Using Open Educational Resources at Viterbo University: Faculty and Student Feedback

Abstract

This study evaluated a coordinated and collaborative pilot implementation of open educational resources (OER) across multiple disciplines including nursing, accounting, environmental science, religious studies, and finance. Participating faculty were qualitatively surveyed regarding their experience creating and implementing OER in a course. Students were surveyed on their perceptions of OER quality, cost savings, and ease of use. Faculty had an overall positive experience with OER, believing there was a significant benefit to students in cost savings while maintaining learning quality. Faculty felt the OER implementation process took a significant investment of time and recommended that faculty should be compensated for creating and implementing OER materials in future courses. Students overall showed positive responses to using OER in their course; the majority of students agreed with the OER cost savings, quality of OER resources, ease of using OER, and they trusted the use of OER materials. Older students (over 30 years) were more likely to state they would print out OER materials rather than read them online (as compared with students 30 and under). Senior-level students agreed significantly more than did freshman-level students that OER presented a cost savings. Faculty recommendations from this study included focusing on courses with very high textbook costs and courses that would impact the greatest number of students. Additionally, faculty recommended a follow-up revision process to keep OER materials current after implementation.

Open education resources’ benefits and challenges in the academic world: a systematic review

“…Various challenges have been reported in this study, such as copyright issues or legal barriers, low quality of OERs, lack of awareness, lack of time among creators and users, lack of skills, lack of technical infrastructure and inadequate organizational support. However, the major challenge identified in most of the studies was lack of time to find relevant resources (Hassall and Lewis, 2017; Henderson and Ostashewski, 2018; Mikroyannidis and Papastilianou, 2021; Oelfke et al , 2021; Pande, 2018; Shams et al , 2020; Tang, 2020; Tlili et al , 2020). Further, sometimes students go for easy and quick choices.…”

“…Among all selected 21 studies, 17 studies reported that OERs are free of cost and time-saving that expand access to learning, and allow the students anywhere in the world to access OERs at any time and access the material repeatedly. Therefore, one of the most compelling reasons for using OERs is lowering or eliminating the costs of course materials (Bansal et al , 2013; Belikov and Bodily, 2016; Kinskey et al , 2018; KreljaKurelovic, 2016; Kumar et al , 2021; Moore and Reinsfelder, 2020; Oelfke et al , 2021; Pounds and Bostock, 2019; Tang, 2020; Thomas, 2017; Wright et al , 2019).…”

“…Therefore, creating and/or locating existing OER can be extremely time-consuming. Most of the studies ( n = 14) identified lack of time as a challenge to find suitable resources (Ngimwa and Wilson, 2012; Oelfke et al , 2021; Pande, 2018; Shams et al , 2020; Tang, 2020; Tlili et al , 2020). Most of the users spent a lot of time on the internet to find suitable and relevant OERs (Belikov and Bodily, 2016; Hassall and Lewis, 2017; Henderson and Ostashewski, 2018; Hu et al , 2015; Kumar et al , 2021; Mikroyannidis and Papastilianou, 2021; Moore and Reinsfelder, 2020; Wright et al , 2019).…”