Measuring use and creation of open educational resources in higher education

Ross McKerlich, Cindy Ives, Rory McGreal

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Articlepeer-review

94 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The open educational resources initiative has been underway for over a decade now and higher education institutions are slowly adopting open educational resources (OER). The use and creation of OER are important aspects of adoption and both are needed for the benefits of OER to be fully realized. Based on the results of a survey developed to measure the readiness of faculty and staff to adopt OER, this paper focuses on the measurement of OER use and creation, and identifies factors to increase both. The survey was administered in September 2012 to faculty and staff of Athabasca University, Canada's open university. The results offer a snapshot of OER use and creation at one university. The survey tool could provide a mechanism to compare and contrast OER adoption with other higher education institutions. Forty-three percent of those in the sample are using OER and 31% are creating OER. This ratio of use to creation is introduced as a possible metric to measure adoption.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)90-103
Number of pages14
JournalInternational Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning
Volume14
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013

Keywords

  • OER
  • Open educational resources
  • Open learning
  • Open textbooks

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