Evaluating NTU’s OpenCourseWare Project with Google Analytics: User Characteristics, Course Preferences, and Usage Patterns

Abstract

<p class="3">As freely adoptable digital resources, OpenCourseWare (OCW) have become a prominent form of Open Educational Resources (OER). More than 275 institutions in the worldwide OCW consortium have committed to creating free access open course materials. Despite the resources and efforts to create OCW worldwide, little understanding of its use exists. This paper reports OCW project development at National Taiwan University (NTU) and investigates its use with Google Analytics. Reports include strategic plans to overcome challenges to OCW creation and implementation, the project’s growth and maturation, overall use of OCW, and possible future directions. As a result of its 5-year development and of lessons learned, the NTU-OCW experience features: (1) integrating resources on campus and established operating procedures, (2) setting course selection criteria featuring the strength of NTU and Taiwan, (3) providing coherent program support to enhance faculty participation, and (4) adhering strictly to the Creative Commons license. Data from Google Analytics was reviewed for better understanding of the use, characteristics, course preferences, and behaviors of NTU-OCW users. Results show visitors were primarily lifelong learners (65%) in informal learning settings. Statistics indicate an overall successful use of NTU-OCW for Chinese speaking users, especially in urban areas where information and communication technology is more developed. Potential impacts and future improvements are discussed, including how to promote usage of OCW courses for on and off campus users, adding rating features and indexing for customizing search, and integrating OCW into the learning management system (LMS) as part of OER.</p>

Open Educational Resources and Practices in China: A Systematic Literature Review

“…They also reported that several factors should be considered when using social media within MOOCs, such as the required number of posts and the balance between leisure and learning time. Sheu and Shih [41] highlighted the successful implementation of the open courseware project at National Taiwan University (NTU). Specifically, 26 new courses are added each year, and over 100 faculty members have actively participated in this project.…”

Developing Information Technology in OpenCourseWare: From Movements to Opportunities in Asia

“…There are serious problems that occur in developing countries in Asia such as Indonesia; one of which is that there are still digital gaps, especially for teachers, this is, of course, a separate challenge that must be overcome through various ways by involving all relevant stakeholders. However, a study by Sheu and Shih (2017) statistically shows the successful use of OCW at National Taiwan University, specifically for the lecture materials which are overall designed for Chinese users who live in urban areas, where information and communication technology is more developed. The research concludes that accessibility needs to be continuously developed.…”

“…For example, in Taiwan there is Opensource OCW Prototype System (OOPS), formed by an organization consisting of volunteers (Lee et al, 2007), headquartered in Taiwan. It was originally designed to translate open source materials from the MIT OCW site into Chinese (Sheu & Shih, 2017). The success of the CW movement in China is largely due to initiatives from the Chinese government who provide special incentives for developers of lecture materials to be distributed openly.…”

“…The term OCW (Wiley et al, 2014) was first adopted by UNESCO in 2002 in the "Forum on the Impact of Open Coursework for Higher Education in Developing Countries" (Clements, Pawlowski, & Manouselis, 2015) (Rodríguez et al, 2017). OCW is a collection of materials published online through a website; for example, lecture notes, reading lists, recitals, syllabi, teaching materials and exam questions, illustrations and simulations, and streaming videos of preparatory classes, published since 2002 through IT in the form of websites or portals (Sheu & Shih, 2017) with non-commercial purposes (Karunanayaka & Naidu, 2018). OCW is an innovative breakthrough for improving the quality of learning, teaching materials, and teaching in higher education, as well as providing alternative choices of materials for students to independently study necessary subjects outside the regular classes.…”

“…OCW is growing rapidly in the world due to the establishment of the Open Education Consortium (OEC) supported by The Hewlett Foundation (Wiley et al, 2014;Rodríguez et al, 2017;Sheu & Shih, 2017). OEC is a network of members of non-profit education institutions and organizations.…”