Teachers’ Adoption of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education

Despite the availability of open educational resources (OERs), users are still faced with barriers to accessing resources.

When I started learning about open education and OERs, the most frequent vocabulary I have encountered were confusing, debate (dispute, argue, controversial) and strive (struggle, pursue). Amazing, isn’t it?

On the other hand, the first advice I got from one of the experts in leading the global trend of openness was ‘Don’t worry’.

So, the way I got it is that it’s common for the fresh concept to face disparities in understanding, defining and application. It’s normal for the openness to be defied by powers of variable levels. It seems that it’s the educators’ duty to adopt this move, but despite the growing number of open resources accessible, the use of OER in higher educa­tion is low. One interesting triangle (figure 1) created by Cox and Trotter (2017) describes the OER Adoption to underline the interdependencies of the factors that influence OER adoption in relation to adoption. The constituting layers of the pyramid run in a sequential order, as an educator can’t reach the following step unless they manage to address the previous issue. What really interest me are the bottom layers and they control educators’ labour and even their willingness to go freely open.

From the one hand, the educators should follow the policy of the institution they work for, which in turn work under the umbrella of the national policies on OERs. On the other hand, there are major bodies that indirectly control the institutions’ policies and have an impact on the educators pursuing to use and share resources openly.

For instance, citation impact metrics such as impact factor and h-index obligate many fresh academics to forget about openness for a little while until they can advance their career through publishing in closed respectful journals. Institutions occasionally encourage academics to do so, and it’s likely justified as ranking of the university will increase accordingly. This ranking issue which has been set by powerful bodies can be detrimental in some districts, not only because teachers are supposed to take a certain approach in publishing their material, but also, they are restricted in the way the interact with their communities. Teachers are only allowed to teach or spread their material on the university’s website to raise the ranking by the increased number of visitors and teaching is not allowed on web 2.0 platforms, not even for announcing instructions for the students!

I can move beyond institutions and say that politics affect the application of openness, even for those who claim to be fully open, even farther for those who teach the concept of openness. During my journey in raising my conceptual awareness of the OERs, I have decided to join a course offered under a CC attribution, which seemed for me to be a good one to follow (figure 2).

The surprise was I can’t, because I live in country that suffers from sanctions applied without exemptions even for education.

In conclusion, educators are confronted with wave after wave of technical issues, national and international policies and only if they follow the light of compassionate, collaborative colleagues they can reach the shore safely.

References:

Allen, IE and Seaman, J. 2014. Opening the Curriculum: Open Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education. Available at https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthecurriculum2014.pdf

Baas, M, et al. 2019. Teachers’ Adoption of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2019(1): 9, pp. 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/jime.510

Cox, GJ and Trotter, H. 2017. An OER framework, heuristic and lens: Tools for understanding lecturers’ adoption of OER. Open Praxis, 9(2): 151–171. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.9.2.571

Schuwer, R and Janssen, B. 2018. Adoption of Sharing and Reuse of Open Resources by Educators in Higher Education Institutions in the Netherlands: A Qualitative Research of Practices, Motives, and Conditions. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(3). DOI: https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i3.3390