Chinese Faculty Members’ Open Educational Resources (OER) Usage Status and the Barriers to OER Development and Usage

Abstract

Abstract-The purpose of this study was to investigate faculty members' usage of Open Educational Resources (OER) as well as the barriers to OER development and usage. 360 faculty members from Zhejiang University (ZJU) in China were randomly selected to complete a survey. The study found that: (1) most of surveyed faculty members rarely utilized OER, while they had some awareness of sharing educational resources; (2) the majority noticed online educational materials published for learning or reference, while they ignored open source software or licensing tools for sharing and reusing resources; (3) lack of time and skills were significant obstacles for faculty members to develop OER, while lack of incentives was a potential obstacle; (4) content, experience, and school factors affected faculty members' OER usage; (5) online teaching experiences impacted incentive to develop OER as well as how to develop OER. It also played a key role in faculty members' perceptions about the experience and habit factors as possible barriers to OER usage. Results of the study implicate that more serious efforts are needed to improve the awareness and development of OER in China.

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

“…This framework covers 35 quality criteria across five quality domains, namely teaching resources development and management, teaching process management, learning support services, teaching management, and teaching and learning environment [23]. Furthermore, Guo, Zhang, Bonk, and Li [24] reported that several Chinese universities, such as Tsinghua and Shanghai Jiaotong Universities, have taken the initiative to build their own local Massive Open Educational Resources Courses (MOOCs) platforms such as "Xuetang online" and "CNMOOC". McGreal [25] highlighted that despite the fact that in many cases the content of MOOCs is not released with an open license, these courses can be considered the offspring of the OER movement.…”

“…Guo, Zhang, Bonk, and Li [24] and Zhang and Li [44] investigated the perception of faculty members towards OER at Zhejiang University (ZJU) in China. They found that the majority of faculty had a positive perception about OER and were willing to publish their OER online.…”

The Utilization of Open Educational Resources in the Collaborative Learning Environment to Enhance the Critical Thinking Skill

“…Various researchers are conducted to improve the learning effectiveness by utilizing OER both from the teacher and students sides in multiple aspects such as belief, motivation, learning result, and thinking skills. The researchers result sustainably contributes to the policy and strategy for better OER management (Guo et al, 2015;Obradović et al, 2016;Piedra et al, 2015).…”

“…Through this technology, students can access vast unlimited information. This technique becomes an opportunity for teachers to improve the learning process (Guo et al, 2015;Kaendler et al, 2015;Newhouse, 2015). Now, there are numerous learning sources to obtain to support the learning process in achieving specific competencies Krajcso, 2016;Piedra et al, 2015).…”

“…Education is not only mastering knowledge but also including the expertise to integrate the experience to be a new and more meaningful thing (Algers & Silva-Fletcher, 2015;Guo et al, 2015;Obradović et al, 2016). The teacher can assemble problem-solving activities to enhance critical thinking (Howard et al, 2015;McPeck, 2016).…”