Hi there,
I feel elated to be sharing on OERs with you for this week’s thread. This is my first time exploring the world of OERs and so far, I must confess that it has been an awesome learning journey! Interestingly, the readings evoked a comical occurrence. To be precise, I would always check the course syllabus before the course’s official start date to see what textbooks were required. I always felt relieved when I saw this:
Yes, that’s right! No required textbooks! As has been revealed in studies this week, textbooks can be quite costly for some students. In fact, several students expressed concern about the cost of textbooks required for courses (Senack, 2014, as cited in Fischer et al., 2020) while others pinpointed the detrimental impacts that textbook affordability have on their overall success (Senack, 2014, as cited in Fischer et al., 2020). It was also very interesting to read about the various ways in which students would allocate their textbooks’ funds. Like many of them pointed out, I too would reallocate those funds towards my education or savings. Hence, the use of OERs in courses serves many benefits to students. However, there are barriers of implementing and relying on OERs. Tang (2020) thoroughly investigated and discussed these hindrances in the k-12 setting. However, I think that they are applicable to other educational settings and contexts as well. Here’s a snapshot of the barriers that Tang’s (2020) study revealed:
As illustrated above, a major hindrance of relying on OERs concerns primarily with a lack of quality assurance. One of the arguments put forward in Tang’s (2020) study is that “Since OER are free, its creators have little to no incentive to ensure the content they share remains relevant, accurate, and accessible” (p. 220). It is thence imperative to evaluate and determine the quality of free resources prior to their use. However, with time constraints experienced by several teachers globally, this heightens the issue of quality assurance. Particularly, a lack of time to scrutinize open materials can result in the use of recourses not being a best fit for courses. As one teacher nicely puts it, “education is resource rich, but time poor” (Tang, 2020, p. 221). As such, not having sufficient time to properly sift through OERs can serve as a barrier to their use.
The topic I chose to explore was online learner support in higher education.
The first open resource I found was a study conducted by Richard Ouma. The study investigated the institutional challenges of supporting learners in online programs in Uganda. The findings revealed inadequate library and faculty support among other things to be challenges faced by the university. The research concluded that “building institutional capacity for distance education should be a driver to transform learner support challenges into opportunities for enhanced service delivery” (Ouma, 2019, p. 1). I can envision this article being incorporated into week 4’s readings. It provides learners the opportunity to explore the challenges experienced by institutions where the provision of core support services is concerned.
See citation and URL here:
Ouma, R. (2019). Transforming university learner support in open and distance education: Staff and students perceived challenges and prospects. Cogent Education, 6(1), 1658934.
View/Open link:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/2331186X.2019.1658934?needAccess=true
Another interesting open material that can be incorporated into week 4’s readings pertains to the use of communication technologies like WhatsApp and Facebook as learner support tools. Simui et al. (2018) explored the use of WhatsApp for learner support in distance education. Interestingly, the researchers highlighted that the University of Zambia “should be proactive to encourage the creation of self-generated social networks to mitigate vexing emergent issues students face on the distance learning mode” (Simui et al., 2018, p. 36). Ultimately, the researchers concluded that WhatsApp enhances the quality of interaction among learners who are separated geographically. It also demonstrates friendliness, closeness, and accessibility among learners. As such, the researchers encourage higher education institutions to use this communication tool to help mitigate some of the emerging issues like isolation that students face in distance education.
See citation and URL here:
Ndhlovu, D., Simui, F., Mwewa, G., Chota, A., Kakana, F., Mundende, K., ... & Namangala, B. (2018). “WhatsApp” as a Learner Support tool for distance education: Implications for Policy and Practice at University of Zambia.
View/Open link:
The final OER that can be incorporated into the course perhaps as a supplemental material concerns the relationship between learner support services and student engagement. The million-dollar question is: how do core support services in distance education affect student engagement? He et al. (2019) examined the impact of core support services on student engagement and outcomes. The study revealed that “there was a significant positive correlation between OLS services usage and student engagement” (He et al., 2019). The researchers therefore suggest that faculty ought to pay close attention to the number of support services used “which may be related to the quality of the service and the student experience” (He et al., 2019).
See citation and URL here:
He, H., Zheng, Q., Di, D., & Dong, B. (2019). How learner support services affect student engagement in online learning environments. IEEE Access, 7, 49961-49973.
View/Open link:
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=8688406
Finally, the process I used to identify the OERs are as follows:
Inserted topic into Google Scholar and looked for articles that covered the topic.
Determined its accessibility by looking to see if there were accessible or open pdf copies of the study.
Quality assurance is key when sifting through OERs. Here’s the criteria that I used to determine the quality and credibility of each OER:
Is the source in-depth or thorough?
Who are the authors and what are their credentials?
Is the source reputable? Is it peer-reviewed and published in a scholarly journal?
Is the source current or dated (more than 5-10 years)?
Does the resource have a CC (Creative Commons) license?
I used this video https://youtu.be/kzWS0t5F-wE along with UMGCs website https://libguides.umgc.edu/credibility to help me make this decision.
Overall, I had fun learning about OERs and it is something that I intend to utilize throughout my career.
As always, I look forward to your feedback!
Krista
MDE student
University of Maryland Global Campus
University of Maryland Global Campus | UMGC
References
Fischer, L., Belikov, O., Ikahihifo, T. K., Hilton, J., III, Wiley, D., & Martin, M. T. (2020). Academic librarians' examination of university students’ and faculty’s perceptions of open educational resources. Open Praxis, 12(3), 399–415. Click here to access the article
Tang, H. (2020). A qualitative inquiry of K-12 teachers’ experience with open educational practices: Perceived benefits and barriers of implementing open educational resources. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 21(3), 211–229. Click here to access the article