Promoting the full potential of Open Educational Resources (OER) in the Lebanese educational community

Abstract

The worldwide use of open educational resources (OER) has highly increased during the recent years. However, there is no clear idea about how these resources are utilized by teachers in Lebanon. Hence, this study aims at examining the extent to which the concept of OER is well known among the teachers. It also investigates the practices of OER users and explores the barriers to powerful use and sharing of OER among teachers. Nevertheless, this is quantitative research designed for analyzing the data collected from 308 teachers through an online questionnaire. The results showed that 60% of the respondents have heard about OER. Moreover, they revealed that OER users showed misunderstanding of the concept of OER due to their lack of knowledge about the open licenses. Hence, a national policy for e-learning is needed to leverage open education and ignite the power of OER by encouraging teachers to be producers of knowledge.