Open Education 2017

The movement toward open educational materials has been slow to gain traction among the teaching mainstream. OERs are still not generally discussed in teacher education programs. According to a study by The Boston Consulting Group (2013), only 21% of educators report being äóìvery awareäó of what OERs are, indicating that they may not be comfortable using them themselves. These findings seem to indicate that educators simply need more education and background on what OERs are and how to use them.



In truth, however, it is not well-understood as to why open educational resources (OERs) have been slow to gain traction among the mainstream of educators. Is it because these OERs are somehow fundamentally flawed or not useful to teachers, or is it simply a lack of knowledge and preparation regarding the use of these materials? Little is known as to why teachers and faculty don't use OERs more frequently, especially because many educators express concern for lowering the cost of materials for their students, one of the primary problems solved by the use of OERs.



To better understand these problems, the presenters embarked on a research project to measure and interpret educator's attitudes towards OERs. This research was conducted using a open online course on finding and using open and free teaching materials. The main purpose of this study was to determine whether additional knowledge and preparation on the use of openly licensed materials helps teachers feel more comfortable using OERs for their own teaching and learning applications. In this session, we'll share our findings from this experience and discuss implications for persuading and training educators on the use of OERs in the future.