Awareness of OER and OEP in Scotland: Survey Findings from the OEPS Project [1045] Members : #OER16

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Tue, Apr 19 2016, 11:30am – 1:00pm

Authors: Beatriz de los Arcos, Beck Pitt, Pete Cannell, and Ronald MacIntyre

Room: Holyrood

Theme: Converging or diverging cultures of openness

Type: Presentation

Description

Funded for 3 years by the Scottish Funding Council, the Open Educational Practices in Scotland (OEPS) project (http://oepscotland.org) aims to facilitate best practice in Scottish open education. It plans to enhance the Scottish tertiary education sector’s capacity and reputation in developing publicly available and licensed online materials, supported by high quality pedagogy and learning technology.

In order to support capacity building and develop a nuanced understanding of the level of open educational practice (OEP) awareness and use of open educational resources (OEP) in Scotland, OEPS ran a series of sector wide surveys. The first survey was launched in October 2015 and targeted educators working at Scottish Higher Education Institutions. A second survey focused on teachers at Scottish Further Education establishments and was launched during November 2015. The results of these surveys aim to provide a much-needed overview of the Scottish education sector in relation to use of OEP and OER.

Both surveys aimed to find out about the level of OER and OEP awareness through a range of questions including: factors influencing selection of teaching resources; use of repositories; attitudes to sharing; familiarity with licensing options; use of OER as primary/supplementary course materials; purposes and reasons for using OER, and barriers to the adoption of open educational resources. In addition, respondents were asked about their participation in staff development/continuing professional development opportunities related to OEP, and their awareness of student engagement with OER.

Survey design builds on the comparative methodology developed by the OER Hub (http://oerresearchhub.org), an approach that enables not only cross-sector comparisons of results to be made but also a wider, international comparison with research conducted by the OER Hub over the past three years.

Initial analysis of early data strongly suggests that awareness of OER among Scottish teaching staff is low, and that most perceive this lack of awareness as the main barrier to the adoption of OER. Educators familiar with open resources, use them primarily as supporting material to enhance their teaching or as further reference for students. However, few have participated in staff development or CPD opportunities regarding different aspects of openness.

This presentation will highlight some of the OEPS survey findings and contribute to scoping the state of play on open education in Scotland.

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