OER Awareness and Use: The Affinity Between Higher Education and K-12

Abstract

Educators within Higher Education (HE) and K-12 share in the need for high quality educational resources to assist in the pursuit of teaching and learning. Although there are numerous differences between the two levels of education, there are commonalties in the perceptions of the purpose, practical uses, and challenges that abide in the use of Open Educational Resources (OER). Observations made while producing podcasts and videos for OER awareness, use, and championing, form an exposition of the merits of OER for HE and K-12. Benefits include cost-savings in acquiring resources for teaching and learning as well as usergenerated content, instructor creativity, and contextualized and responsively timely learning opportunities.Additionally, the teaching culture of K-12 has historically supported the sharing of learning activities and learning resources. At all levels of education, OER awareness requires a deeper understanding of the changes to teaching and learning borne by open educational practices.

Integration of Open Educational Resources in Higher and General Education Institutions: from the Perspectives of Specialized and Concerned Bodies in E-Learning

“…In extrapolating the results of the opinions of specialists and those who are interested in open educational resources in general and higher education institutions -that are detailed in Table (2) and (3), it is noted that these results are partly consistent with the results of Al-Anzi study (2016), which indicated the lack of integration between higher and general education institutions, so the study called for achieving integration between general and higher education institutions through several strategies. Also, the current study considers that the open educational resources represent the most prominent one, and these results are also consistent with the study of (Blomgren, 2018), which indicates that despite the many differences between educational levels in higher and general education institutions, there is a partnership between those institutions in educational, practical and training uses as well as challenges of those educational institutions and their employees in general. Moreover, the current study is also consistent with a study of (Yuan, et al, 2008), which confirms that educational institutions and their employees are in urgent need to share common interests and innovations for providing open access to high-quality educational resources, and thus achieve economic efficiency and raise the level of education and learning in all higher and general education institutions.…”

Understanding K‐12 teachers’ intention to adopt open educational resources: A mixed methods inquiry

“…Based on the TAM, we made the following hypotheses (see Figure S1): Furthermore, technology acceptance in K-12 settings is complicated as additional factors also influence teachers' decisions, such as whether available OER are age-appropriate and subjectappropriate for students and whether OER align with course standards (Blomgren, 2018). A comprehensive understanding, beyond TAM determinants, of K-12 teachers' perception of adopting OER is thus also needed.…”

“…Understanding factors determining K-12 teachers' adoption of OER is thus critical. Existing evidence attributes teachers' adoption of OER mostly to cost considerations, in that OER is seen as a cost-effective alternative to textbooks without harming student learning (Blomgren, 2018). However, such an understanding limits the potential of OER in education since it overlooks the pedagogical merits of openness (Kimmons, 2016).…”

A Qualitative Inquiry of K–12 Teachers’ Experience with Open Educational Practices: Perceived Benefits and Barriers of Implementing Open Educational Resources

“…OER allow teachers to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute a rich collection of open licensed resources (Hilton, 2016;Read, Tang, Dhamija, & Bodily, 2020). Compared with traditional textbooks, open licensed textbooks are more likely to fulfill teachers' needs to provide differentiated instruction (Blomgren, 2018). In addition, research has indicated that classes that implement OER show no harm to course outcome and student motivation when they are compared to classes that use traditional textbooks (Lin & Tang, 2017;Tang & Bao, 2020).…”