Types Of Open Educational Resources Research Articles

Zoom in: Open educational resources for informal online learning during COVID-19 and beyond

Institutions, organisations, and policymakers use open educational resources (OERs) to promote student equity and social inclusion. The global COVID-19 crisis highlighted the need for lifelong learning and underscored the importance of the higher education system in this endeavour. This study describes informal learning among adults through OERs, during the COVID-19 crisis, distinguishing between employed and unemployed individuals and between professional and personal development. A questionnaire distributed during the COVID-19 lockdown focused on three themes: (1) types of OERs used for learning during this period; (2) perceived OERs’ usefulness; and (3) changes in OER use due to the crisis. Our findings revealed group differences in types of OERs used and in changes brought about by COVID-19, as well as within-group differences based on personal characteristics. Only a few participants reported using massive open online courses (MOOCs). Moreover, videoconferencing usage increased despite low perceived usefulness ratings, pointing to a change in informal learning modes. This exploratory research provides insights into the preferences of individual groups. These insights may be used to reduce socioeconomic disparities, especially among those who have lost their jobs, and to develop effective models for open education. Implications for practice or policy: Enhancing the discussions about the future of open education by reflecting a wide picture of OERs use. Redesigning OERs for the labour market by distinguishing between employed and unemployed, and professional and personal development. OER preferences according to personal characteristics can be used to achieve better engagement with learning.

Open Educational Resources - in Engineering Education, Case Study at UC/AGH, UB and ULBS

Abstract To change the educational scene in the epoch of the digital generation there is the possibility of using Open Education (OE) and Open Educational Resources (OER). The term “open educational resources” refers to resources with free access to use, adaptation and redistribution. The objectives of the research are to determine the degree of knowledge and use of OER in three Engineering Universities in three countries (Poland, Hungary and Romania) and to find out whether there is a relationship between the institutions in terms of knowledge and use of OER. The measurement is made by applying the survey method on a sample of n = 192. As a tool we use the questionnaire with 15 questions structured in three chapters: knowledge of OER; using OER; opinions about OER. In this analysis we summarize: the presentation of the degree of familiarity with some OER-related concepts, the use of special search engines, the use of free software sources, the frequency of use of OER and opinions on different types of OER that could be exploited in the future. For the description of relationship between nominal variable we use contingency tables and diagrams and compare the frequency data with the Pearson Chi-square test.

Effectiveness of OER Use in First-Year Higher Education Students’ Mathematical Course Performance

This article examines the effect of two Open Educational Resources (OER) - Khan Academy Collection and a teacher-authored open textbook - on mathematical course performance and attendance amongst first-year higher education Chilean students. It also aims to find out about teachers’ and students’ views on the use of OER in order to understand how these resources are used and valued. To this end, quantitative and qualitative methods were employed. Findings indicate that students in face-to-face classes who used Khan Academy resources obtained better examination grades than students who used the open textbook or relied on traditional proprietary textbooks. Moreover, it was also found that students who used both types of OER had significantly lower attendance levels than students who relied on traditional proprietary textbooks. Finally, it was observed that teachers and students had very positive opinions on the use of both the Khan Academy Collection and open textbook resources.

Integrating Open Educational Resources Into Undergraduate Business Courses

Open educational resources (OER) are educational materials with an open license so that they can be freely copied, modified, and reused. While the rising cost of textbooks is a concern in higher education, over 50% of the surveyed educators stated that they are unaware of the OER and how they could replace the traditional textbooks. In addition, not many instructors understand the Creative Commons licenses under which OER can be used. In this work, we consider the types of OER and outline the sources of OER for business courses. We describe our experience of using such resources for innovative business courses and discuss the choices we made and the lessons learned. Finally, we share the results of surveys about OER we conducted with students and reflect on them.

Challenges for implementing open educational resources by teachers in higher education

Higher Education Institutions (HEI) are facing a number of problems during the last decades: the need to update the curricula to make it compatible with the similar ones from other national and European universities; demand to update the content and the pedagogical approach due to knowledge, technological and research development. Open Educational Resources (OER) might be a sound strategy for institutions to meet these challenges. At the same time OER are themselves one of the challenges that the teachers are faced with. OER could be implemented in courses in different ways, depending on the types of OER and the educational philosophy adopted by the teachers. The paper describes some challenges for implementing Open Educational Resources by teachers in Higher Education in Moldova: the level of awareness on availability and usage of OER; fair use matters; quality assurance of resources; pedagogical approaches for implementing OER into teaching and learning. The paper also grasps the issues of the digital divide that emerge when investigating these challenges. The judgment is based on the literature analysis and on the author’s teaching experience within courses for initial and continuous professional teachers’ training.

Open Educational Resource (OER): C-Programming Handout based Lab Session using MOODLE for Engineering Education

educational resources (OER) are free and openly licensed educational materials. It can be used for teaching, learning, research work and other purposes. OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) defines this OER as digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students, and selflearners to use and reuse for teaching, learning, and research. OER includes learning content, software tools to develop, use, and distribute content, and implementation resources such as open licences. Types of open educational resources include: full courses, course materials, modules, learning objects, open textbooks, openly licensed videos, tests, software, and other tools, materials etc. OER may be freely and openly available static resources and dynamic resources. We have developed Open Education Resource (OER): CProgramming Handout based Lab Session using MOODLE. It consists of C-Programming Lab handouts for First Year Engineering students which contains the useful guidelines for implementing the program problem statements in the lab session. Practise problem statements are given in the each handout. Students practise those problem statements in lab session and submit on the MOODLE for assessment purpose. At the end of each lab session, the quiz will conducted on the MOODLE on the topic covered in the lab session. Since this OER is related to the C-Programming, any faculty or students from any stream can use this OER. We are going to use this OER for the students of First Year Engineering Program for CProgramming course in Semester II.

The role of knowledge sharing self-efficacy in sharing Open Educational Resources

In the current paper we report on a study regarding teachers’ sharing behavior regarding their Open Educational Resources (OER) in the Netherlands. Little is known about how many teachers actually share their learning materials and, therefore, an attempt was made to estimate the number of Dutch teachers and the types of OER they share. Second, we tried to find out whether knowledge sharing self-efficacy facilitated, and evaluation apprehension and trust inhibited teachers to share OER in two different contexts of sharing behavior; sharing with colleagues at their school (interpersonal sharing) and sharing with the public through Internet (Internet sharing). A survey among 1568 teachers from primary to higher education was undertaken to test the relative importance of knowledge sharing self-efficacy, evaluation apprehension and trust in determining Dutch teachers’ intention to share. The results showed that a large proportion of the Dutch teachers shared their OER, but that this sharing was limited to learning materials with low complexity (e.g., texts or images). Moreover, sharing occurred twice as much interpersonally than via websites. Our hypothesis that evaluation apprehension is significantly related to sharing behavior as well as the intention to share was not confirmed. Self-efficacy to share knowledge did, however, explain some of the differences in sharing behavior and in the intention to share of Dutch teachers, although the variables under study accounted only for a small amount of variance. Our findings should thus be replicated in further studies and other variables should be considered that could effectively predict OER sharing behavior of teachers.

Recursos educativos abiertos (REA) en el nivel medio superior: ¿Mejoran el aprendizaje?

El presente documento muestra la experiencia de uso de Recursos Educativos Abiertos (REA) en cuatro grupos de estudiantes del nivel Medio Superior y se analiza el impacto en su aprendizaje al variar la instrucción utilizando tres tipos de Recursos Educativos Abiertos (REA), los cuales han sido diseñados para incrementar el grado de interactividad del REA con el estudiante. Los resultados sugieren que a medida que el REA se vuelve más interactivo y cercano a un contexto real los estudiantes mejoran significativamente su aprovechamiento evaluado mediante un examen teórico. Además, los resultados indican que no existe una diferencia significativa en el aprovechamiento a partir del género. Finalmente, se considera relevante el seguir indagando en el impacto que tiene el diseño y características de un REA para generar un mejor aprovechamiento en los estudiantes que hacen uso de ellos.