Chief academic officers (CAOs) at U.S. colleges and
universities agree that open educational resources (OERs) offer the potential
to reduce the cost of course development, especially for online courses, but
concede it has been left to individual faculty members to decide whether to adopt
OERs for their classes.
That’s among the findings in a new report, Growing theCurriculum: Open Education Resources in U.S. Higher Education, produced by the Babson
Survey Research Group, Hewlett Foundation, and Pearson. The report is based on
a series of surveys in 2009-11 with higher education faculty and academic
technology administrators.
About half of the CAOs admitted none of the courses at
their institutions used any OERs, at least to their knowledge. These CAOs were,
overall, less aware of the range of open sources available to instructors; for
instance, some defined “open source” as just the materials accessible in their
school’s learning management system. Many expressed concerns about the amount
of time and effort faculty had to expend in finding appropriate open resources.
Faculty respondents, on the other hand, view OERs in a much
more optimistic light. Approximately 83% reported using some sort of openly
available digital content for at least one of their class lectures, though most
said this wasn’t a regular practice.
But professors do have their own concerns about OERs,
including how faculty are compensated or acknowledged for their contributions
to open-source content. Like CAOs, they are also wary of the amount of time it
takes to find and vet content for courses.
Although faculty have been criticized in the past for
choosing reading materials without regard for their students’ budgets or needs,
in the Babson surveys faculty said their main criteria for selecting an online
resource were ease of use and minimal or no cost.
