remix license.

Learners’ Attitudes and Perceptions of Blended MEd Programme Towards OER-Based Self-Learning Materials

School of Education (SoE) of Bangladesh Open University (BOU) runs a Master of Education (MEd) programme for professional development of teachers of schools and colleges under blended mode leveraging open educational resources (OER). The Programme uses OER-based self-learning materials (SLMs) and video lectures, and contacts (face-to-face tutorials) at the learners’ surroundings. The objective of this study was to explore the learners' perception about content, need and use of basic SLMs of their MEd programme to create learning experiences for learners. A total of 290 questionnaires were distributed among students randomly after taking their consent for participation in the study. About 184 completely filled questionnaires were received back and the response was analysed. A 5-point Likert-scale structured questionnaire was used to acquire the learners’ views, attitudes and perceptions on the MEd SLMs. Students identified SLM available at the OER repository for all subjects were highly beneficial for their studies. Students were satisfied with the integration of video lectures to impart on their studies, but SLM were considered as self-sufficient for exam preparation. Overall, the attitudes of students toward SLMs were positive. The learning experience for them can be improved significantly by better video integration along with face-to-face (F2F) contacts.