Exploring Faculty Perceptions of OER and Impediments to their Use: A Multi-Institutional Study

Abstract

<p>Understanding faculty perceptions about OER is a vital step for those hoping to support the growth of OER initiatives at higher education institutions. Faculty members’ perceptions of OER often influence their interest in adopting open educational practices and their willingness to seek out support from campus staff. To explore how faculty members across their four institutions feel about open education, the authors developed a survey to discover faculty members’ (1) perspectives on, (2) barriers to, and (3) beliefs about OER use. The survey corroborated past research findings that faculty often have difficulty finding time to locate and evaluate OER, and that there is a need among the academic community to better compensate educators for their work developing open content. More notably, the authors discovered that the faculty who are aware of library support services and other institutional OER initiatives are more engaged in open educational practices and willing to explore OER, regardless of their prior experience with open education.</p>