Open Educational Resources in the Commonwealth 2016
Description
This article reports the results of a survey of stakeholders within institutions associated with the Commonwealth of Learning. Of the 657 respondents, 61% were in higher education systems, 24% were in schools, and 15% were in technical/vocational institutions; 28 countries and 214 institutions were represented in the responses. The study finds that 64% of faculty/teachers at vocational institutions participated in OER-related training activities, compared to 49% at universities and 38% at schools and other institutes. Furthermore, 50% of respondents reported that OER were of "good" quality and 32% reported that OER were of "very good quality"; only a total of 5% reported that OER were not very good or poor quality. Additionally, 94% of respondents reported that open licensing is important when they are using teaching resources. The study also finds that only 12% of respondents allow "reuse and revision of their teaching materials" (p. iv), and that the two biggest challenges faced in using OER are "Not having information about the quality of OER" (46% of respondents indicated this as a barrier) and "Not having enough OER in other formats, such as video and audio" (44%) of respondents (p. 13). Additionally, the study suggests that ease of download is important in OER, as 62% respondents indicated that this was the most important factor for adopting OER. Finally, the study finds that 78% of respondents used search engines to find OER, compared to 22% that used repositories.
Link
B. Phalachandra, Ishan Abeywardena
Tags
Primary educational sector
Secondary educational sector
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