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.

In higher education institutions around the world, educators and administrators are actively engaged in sometimes lively discussions about immersive environments and their application for learning. Innovative educators are excited about the possibilities of learning collaboratively in a virtual place without loss of visual cues and the enhanced sense of presence that this new media affords. Like every new technology, immersive environment's application to learning must be evaluated and tested before it earns a place in the often crowded technological tool chest of both distance, campus and blended educators. To aide in the evaluation of these tools, the paper describes the initial development of an immersive environment education evaluation tool based on the well regarded community of inquiry model of online learning. After a brief overview of both immersive environments for learning and the community of inquiry model, the following research questions are addressed: Is the Community of Inquiry recognizable in a MUVE learning environment? Are new indicators required if the community of inquiry was used as an evaluation tool for MUVE learning environments? Could the Community of Inquiry model be used as a framework for evaluating educational events in immersive environments? Observations of five diverse educational events are described in the context of the community of inquiry model. The research questions are then revisited and the Multi User Virtual Environment Education Evaluation Tool (MUVEEET ™) is proposed.

This paper describes an exploratory, observational study using a purposive sample selection to determine if the presence indicators of the well regarded Community of Inquiry model can be a useful tool to observe and assess learning events which use a Multi User Virtual Environment (MUVE) as the mode of delivery [1]. Specific research questions addressed include whether the Community of Inquiry is recognizable in a MUVE learning environment, if new presence indicators are required if observing a MUVE learning event and finally, does the community of inquiry offer a base rubric to determine the educational effectiveness of learning events which take place in a MUVE? The results are promising; while new presence indicators add breadth to understanding the nature of learning in an immersiveenvironment the core construct of the community of inquiry does indeed transfer to this emerging learning technology.