2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition
Assessment of the Utilization of Open Educational Resources during and after the Pandemic
Presented at COED: Online and Remote Learning
The COVID pandemic situation posed several unprecedented challenges to the teaching fraternity. Apart from the challenges, it also provided avenues to explore the use of open educational resources. The digital learning materials acted as supplementary learning materials and catered for the need of the students. As a faculty member, one of the duties is to streamline the collection of learning resources from authentic sources and promote an ethical way of adopting the same. Through the internet, learning materials are available at plenty and sold for prices. The cost, students tend to avail the pirated or obtain from the sites in an unprofessional manner. It is highly imperative for teachers to promote open educational resources and infuse good learning practices. To promote OER, the faculty members need to be aware of the same. Hence sensitization workshop was conducted through online lectures (pre-recorded) and delivered to more than 7000 learners. To measure the learning outcome, a change project is provided to study their effective utilization of OER.
In this research paper, the observation was made from the questionnaire survey administered to 1633 faculty members about their awareness and adoption pattern of open educational resources. The study was carried out in two phases during the month of December in the years 2020 and 2021. Around 66.2% of male faculty members and 33.8% of female faculty members effectively answered the questions. Approximately 70.5% of the faculty members were aware of OER before the pandemic but never utilized it effectively, 19.5% of faculty members used it before the pandemic at a minimum level, and 10.5% never utilized the OER. It was decided to understand how often they used the OER platforms for teaching and learning before and after the pandemic. How it evolved over the period. It is also checked to understand their needs to translate the available resources into the native language. The study has observed the level of faculty members (Professor 9.5%, Associate Professor 15.2%, Assistant Professor 60.3%, others 15%) along with their branch of specialization. The questionnaire also enquired about the type of content they fetched in the OER and their contribution to the OER.
The study outlined the importance of OER during and after the PANDEMIC and how the scope of adoption increased after the pandemic. It facilitated the adoption of the materials and also strengthened the OER repositories. The peer review and the validation of the material's authenticity are the need of the hour. The transformation in the ecosystem with sharing resources is quantified based on the study.
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Dr. Janardhanan Gangathulasi
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4443-6677
National Institute of Technical Teachers Training and Research, Chennai, India
[biography]
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