Understanding Lecturers' OER Adoption
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This document summarizes research into factors that influence lecturers' adoption of open educational resources (OER) at three South African universities: the University of Cape Town (UCT), the University of Fort Hare (UFH), and the University of South Africa (UNISA). The researchers developed an OER adoption pyramid identifying six key factors - access, permission, awareness, capacity, availability, and volition. Interviews with lecturers showed their level of OER readiness varied between the institutions depending on how structural, cultural, and personal factors interact within each university's institutional culture. UCT exhibited the highest OER readiness while UFH exhibited the lowest.
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Understanding Lecturers' OER Adoption
- 1. Understanding lecturers’ adoption of OER: a multi-factorial approach Glenda Cox & Henry Trotter OE Global Conference 2017 Cape Town : 8 March 2017www.slideshare.net/ROER4D
- 3. Our sub-project research questions • Why do South African lecturers adopt – or do not adopt – OER? [adopt = use and/or create] • Which factors shape lecturers’ OER adoption decisions? • How does an institution’s culture shape lecturers’ adoption of OER?
- 5. University Profiles UCT UFH UNISA Student access Residential Residential Distance Student numbers 26 000 11 000 400 000+ Location Urban Rural Dispersed Approach Traditional Traditional Comprehensive Institutional culture Collegial Bureaucratic Managerial Copyright owner of teaching materials Lecturers Institution Institution
- 7. Interviews (N=18) • Introduction to OER and Creative commons workshops • 6 interviewees per university • Structured, One-on-one • 30 minutes–1 hour interviews • 50-56 questions • Covering multiple elements of teaching and OER activity
- 9. Volition to adopt OER Availability of relevant OER of requisite quality (for use or sharing) Capacity technical skills for using, creating, finding, uploading OER – personally or w/ support Awareness of OER, the concept, and how it differs from other educational resources Permission to use/create OER, according to institutional IP policy Access to infrastructure: computers, internet connectivity, electricity The OER Adoption PyramidEXTERNALLYDETERMINEDINTERNALLYDETERMINED Personal Individual values Institutional Financial, technical or policy support Social Departmental & disciplinary norms INDIVIDUALS may be agents of OER adoption INSTITUTIONS may be agents of OER adoption
- 11. VOLITION The 6th factor refers to an agent’s motivation to adopt OER. If the agent (lecturer or institution) enjoys the access, permission, awareness, capacity and availability necessary to adopt OER, then volition becomes the key factor in whether they will do so. This outcome is shaped by the agent’s pedagogical values, social context and institutional culture. VOLITION Do you have any desire to use OER? VOLITION Do you have any desire to create and share your teaching materials as OER? AVAILABILITY The 5th factor refers to the availability of OER for an agent to use or contribute. For users, this is determined by an OER’s relevance (content, scope, tone, level, language, format), utility for a specific anticipated use, and quality as judged by the user. For creators, it is determined by whether they feel their educational materials are relevant and of the requisite quality (based on one’s pedagogical self-confidence). AVAILABILITY Have you found OER online – of acceptable relevance, utility and quality – that you can use? AVAILABILITY Do you hold copyright over teaching materials – of necessary relevance and quality – that you could license and share as OER? CAPACITY The 4th factor refers to the technical and semantic skills necessary for adopting OER. This capacity can be held by the educator or found through institutional support. It implies an educator or institution enjoys the technical fluency to search for, identify, use, and/or create (license and upload) OER, or has access to people with those skills who do. CAPACITY Do you know how and where to search for and identify OER? Do you know how the different CC licenses impact the ways in which you can use an OER? CAPACITY Do you know how to license your teaching materials so that they can be shared as OER? Do you know where (on which platforms) you can upload your materials as OER? AWARENESS The 3rd factor refers to the fact that a potential OER adopter must have been exposed to the concept of OER and grasped how it differs from other types of (usually copyrighted) educational materials. Educators may inadvertently use OER, of course, but this does not comprise OER adoption per se, which requires a level of OER awareness. AWARENESS Do you have any knowledge of or experience with OER? Do you understand how Creative Commons (CC) licenses differentiate OER from traditionally copyrighted materials? AWARENESS Do you have any knowledge of or experience with OER? Do you understand how Creative Commons (CC) licenses differentiate OER from traditionally copyrighted materials? PERMISSION The 2nd factor refers to an agent’s legal right to use or create OER. For users, the OER license determines permission parameters. For creators, institutional IP policies usually determine whether educators or institutions hold copyright over teaching materials produced at the institution that can be shared as OER. Only copyright holders can be creators. PERMISSION Do you have permission (from your curriculum committee, etc.) to use OER for teaching? Does the desired OER allow you use it in your specific context (e.g. no CC-ND licenses on items that will be sold as course material)? PERMISSION Do you possess copyright over teaching materials that have been developed at your institution? ACCESS The 1st factor refers to the need for agents to have access to the appropriate physical hardware and infrastructure – such as electricity, internet connectivity and computer devices –for engaging with digitally mediated OER. ACCESS Do you have (stable) electricity provision? Do you have (stable) internet connectivity? Do you have the necessary computer hardware for OER adoption? ACCESS Do you have (stable) electricity provision? Do you have (stable) internet connectivity? Do you have the necessary computer hardware for OER adoption? Questions for potential OER users Questions for potential OER creators The six essential OER adoption factors
- 13. OER Readiness: academics as users UCT UFH UNISA Volition Availability Capacity Awareness Permission Access Level of OER readiness Very low Low Medium High Very high
- 14. OER Readiness: academics as creators UCT UFH UNISA Volition Availability Capacity Awareness Permission Access Level of OER readiness Very low Low Medium High Very high
- 15. OER Readiness: institutions as creators UCT UFH UNISA Volition Availability Capacity Awareness Permission Access Level of OER readiness Very low Low Medium High Very high
- 16. • UCT is OER ready if the individual academic is viewed as the agent of activity : personal volition is the key • UNISA is OER ready if the institution is viewed as the agent of activity : institutional volition is the key • UFH is not OER ready for either OER use or creation because: both the institution and academics lack awareness; academics lack permission to create So which institution is OER ready?
- 18. Institutional Culture type Structure institutional policies Culture social/ disciplinary norms Agency personal motivation Collegial (UCT) low medium high Bureaucratic (UFH) medium high low Managerial (UNISA) high medium low The relative importance of Structure, Culture and Agency on motivating OER activities according to Institutional Culture context
- 19. Volition to adopt OER Availability of relevant OER of requisite quality (for use or sharing) Capacity technical skills for using, creating, finding, uploading OER – personally or w/ support Awareness of OER, the concept, and how it differs from other educational resources Permission to use/create OER, according to institutional IP policy Access to infrastructure: computers, internet connectivity, electricity The OER Adoption Pyramid and Institutional cultureEXTERNALLYDETERMINEDINTERNALLYDETERMINED Personal Individual values Institutional Financial, technical or policy support Social Departmental & disciplinary norms INDIVIDUALS may be agents of OER adoption INSTITUTIONS may be agents of OER adoption Collegial culture Managerial or bureaucratic culture
- 20. Related materials Journal Articles Cox, G. & Trotter, H. (2016). Institutional Culture and OER Policy: How Structure, Culture, and Agency Mediate OER Policy Potential in South African Universities. IRRODL, 17(5). Retrieved from http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2523 Article in Open Praxis based on this presentation (TBD) Book Chapter Cox, G. & Trotter, H. (in press). Factors Shaping Lecturers’ Adoption of OER at Three South African Universities. In C.A. Hodgkinson-Williams & P.B. Arinto (Eds) Adoption and Impact of OER in the Global South. Research Data Cox, G. & Trotter, H. (2015). Research into the Social and Cultural Acceptability of Open Educational Resources in South Africa. (ROER4D Sub-project 4) [dataset]. Version 1.1. Cape Town: ROER4D [producer], 2015. Cape Town: DataFirst [distributor]. Available at: https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/555/related_materials. Poster Presentation Trotter, H. & Cox, G. (2016). The OER Adoption Pyramid. Presentation at Open Education Global 2016. 12-14 April 2016: Krakow, Poland. Retrieved from http://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/18936 Blog Posts Trotter, H. (1 June 2016). How Intellectual Property (IP) Policies affect OER Creation at South African Universities. Retrieved from http://roer4d.org/2298 Trotter, H. (1 June 2016). The OER Adoption Pyramid. Retrieved from http://roer4d.org/2290
- 21. Glenda Cox – glenda.cox@uct.ac.za Henry Trotter – henry.trotter@uct.ac.za Thank you “Understanding lecturers’ adoption of OER: a multi-factorial approach” by Glenda Cox and Henry Trotter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to this short presentation on considering the readiness of these three SA universities for OER adoption. Henry and I both work in the Centre for Innovation and Teaching and Learning (CILT) at UCT. I will start with a short introduction and Henry will talk about the indicators of readiness and a proposed model of OER adoption.
- The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project aims to provide evidence-based research from a number of countries in South America, Sub-Saharan Africa and South / South East Asia. The research here is from one of 18 sub-projects from 26 countries that aims to redress the current imbalance where so much research on OER is from the Global North. The primary objective of the programme is to improve educational policy, practice, and research in developing countries by better understanding the use and impact of OER. I conduct research in one of the programme’s sub-projects, focusing – with my colleague Henry Trotter - on OER in South Africa. For more information, see: http://www.roer4d.org
- We travelled to the other universities and conducted workshops on OER and Creative Commons. These universities have quite different characteristics, as the table shows.
- After conducting the workshops, we interviewed 6 staff members at each university on their teaching and OER in/activities.
- As we were conducting our research, it became clear that a number of factors shaped OER adoption decisions at these universities. But 6 of them stood out as having a “determinative” effect on OER activity and its potential. These are factors which, if you ask, “can OER activity proceed here without them?”, the answer would be “no”. So we developed what we call The OER Adoption Pyramid.
- When we used The OER Adoption Pyramid to analyse and compare the three universities, we were able to generate what we call “OER Readiness Tables” to visualise the levels of readiness that each institution has for the different pyramid factors. We do this according to a simple colour scheme based on 5 levels: very low, low, medium, high and very high. But because there are two components to OER adoption – use and creation – as well as two potential agents of OER adoption – academics and institutions – we end up with multiple tables. In this first one, we’re assessing OER readiness if the academic is considered the user.
- In this second one, this shows OER readiness when the academic is taken as OER creators. Here the key feature is that UFH and UNISA possess copyright over academics’ teaching materials, so academics are not able to create and share OER from their teaching materials. They do not have permission.
- This third OER readiness table looks at institutions as creators, which shows challenges for a university like UCT (which has given copyright over teaching materials to the academics), challenges for UFH (which lacks awareness and volition) and real opportunities for UNISA which has developed an OER Strategy to potentially (in the future) share its IP assets as OER materials. (There is no need for a table showing institutions as users, because institutions do not typically “use” educational resources; rather academics do that.)
- Link between culture and Pyramid
- This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.