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Masters Dissertation by Libor Hurt De Montfort University This research dissertation explores student perceptions of open educational resources (OERs) in a life science faculty. Mixed methodology was employed including questionnaires and interviews. Students responding (n=252) tended not to have heard of the term OER although were in fact readily using OER and digital resources in their studies. There was a culture of students sharing materials with their peers although some confusion over what constituted plagiarism. Some students questioned whether medical and sensitive content should be made openly available on the web, and some were reticent to be paying fees and then sharing OER beyond the university, “we paid for it so we should keep it”. [Includes 76 references].
h t t p : / / w w w . b i o l o g y c o u r s e s . c o . u k B i o l o g y C o u r s e s a n d O p e n E d u c a t i o n a l R e s o u r c e s
Student Perceptions of Open Educational Resources
Artwork by Jacob Escott
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Masters by Research Dissertation
By
Libor Hurt 2013
Citation:
Hurt, L. (2013). De Montfort University Student Perceptions and Understanding of Open
Education Resources.
Available as PDF from:
BIOLOGY COURSES
JORUM
This research project was funded by the Jisc/HEA Open Educational Resource Programme (2009
– 2012). The project was supervised by Professor Simon Dyson and Dr Vivien Rolfe at De
Montfort University, Leicester, UK.
Shared with the permission of the author (CC BY ND NC)
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January 2013
De Montfort University Student Perceptions and Understanding
of Open Education Resources
Thesis
Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of
Science by Research at De Montfort University
By Libor Hurt
1st Supervisor: Dr Vivien Rolfe 2nd Supervisor: Dr Simon Dyson
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Dr Vivien Rolfe without whom this work would not have been possible, for her
continuous support, advice and for becoming my knight in shining armour. For reading draft after draft,
for offering her gentle guidance without fail, for supporting me when my enthusiasm run low and for
believing in me every step of the way.
Furthermore, Dr Simon Dyson for his exceptional insight and guidance within the world of social science
and for also continuously reading and offering his thoughts and direction on copious amounts of drafts.
I would also like to thank Lauren Bland for spending many hours with me whilst I worked, for her logic,
support, proof reading and limitless supply of tea.
Finally, thank you to all the academics and friends involved within this research for their input and
support.
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ABSTRACT
Research looking at the learner experience of Open Education Resources (OERs) is sparse. There is a
particular lack of literature exploring student views and perceptions of OERs. This study employed a
mixed method approach in establishing whether students have heard of OERs, their understanding of
these, and their sharing culture in general via a questionnaire and semi-‐structured interviews. The
majority of students said that they have not heard of the term OERs although the majority stated an
awareness of OER specific projects. A culture of sharing was substantiated amongst the students,
although some stated fears of plagiarism as reasons for not sharing. There was also perception that
OERs were not always accessible and usable, and it was evident that more should be done to promote
the discovery and use of OERs. Sharing with members of the public is viewed less favourably than
sharing with other students, regardless of which university they are at. There is recognition of the fact
that sharing and an open culture prompts an overall increase in the holistic knowledge of subjects,
although there were some concerns from healthcare students as to whether some medical or
professional content should be made openly available. It is the recommendation of this study that more
research be carried out on the views that students hold of OERs in different subjects, departments and
universities, and that strategies continue to be explored to make OERs discoverable, accessible and
usable to all learners.
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Contents
1 Chapter One: Introduction ____________________________________________ 11 1.1 Defining OER _________________________________________________________________ 11
1.2 Initiation and development of the OER movement ___________________________________ 13
1.3 The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation _________________________________________ 13
1.4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) _______________________________________ 14
1.5 Creative Commons Organisation _________________________________________________ 14
1.6 OER activity in the UK __________________________________________________________ 15
1.7 Current challenges for the OER movement _________________________________________ 15
1.8 Sustainability of OERs and open practices __________________________________________ 19
1.9 Project rationale ______________________________________________________________ 22
1.10 Central research questions ____________________________________________________ 23
2 Chapter 2: Literature Review __________________________________________ 25 2.1 Defining Terms _______________________________________________________________ 25
2.1.1 Openness __________________________________________________________________ 25
2.1.2 Definitions of open education resources and practices ______________________________ 26
2.1.3 Value and quality of OER ______________________________________________________ 26
Staff and student attitudes toward OERs and open practices _____________________________ 28
2.2 _____________________________________________________________________________ 28
2.2.1 University of Nottingham BERLiN Project _________________________________________ 28
2.2.2 University of Exeter __________________________________________________________ 29
2.2.3 BL4ACE and RLO-‐CETL ________________________________________________________ 30
2.2.4 Staff perception studies at De Montfort University _________________________________ 30
2.2.5 Oxford University Podcasts Report on student perceptions __________________________ 31
2.2.6 OpenLearn _________________________________________________________________ 31
2.2.7 Other studies of student perceptions of open practices _____________________________ 32
2.2.8 Summary of studies __________________________________________________________ 33
2.3 The aim of this research ________________________________________________________ 33
2.4 Authors prediction ____________________________________________________________ 34
3 Chapter Three: Methods ______________________________________________ 35 3.1 Mixed Method Approach _______________________________________________________ 35
3.2 Questionnaire methodologies ___________________________________________________ 36
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3.3 Semi-‐structured interviews _____________________________________________________ 37
3.4 Rationale for choice of data collection, validity, reliability and generalizability _____________ 38
3.5 Student selection _____________________________________________________________ 39
3.6 Ethical issues _________________________________________________________________ 40
3.7 Data analysis and statistics ______________________________________________________ 41
3.8 Complications arising __________________________________________________________ 42
4 Chapter Four: Questionnaire Data Analysis ______________________________ 44 4.1 Student demographics _________________________________________________________ 44
4.2 Student understanding of the term open educational resources ________________________ 45
4.3 Student attitudes to sharing and open practices _____________________________________ 48
4.4 Understanding student sharing behaviours and practices _____________________________ 51
4.5 Gender differences in awareness and attitudes to OER _______________________________ 57
4.6 Programme differences in awareness and attitudes to OER ____________________________ 57
4.7 Undergraduate student year (level) differences in attitudes and awareness of OERs ________ 61
4.8 Differences in responses due to ethnicity __________________________________________ 63
4.9 Summary ____________________________________________________________________ 63
5 Chapter Five: Interview Data Analysis __________________________________ 65 5.1 Student awareness of OER ______________________________________________________ 65
5.2 Student perceptions of OER and open practices _____________________________________ 68
5.3 Student views of sharing OER with the general public ________________________________ 71
5.4 Student working cultures _______________________________________________________ 75
5.5 Student notion of resource quality and value _______________________________________ 77
5.6 Summary ____________________________________________________________________ 83
6 Chapter Six: Discussion ______________________________________________ 85 6.1 Rationale for research _________________________________________________________ 85
6.2 Student Awareness of OER ______________________________________________________ 86
6.3 Student culture of sharing ______________________________________________________ 87
6.4 Other student learning and studying behaviours ____________________________________ 88
6.5 Limitations, Improvement and Future Research _____________________________________ 92
7 Chapter Seven: Conclusion ___________________________________________ 95 7.1 Overview ____________________________________________________________________ 95
7.2 Conclusions __________________________________________________________________ 96
7.3 Implications for OER ___________________________________________________________ 97
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7.4 Final words __________________________________________________________________ 98
References ____________________________________________________________ 99
Appendix 1 – Questionnaire ____________________________________________ 104 Appendix 2 – Paired Interview Topic Guide ________________________________ 114
Appendix 3 - _________________________________________________________ 115 Participant information sheet for Open Education Resources Research __________ 115
Appendix 4 - _________________________________________________________ 118 Participant Consent Form – Semi Structured Paired Interview _________________ 118
Contents of Tables
Table 1: Table describing the challenges facing the OER movement 16
Table 2: Student Selection Demographic 37
Table 3: Number of students responding to the questionnaire 41
Table 4. Student suggested definitions of OERs, and numbers responding 43 that identified elements of the formal definition
Table 5. Table showing resources that were perceived to be Open Education 44 Resources or Repositories Table 6. Student opinion to sharing 45
Table 7. Reported student strategies for finding learning materials 48
Table 8. Which resources are used to supplement lectures? 49
Table 9. Which resources are used in academic research for coursework? 49
Table 10. Ways by which students claim to share resources with their peers 51
Table 11. OER and repository awareness by degree programme 55
Table 12: Student attitudes toward sharing by degree programme 56
Table 13. OER and repository awareness by year of study 58
Table 14. Sharing statement agreement year breakdown 59
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1 Chapter One: Introduction
This chapter will aim to provide an overview of the Open Education Resource (OER) definition as well as
provide a synopsis of the OER movement. A quick summary of the OER activity in the UK will be
portrayed followed by an outline of the challenges posed to this movement with particular focus on
sustainability. It will be highlighted that despite the extensive worldwide work, research focused on the
student population is lacking, and conducting research to address this was the primary motivation
behind this thesis.
1.1 Defining OER
In 1998 David Wiley first introduced the concept of open education by analogy of the open source
community derived from those with interest in computer coding (Wiley, 1998), where the idea of
“open” is structured around the concept of free dissemination of education through the means of the
internet for the benefit of society. “Open” exists in different formats depending on the context of the
situation. Socially the concept is motivated by the anticipated social benefits and ethical considerations
to freely use, contribute and share resources. In the technical context “open” is characterised by access
to source code or the standards process (Yuan, n.d). Yuan further states that “openness” should be
about the right and ability to modify resources, to repackage them and add an overall value for the
users. Hylen (2006) says that the two most important aspects of openness regard free availability of
resources over the internet and minimalistic restrictions in terms of use and reuse. This opens the
potential benefit to society as a whole, due to increased accessibility of knowledge to everyone (McGill
et al, 2008). In considering OER, the level of openness is related to four aspects. (1) Open Access. (2)
Open Licensing (3) Open Format and (4) Open Software. If something is truly “open” it should relate to
all four of those aspects (Schaffert and Geser, 2008). Unfortunately a large number of initiatives allow
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the lowest level of openness whereby there are no cost implications to using the resources, but there
are often other conditions associated with them (Tuomi, 2006).
The OER term was first adopted by UNESCO’s 2002 forum on the impact of Open Courseware for Higher
Education in Developing Countries (Johnstone, 2005). Later in 2005 the Centre for Educational Research
and Innovation (CERI) started a 20 month research study to analyse the scope and scale of initiatives
pertaining to OERs with regards to their purpose, content and funding. The output “Giving Knowledge
for Free: The Emergence of Open Education Resources” was published in 2007, and offers a
comprehensive overview of the rapidly changing phenomenon or OERs and the challenges that it poses
for higher education. It also further examined the reasons for sharing resources for free, and analyses
copyright issues, business models, sustainability as well as policy implications for organisations.
Today there is a fuller definition of OERs. They are digitised materials, which can be reused for teaching,
learning and research, that are made available through open licensing (Hylen, 2007). The William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation states that OERs are openly licensed and support open access to knowledge:
“OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-‐purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge.” (Atkins et al, 2007)
In their modern day definition UNESCO defines OERs as:
“Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution.” (UNSESCO, 2012)
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1.2 Initiation and development of the OER movement
Developments in the open source community and culture are what inspired are what instigated
movements around the world to develop and share OERs, and have led to attempts to instil an open
knowledge, open source, free sharing and peer collaboration culture within all of education including
higher education (Wiley 2006). With the launch of the World Wide Web in 1992 a plethora of online
information became widely available. The majority of the available materials neither promoted learning
nor did they incorporate the latest technological and pedagogical advances, and importantly, were not
openly licensed for use. The majority of 1990s funding for information technology primarily aimed to
provide access to computers, computer literacy and the internet (Atkins 2007).
1.3 The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
The open education movement was much supported by the Hewlett Foundation which began in 1967,
and has been offering grants since then to solve social and environmental problems at home and around
the world for a number of years (Hewlett Foundation, 2012). The foundation’s Open Educational
Resource Programme, which started in 2002 aimed to instigate and catalyse the sharing of high quality
academic content on a global level. They believed that corporations, through using the internet, could
widen the education opportunities for all. Atkins (2007) states that its initial focus was to fund
exemplars of high quality content and build a community that created, shared and disseminated the use
of OERs, because they believed that everyone should have the opportunity to benefit from a good
education.
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1.4 Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was one of the first education establishments to
release many of its courses for free onto the internet, openly accessible to anyone. The MIT Open
CourseWare (OCW) project uses the Creative Commons open license and was initially funded by the
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the MIT. In 2010 the OCW
website reached its 2000 MIT courses milestone, one of the richest collections of openly shared
educational resources anywhere in the world, a major milestone in the OER movement (MIT 2012).
1.5 Creative Commons Organisation
A significant catalyst of the global open education movement was the introduction of the Creative
Commons open license in 2002. The Creative Commons (CC) organisation was founded through the
support of the Centre for Public Domain, and was led by a group that included education experts,
technologists, legal scholars, investors, entrepreneurs and finally philanthropists. In 2002 the CC
released its first set of copyright licenses for use by the public. There are now hundreds of millions
licensed CC works. The licenses are not an alternative to copyright which is retained by the author or
originator of the work. They are a form of license to permit use of the work, in modified or unmodified
forms, depending on the terms of the license. The CC is flexible, for example, the licensee can choose to
allow only non-‐commercial uses. The CC protects the people who both share and reuse licenced work
so that they do not need to worry about copyright infringement, under the condition that users abide by
the terms of the license (Creative Commons 2012).
Creative Commons Licenses have played a major role in the development of “openness” allowing the
ease of publishing, distributing and reusing content, “it is not like a light switch that is either ‘on’ or ‘off’.
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Rather, it is like a dimmer switch, with varying degrees of openness” (Hilton et al 2010). In fact, the free
licenses were developed to encourage sharing, reuse and repurposing of creative works (Atkins et al,
2007).
1.6 OER activity in the UK
The Higher Education Academy (HEA) and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) are working
in partnership to support the HEFCE-‐funded Open Education Resources programme which began its
pilot initiative in April 2009 (The Higher Education Academy, 2011). The OER pilot phase ran between
April 2009 and April 2010 with the aim of making a wide range of existing high quality materials freely
available, discoverable and often reused and repurposed by both educators and learners worldwide. The
OER phase 2 ran between August 2010 and August 2011 where there was funding to (1) extend the
range of materials freely available, (2) document benefits offered by OER to those involved in the
learning process and (3) enhance the discoverability and use of OER materials. The final OER phase of
funding ran between October 2011 and October 2012. This enhanced the goals of the OER movement in
the UK by looking at embedding OER to support post-‐graduate certificate in education, to support
accredited university programmes, to drive institutional change and to address particular subject
themes that were deemed important. The UK OER programme has involved a large proportion of the UK
universities, and many colleges and schools. Educational policy and practices are shifting within
organisations, and the genuine benefits have moved beyond the content itself, to greater professional
benefits to staff and students, such as the widespread availability of good quality resources.
1.7 Current challenges for the OER movement
OERs face a number of challenges moving forward (summarised in Table 1). To evaluate the progress of
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the growing OER movement, in 2005 the Centre for Education Research and Innovation (CERI) began a
20 month research study to analyse the scope and scale of initiatives pertaining to OERs with regards to
their purpose, content and funding. The output was published in 2007 and was called “Giving
Knowledge for free: The Emergence of Open Education Resources”(CERI, 2007). . The review offered a
comprehensive overview of the rapidly changing phenomenon of OERs and the challenges that it poses
for higher education, such as needing to understand the reasons and models for sharing resources for
free, analysis of copyright issues, business models, and sustainability as well as policy implications.
Further challenges to the OER movement growing was stated by Moore (2006), who described that the
use of OER had grown significantly, but the movement faced a chasm between the initial adopters of
OERs who had fuelled them thus far, and the mainstream institutions whose acceptance of technology
would transform education.
The Hewlett Foundation 2011 White Paper on OERs explored further the challenges facing OER
mainstream adoption in education institutions and broke down the problem into four aspects. (1)
Limited supply of materials, (2) incompatible policies and lack of incentives for staff,(3) lack of standards
and (4) limited proof of effectiveness.
1) Limited supply – OERs exist at the edges of the education system but OERs do not yet include a
full set of high quality materials for everyday use by teachers and educators in general,
particularly in the most widely taught in the k-‐12 (US) and post-‐secondary subjects.
2) Incompatible policies and lack of incentives – A major hurdle identified in the US is that some
states require content producers to pay for review by education officials. Furthermore
sometimes educational materials are only used when they come bundled with items of
assessment that OER producers do not always offer. Within the higher education institutions,
the production of OERs is not considered as part of contracts or promotional procedures, so OER
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have largely relied on individuals and universities to make sacrifices to contribute to the OER
movement.
3) Lack of technical standards-‐ OERs can be hard to find and incorporate into the learning and
student data systems used by schools and educators.
4) Limited proof of effectiveness – Although there has been some progress in demonstrating the
gains in productivity of and educational effectiveness that OERs deliver, there is not enough
evidence to convince policy makers and educators to adopt OERs. OER producers have limited
marketing tools and therefore good research may be required to shift the public opinion into
the favour of OERs.
The Horizon Report (2010) portrays some of the common challenges of sharing, repurposing and reusing
works. This includes concerns about copyright, how OER fits with student to student collaboration, and
how OERs fit within institutional intellectual property policy and staff reward structures. As Yuan et al
(2012) state, with no institutional peer recognition or encouragement, there is little or no incentive for
members of university faculties to develop and refine OER content.
Other barriers to the OER movement were highlighted in a study by Masterman and Wild (2011) who
stated that many logistical factors that could deter potential users of OERs. These include poorly
indexed materials, inadequate search engines, and the requirement to register with a site or download
an application in order to retrieve or run a resource and unreliable hardware or software on the hosting
site. Thus in addition to more obvious copyright and institutional barriers, there were also technical
hurdles to overcome (Masterman and Wild, 2012).
This report also identified the volume of resources as a challenge, because a critical mass of OERs has to
be reached in order to make them viable across the board, although the severity of the problem varies
with differing disciplines. The small mass of resources is linked to low discoverability, which is another
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challenge of OERs, and is also affected by poor indexing and inadequate power of search engines. The
discovery of materials is another important consideration. Over the years of resource development, the
same materials have been recreated frequently. This repetition comes at the expense of time, money
and labour from the university faculty. Participants often do not share materials because they are not
aware of who requires them nor are they aware of the means by which such sharing can take place
(Seonghee & Boryung 2008).
Other areas to be explored include the willingness to share resources which is a key underlying
philosophy of the open education movement. People must be willing to publish resources for others to
share, and individuals – academics and students – must be willing to share the work of others.
Charlesworth et al (2007) stated that most of the sharing in the UK can be broken down into small scale
and large scale, where small scale is the predominant mode, and takes form via CDs, emails and funded
projects aimed at stimulating sharing. Whereas large scale sharing mechanisms are required to improve
the quality of the impact of OERs on teaching and curricula. In one study of a UK university, it was shown
that staff were more comfortable sharing locally with programme colleagues than on a wider basis
externally to the university (Rolfe 2009). Understanding these personal motivations is important for a
movement that requires the philosophy of openness and sharing to thrive.
Overall, Professor Cheryl Hodgkinson-‐Williams from the Centre for Educational Technology, University of
Cape Town summarises the challenges of OERs for higher education institutions (2010) via a condensed
table (Table 1) from articles discussed from OECD 2007 (Hylen 2006 Yuan et al 2008).
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Extracted from: Hodgkinson-‐Williams, C. (2010) Benefits and Challenges of OER for Higher Education Institutions. Available: http://www.col.org/SiteCollectionDocuments/OER_BenefitsChallenges_presentation.pdf Last Accessed: 15 August 2012
Table 1: Table describing the challenges facing the OER movement
1.8 Sustainability of OERs and open practices
There has been much discussion focused on how to sustain open education activity and initiatives which
is a genuine concern when funding of specific projects ceases. Sustainability can be defined as the
inherent ability of a project to continue its operations after funding ceases. Although the term “to
continue” has a large value when considering sustainability, it can be further enhanced by considering
the projects’ ability to continue to have impact and accomplish goals. Therefore sustainability can be
defined as an OER project’s on-‐going ability to meet its goals (Wiley, 2007).
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In his paper on sustainability, Wiley (2007) describes three different models for Open Education
Resource projects in higher education. These are the MIT model, the USU (Utah State University) model
and the Rice model. In summary, the aim of the MIT model is to publish all course materials within a
fixed period of time and to publish new versions whilst archiving older versions of courses. Similarly, the
goals of the USU model are to publish as many courses as possible within the USU course catalogue.
Finally, the Rice model aims to enable the collaborative development of educational modules and
courses by authors from around the world, an entirely different approach. Unlike MIT but similarly to
USU there are no set target of courses to be developed and unlike both MIT and USU, the materials
published are not entirely from courses taught at the hosting universities, where authors from around
the world contribute materials to the site. However, if users of OERs do not pay for production and
distribution, how could they be maintained, (Downes, 2007), especially since there are many projects
that have become inactive or discontinued correlating the timescales of typical funding that on average
do not exceed 3 years (Friesen, 2009)?
In 2005 the Open University in the UK spent an average approximate £1.9 million on content
development per course, and had over 200 undergraduate courses in their inventory. This meant that
the total investment was around £382 million, representing 40 percent of its budget. Over an average
eight year depreciation for courses, the on-‐going development cost approximate £48 million per year
(Beshears, 2005). It is therefore clear that the term sustainable is definitely not “cost free”. Walker
(2005) suggests that the production of OERs may entail a large-‐scale investment.
Sustainable is also defined as the long term viability for all concerned where it meets the provider’s
objectives for scale, quality, production cost, margins and return of investment (Downes, 2007). Thus in
the UK, an on-‐going objective of the OER programme has been pursuing the concept of sustainability
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after funding has become spent, and many projects around the UK have embedded OER in to curricula,
practices and university policies that has resulted in sustained and growth of activity.
There are other elements to consider when aiming for an open education system. When discussing ideas
at a Hewlett Open Education Grantees meeting, and considering what is the future of open education,
Wiley goes onto state that “Wikipedia has two employees and well over a million articles in multiple
languages. We need to learn this lesson if open education is really going to reach out and bless the lives
of people”(Wiley 2005). But Downes (2007) has philosophised further and has elaborated upon several
models that would enhance the OER movement and provide bases for permanent open educational
practices. Alongside other published models, several ideas by Downes (2007) are presented here:
1) Endowment Model-‐ Project obtains base funding. An administrator manages this base funding
and the projects spending funding is derived from interest earned on that fund.
2) Membership Model-‐ Interested organisations would be invited to contribute a certain sum this
could take the form of a subscription or as a single payment. This generates revenue.
3) Donations Model-‐ A project deemed worthy receives donations which are managed by a non-‐
profit foundation. It may then seek endowment if the funds are substantial enough or simply
apply them to operating expenses.
4) In an additional model called the Conversion Model-‐ Sterne and Herring (2005) describe this
model as “giving something away for free, and then converting the consumer of this to a paying
customer.”
5) Contributor-‐Pay Model-‐ Used by the Public Library of Science, this model consists of a
mechanism where the contributors pay the cost of maintaining the contribution and the
provider makes the contribution available for free (Doyle, 2005).
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6) Sponsorship Model-‐ this model is based on the form of access available in most homes, which is
radio and television. This can range from intrusive commercial messages to the subtle
sponsorship message.
7) Institutional Model-‐ The institution takes responsibility itself for an OER initiative. An example of
this is the MIT Open Courseware project; where funding is derived from the universities regular
program, as part of its organisational mission (MIT, 2005).
8) Government Model-‐ This is similar to the institutional model. The government presents direct
funding for OER projects via agencies, including the United Nations.
1.9 Project rationale
Since OER and open education practices are changing educational practices globally, and are increasingly
used in UK universities, it is surprising that existing research into the student perceptions and attitudes
towards OERs is sparse. A report by Bacsich et al (2011), funded by the Higher Education Academy
(HEA), on the Learner Use of Online Education Resources for Learning (LUOERL) highlights this fact. The
review highlights how the literature on learner use of OERs is very under-‐developed and there is a
deficiency in good quality studies and robust review articles in the area. The authors also state that the
JISC/HEA OER Programme has so far produced relatively little data on learner use, although UK activities
funded through this route are in their infancy. Particular areas of research highlighted by the LUOERL
report included: examining student use of Wikipedia; student use of multimedia video and animation
that require more technical knowledge; student use of OER and online materials created by other
students, and learner behaviours and activities associated with the use of online materials.
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1.10 Central research questions
In light of this report, and the sparse availability of student-‐focused studies, the aim of this thesis is to
establish the student perceptions and understanding of OERs,
A) Do students know about OERs and if so do they use them?
B) What is the student academic sharing culture?
C) What reasons underlie the academic sharing culture?
To achieve this, the dissertation addressed the following objectives:
• Identifying target groups of students at De Montfort University Faculty of Health and Life
Sciences who are both exposed and unexposed to the use of OERs; and
• Discovering their awareness, perceptions and understandings of OERs through a questionnaire
and paired interviews.
The dissertation is structured as follows;
In Chapter Two, we look at the available literature and it will be argued that the existing studies
have failed to consider the student perspective towards OERs.
In Chapter Three the choice for the design, methods of data collections and the selection of
subjects will be explained. Following the Ethics Committee approval, a questionnaire was
administered to several groups of Health and Life Science students followed by paired
interviews.
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In Chapter Four the data from the questionnaire will be presented and analysed. Student
understanding and perceptions of OERs will be examined and further comparisons will be
carried out based on gender, course and year of study.
Chapter Five will analyse the interview data from Biomedical Science and Midwifery students.
Major themes will be highlighted and discussed bringing particular attention towards sharing
and the culture surrounding it.
Chapter Six will provide a summary of this thesis and will aim to provide recommendations for
OERs that focus on the issues highlighted in chapters four and five. It also proposed further
research building on the insights of this small scale study.
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2 Chapter 2: Literature Review
This chapter will provide an overview of some of the definitions that pertain to this research, also of
research available that looks at student and staff involvement with OERs with emphasis on
understanding, perceptions and sharing in general. It will be highlighted that research focusing on the
student population is sparse, so research looking at learners’ needs to be carried out as learners form a
large OER user group, substantiating the grounds for the current study.
2.1 Defining Terms
2.1.1 Openness
Openness with regards to OERs can fall into many different categories, namely social, technical, legal
and financial. Hodgkinson-‐Williams and Gray summarise these different categories as follows:
Social openness is an attribute of overall openness in that there is willingness to make materials
available beyond the confines of academic circles, classrooms and the university.
Technical Openness identifies the ”open” material being interoperable, internationally and nationally
available, accessible, be easy to identify, indexed, findable and to certain limits convenient.
Legal openness regards the many different aspects of intellectual property rights. These range from the
locked down copyrighted materials, a range of flexible licenses afforded by Creative Commons or the
GNU Free Documentation License to public license. In summary, for materials to be truly legally open,
they would be accessible, changeable and perhaps republish-‐able without any legal repercussions.
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Financial Openness pertains to the user of the material and not the creator because OERs are not free to
produce. The concept of openness entails a minimum or no cost to the consumer of the material, where
if there is a cost then the resource is not shared but exchanged (for money). For a resource to be truly
financial open, there should be no cost implications for the user or consumer (Hodgkinson-‐Williams and
Gray, 2009).
2.1.2 Definitions of open education resources and practices
UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) were the first to adopt
the phrase open educational resource (OER) in a global OER forum in 2002. UNESCO defines OERs as:
“Open Educational Resources are teaching, learning or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaptation, and distribution.” (UNESCO, 2012)
Emerging from organisational and individual involvement in the production and sharing of OERs were a
culture of changing working practices. In a review of over 60 studies and OER initiatives, Professor John
O’Donoghue was first to describe the advent of “open” working practices, noting that OERs were raising
the quality of education and training in institutions, and innovative practices were impacting on both
individuals and their organisations (O’Donoghue, 2011).
2.1.3 Value and quality of OER
The terms value and quality are not mutually exclusive when considering Open Education Resources,
rather they are interlinked via overlapping definitions and boundaries that can be considered vague.
27
The concept of value can be subject to prolonged debate and there are many publications that discuss
this, overall it is difficult to clearly define value that encompasses and pertains to OERs. We can however
use Browns (1984) discussion to ascertain what value would mean to a student using OERs. It can be
said to be the resources effective accessibility and usability to a situation or a task at hand with
minimum effort required on part of the student.
It is difficult to define quality in the context of OER because discoverability, accessibility and availability
are no less important that the production values. It remains that the quality of a learning resource is
usually determined using the standardised academic factors, namely the accuracy, reputation of
author/institution, the standard of technical production, accessibility and finally fitness for purpose
(McGill, 2013).
It is important to note that the definition will be influenced by a persons’ position, therefore the
definition varies to students, academic staff, institutions and policy makers.
Whilst the definition of value to a student is discussed above, Ithakas report provides some insight into
the value viewed by the different parties.
Value to academic staff would encompass the resources wide scale usability and it being suitable as a
teaching aid. Institutions would perceive resources valuable should the demand be large scale enough
for the institutions libraries to commit resources for archiving, whether this is virtual or physical.
Furthermore, it would be considered valuable should it add value to a course at no or minimal extra
cost.
Policy makers are likely to view value, with regards to OERs, in terms of the large scale impact that the
resource would have and the implications that it would pose on a large scale and long term basis
(Guthrie et al 2008).
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2.2 Staff and student attitudes toward OERs and open practices
2.2.1 University of Nottingham BERLiN Project Some studies have looked at staff and student engagement with OERs. In 2009 the Nottingham
University BERLiN project (Building Exchanges for Research and Learning in Nottingham) team explored
the barriers preventing the adoption of OER through a series of academic and student focus groups, in
order to explore how the publication and re-‐use of open learning materials is perceived at Nottingham
by staff and students. The results showed that there were anxieties pertaining to the loss of control of
produced materials, the legal or moral restrictions, the time and effort required, the quality controls and
the extent to which the numerous forms of teaching can be represented in OERs (Beggan 2010).
In a further Nottingham study, Stapleton et al (2011) looked at 51 undergraduate students who had
used a repurposed hand-‐out originally created on the statistical package SPSS which initially resulted in
time savings for academic staff concerned. The research captured both qualitative and quantitative data
and a further telephone interview was also carried out with an academic member of staff from the
University Of Nottingham Faculty Of Engineering who is using the hand-‐outs as part of a module on
research methods in ergonomics. In their research, the authors asked “have you ever used other open
education resources that you found on the web in your studies?” (Stapleton et al, 2011). Only 35 percent
of the respondents answered yes and of these 67 percent found them browsing the web and 56 percent
through a search engine. In all, 33 percent of the students stated that lecturers told them about the
OER whilst 6 percent said that they were pointed to them by other students. This study failed to
examine what the students thought of OERs and why the 65 percent did not use them in their work,
although it was one of the initial studies that looked at student use of OER.
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2.2.2 University of Exeter Between the years of 2009 to 2010 a team at the University of Exeter encountered a range of academic
opinions on OERs and investigated the awareness of OERs. The following quotations reflect an
enlightened view that is held by some academics at the University of Exeter.
“Currently we tend to teach as if we are the gatekeeper of all knowledge. OER can be
enlightening and allow student interaction. … The notes should just be one resource in
conjunction with others.”(Browne, 2010)
Views of academics was positive, and some staff were happy to share resources to the advantage of
others:
“All I'm really interested in as a contributor is making my resources more freely available to other
educators to use as they see fit -‐ I think there is some value in my resources that I'm happy to see
others take advantage of if they wish.” (Browne, 2010)
Although the above statement elicits a positive perception towards OERs, there were some comments
that were forthright in their rejection of the concept of OERs:
“Making this material available as OER is the equivalent of giving away research that would
otherwise be patented (and hence could earn income) and would not be in the best interests of
either the staff or the University.” (Browne, 2010)
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2.2.3 BL4ACE and RLO-‐CETL
Other research has looked at open education practices and how resources have benefited students
directly. Project BL4ACE (Blended Learning 4 Academic Competence and Critical Enquiry) was in
collaboration with the RLO-‐CETL (Reusable Learning Object – Centre for Excellence in Teaching and
Learning), and aimed to develop and further the impact and reach of RLOs across the Thames Valley
University curriculum (Greaves, 2009). It successfully redesigned an academic skills module by
incorporating RLOs (bite-‐sized chunks of learning often in the form of multimedia instruction and
quizzes) to encourage independent learner activities (Greaves, 2010). This has led to the team
representing and communicating their learning design model for the Business subject area and
transferred it across subject domains to the subject areas of Health and Law. The student progression
statistics showed a significant progression and learning gain between the previous cohort and the 2010
cohort who had the revised scaffolded curriculum (Greaves, 2010). Although this and similar research
has demonstrated educational benefits to on-‐line resources, these aren’t OERs supported by open
licenses. What is distinctive about OERs is not the educational quality of the material per se, but the fact
that it might be reused or repurposed or at least accessible to student groups other than those for
whom it was originally designed. A similar study that looked at resources that were later to be licensed
as OERs demonstrated that science undergraduates using laboratory skill RLOs experienced increased
confidence and acquired knowledge of laboratory skills when using electronic resources prior to going in
the laboratory (Rolfe, 2008). However, neither of these studies strictly looked at student use and
perceptions of OERs that were openly licensed and mobilised under a Creative Commons license.
2.2.4 Staff perception studies at De Montfort University
Other staff studies have looked at awareness and perception of OERs by academic staff, and in particular
31
in relation to attitudes to sharing resources which is a key to the philosophy behind open education.
Rolfe (2009) showed that staff not surprisingly had little awareness of the term OER at the start of the
UK national OER programme in 2008/2009, but in repeating the same survey in 2012, awareness of the
term and associated repositories of OERs had dramatically increased (Rolfe, 2012). In both surveys, staff
were inclined to share learning resources locally within their institutions but whilst happy to reuse
resources from the internet were less inclined to wish to share them there.
2.2.5 Oxford University Podcasts Report on student perceptions
Geng et al (2011) published a report analysing the impact of Oxford University’s podcasts worldwide,
not just on existing students but global learners. The report states that the iTunes podcasts attracted
listeners from around the world including Sweden, Norway, Brazil, USA, Canada, China, Korea and New
Zealand. The resources were found to motivate distance learners as well as supporting existing students.
This study report does not analyse the accessibility of the podcasts and perhaps why they might not
have been used. The OERs inherent accessibility relies on the student access to iTunes. Again, there is no
data to substantiate students attitudes, understandings and perceptions to OERs although there is some
suggestions of a positive view, as the podcasts acted as motivators to learning and engagement in
learning.
2.2.6 OpenLearn Some research suggests that the benefits of OER might be beyond the remit of the institution and
traditional learner, and that they might be useful for facilitating interaction and dialogue. If OERs were
used in environments where learners and content creators were able to communicate, this would add a
32
sense-‐making layer to the material (Lane, 2007). Similarly, Buckingham and De Liddo (2010) discuss the
student use of OERs. They provide a description of curricular locations that were non-‐traditional where a
particular OER might fit and the characteristics of the learners that would use OERs. Perhaps the largest
existing UK example of an open educational resource is OpenLearn (Buckingham and De Liddo, 2010),
and in a study of online activity of approximately 65,000 registered users to the website, Godwin and
McAndrew (2008) published an overview of the online activity of approximately 65 000 OpenLearn users
registered with an OER website. Clearly there were groups of more social learners who were welcoming
the notion of community, and the clearest theme emerging was the need for assessment, to move from
mere content provision to a full-‐bodied open course experience.
2.2.7 Other studies of student perceptions of open practices
In small-‐scale studies that had looked at student attitude and means of sharing OER, such as at Leicester
University, one third of the students stated that they were not prepared to turn their own materials into
OERs and to share them with peers (Witthaus, 2010). At the University of Bradford, students used OER
materials for revision purposes and shared their revision notes with the rest of their group and were
happy with this arrangement (Hoorebeek, 2010). In a final study that explored how students shared,
when asked about using social networking tools to share their resources, the MEDEV OOER Newcastle
University students expressed apprehension about enlisting “social” networking tools.
“Students reported a wide variety of sharing knowledge about good resources or sites between peers using word of mouth as via email, or through specific collaboration tools such as when working in a small group on a shared task. Although student participants declared that they sometimes shared resources or links to resources via social networking sites such as Facebook, they did see Facebook in particular as a black hole of productivity.”(Hardy, 2010: 49).
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2.2.8 Summary of studies
In summary a number of studies have looked at staff use and perceptions of OERs, and fewer still have
explored the student and learner perceptions and involvement with OERs. The majority of these, as well
as the studies above, again fail to consider student attitudes and opinions on OERs, and many focus on
learning gains of resources that are deemed open because they are available on the internet. There is
little data to suggest that students understand what OERs are, whether this is important, and what
opinions are held in relation to the learner sharing culture and study practices.
2.3 The aim of this research
Research looking at the direct understanding and perception of OERs by students is sparse, though as
potential users, students need to be aware of OERs. This is particularly true should the OER movement
continue and wish to achieve its goal of providing equal opportunities through education to all, as per
the Hewlett Foundation’s aspiration, and the aspiration of many involved in OER. With many OERs
already established, and institutions being producers or OER and embedding them into programmes and
courses, the question remains, do students know that OERs exist? Do students use OERs, or if they do
use openly licensed resources such as Wikipedia and YouTube, are they aware of the resources OER
status? An important question in the current climate is how do students feel about their institutions
funding and creating materials which they then share for free, especially in light of increases in student
fees in the UK in 2012? This thesis will aim to analyse and help answer some of those questions via a
small-‐scale, university-‐based student questionnaire and interview process.
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2.4 Authors prediction
It is the view of the author, based on the literature review and available materials that the majority of
students will not have heard of the term Open Education Resources and as a result will not be able to
define the term in full. Furthermore there is likely to be an established culture of sharing between peers
with an overall motivation being the completion of individual’s assignments. It is likely that students will
be influenced by the current economic climate when considering openly sharing resources with the
public, this is with particular regard to the increase in tuition fees to a £9 000 cap.
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3 Chapter Three: Methods
This chapter will look at the choice and the design for this study, the methods of data collection and
participations selection. The ethical procedure will be discussed as well as the complications and their
solutions that arose during the period of this study. The scope of this research aimed to identify three
main areas that pertain to Open Education Resources (OERs). These are (1) the student awareness of
OERs, (2) The student views towards OERs, and (3) students sharing culture.
3.1 Mixed Method Approach
This study followed a mixed methods approach. This is suitable because it can evaluate a new policy and
its impact, compare alternative perspectives on a phenomenon and it also combines aspects of other
strategies. “Mixed methods” relates to research that pools alternative approaches within one study. Put
simply, it combines both qualitative and quantitative methods (Denscombe, 2010). This approach has
been widely and successfully used previously by authors like Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004), Creswell
(2009) and Tashakkori and Teddlie (1998, 2003, 2009).
Denscombe (2010) states that there are three characteristics that set a mixed approach apart from
other strategies for social research:
(1) Researchers can combine together social research elements that have been previously treated as the
and/or options, where the distinction lies between a qualitative and a quantitative approach. (2) There
is triangulation – focus on the link between the different approaches. This method emphasizes the need
to explain why the alternative approached are beneficial and how the alternatives are brought together.
(3) The answers to the research problem are treated as the overriding concern.
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This use of mixed methods approach “seeks convergence, corroboration, correspondence of results from
the different methods” (Green et al, 1989: 259). The fact that the different methods produce data that
are relatively the same means that the researcher can feel confident in assuming that the findings are
accurate (Denscombe, 2010).
Different methods have their own respective strength and weakness. A mixed methods approach
compensates for any innate bias or weakness of a single approach by combining it with a different one
that can compensate for this. “By combining multiple observers, theories, methods and data sources,
[researchers] can hope to overcome the intrinsic bias that comes from single methods, single observer,
and single theory studies” (Denzin, 1989: 307).
3.2 Questionnaire methodologies
A research questionnaire was designed (Appendix 1) and was disseminated online in addition to
subsequently being printed and distributed via a paper copy to the target students due to poor online
response. The structured questionnaire was administered to the students to explore a number of factors
using Likert scales and open-‐ended questions. Likert scale measures are primarily at the ordinal level of
measurement because the responses given indicate a ranking. However its reliability increases rapidly
with an increased number of step and levels off at around 7 steps. After 11 steps, there is a little gain in
reliability (Neuman 2000). Dyer (1995) states that “attitude scales do not need to be factually accurate
as they simply need to reflect one possible perception of the truth… [respondents] will not be assessing
the factual accuracy of each item, but will be responding to the feelings which the statement triggers in
them.” Tittle et al (1967) state that the Likert scale is the most widely used method of scaling in social
sciences. Perhaps this is because they are easier to construct than other scales and tend to be more
reliable than other scales with the same number of items.
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The questions posed ranged from the students awareness of OERs and their inherent ability to define
them, their perception as to what OERs are, and their own peer to peer sharing culture. The
questionnaire was generated using the online survey tool SurveyMonkey (surveymonkey.com) and was
distributed by both email and by paper copies, being disseminated among students within their
timetabled lecture sessions to maximise questionnaire return and to increase the number of responses.
The answers from the paper-‐based questionnaires were then inputted manually onto
surveymonkey.com by the author for data analysis so that all of the responses could be analysed in the
same format.
3.3 Semi-‐structured interviews
Informed via the outcomes of the questionnaire, a number of interviews (Appendix 2) were run to
provide further details and a deeper view of some of the answers given within the questionnaire. A
particular importance was placed on three main factors. (1) Whether the student knew what OERs were,
(2) their view on sharing both with the public and other universities alike and, (3) where they perceive
quality to lie within the resources, with emphasis on personal value. The Interviews were all captured on
a MP3 recording device, and the data was then transcribed in full by an independent scribe, employed
by De Montfort University.
When a researcher needs to gain an insight into people’s opinions, feelings, emotions and experiences,
then interviews provide a suitable method. According to Descombe (2010) interviews lend themselves
to the collection of data based on:
• Opinions, feelings, emotions and experiences;
• Sensitive issues; and
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• Privileged information – this is important as the depth of information can provide the best value
if the informants are willing to give information that other could not – when what they offer is
an insight they have as people in a special position “to know” (E.g. Midwifery students
established as practicing nurses).
With semi-‐structured interviews, the researcher had a clear list of issues to be addressed and questions
to be answered. The researcher was prepared to be flexible in terms of the order in which topics are
discussed and more significantly to let the interviewees speak more openly and to allow their ideas to
develop. The answers were open ended, and there was emphasis on the students elaborating on their
points of interest.
3.4 Rationale for choice of data collection, validity, reliability and generalizability
The validity of questionnaires relies on their reliability. Reliability refers to the consistency of the
measure. There are two forms of reliability; (1) Test-‐retest reliability and (2) reliability within a scale
(Trochim & Donnely 2007). The greater structure of the questionnaire ensures that higher reliability is
achieved, as answers may be repeatable between respondents and over time however the answers may
not fit neatly into the frame of reference reducing the validity of research. As questionnaires ask the
same questions in the same format for each respondent, they will tend to be more reliable (repeatable)
forms of data collection. However, because they impose the researchers framework of what is
important onto the respondent the possibility is increased that questionnaires will “miss the point” from
the point of view of understanding the world of the student being researched. On the other hand, using
a mixed research method means that high validity will be obtained from the interview design with
greater reliability attained from the questionnaires thus drawing on all the strengths of the approach.
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The strong points of interviews are that there is a positive rapport between the interviewer and the
interviewee. It is a simple and efficient way of collecting data that cannot be easily observed. It offers
high validity because the interviewees can talk about the subject matters in depth and in detail and
complex issues may further be discussed, where emotions and personal values can be expressed clearly.
The validity of the interview can however be compromised if the interviewee is lying. The reliability of
interviews is varied and is considered to be low because it is often difficult to repeat a focused
interview. The samples may be relatively small and the respondents may be asked questions in non-‐
standardised format (Sociological Research Skills, 2012).
Overall the research combines breadth and coverage of respondents afforded by questionnaires and the
depth and capacity to probe in order to extract meaning and context from the interviews.
3.5 Student selection
Undergraduate students were selected from the De Montfort University Health and Life Sciences faculty
between January and July 2012. Six undergraduate science programmes were selected, with
participants spanning all three years of undergraduate study, Biomedical Science( n = 116, year 1 :78,
year 2: 38, year 3: 0), Medical Science (n=27, year 1: 16, year 2: 11, year 3: 0), Forensic Science (n= 54,
year 1: 27, year 2: 14, year 3: 13), Midwifery (n= 2, year 1: 0, year 2: 2 year 3:0), Nursing and Healthcare
science( n= 65, year 1: 65, year 2: 0, year 3: 0). The Midwifery, Nursing and Healthcare science students
were combined into one group due to low numbers in some of these groups participating (Table 2).
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Table 2: Student Selection Demographic
Biomedical Science
Medical Science
Forensic Science Midwifery
Nursing and Healthcare Science
Year 1 78 16 27 0 65 Year 2 38 11 14 2 0 Year 3 0 0 13 0 0 Total 116 27 54 2 65
Numbers of students selected across five life science degree programmes throughout
three years of study.
The online surveys were distributed to the Biomedical and Medical science students by email where
students volunteered to participate in the survey. The paper-‐based surveys were distributed in lectures,
this did provide larger numbers of respondents (n=252). The student interviews were conducted in
Midwifery and Biomedical Science teaching sessions. These were all year one Biomedical Science and
Midwifery programmes.
3.6 Ethical issues The research adhered to the ethics guidelines of the British Educational Research Association. The
research was subject of approval from De Montfort University Faculty of Health and Life Science Ethics
Committee . The research was conducted on the basis of informed consent and all participants were
provided with an information sheet describing what the research entails, what would be expected of
them as participants and their rights (Appendix 3). Those taking part were guaranteed confidentiality.
Those taking part in focused interviews were asked to sign their written consent to do so, using a
consent form (Appendix 4). The information sheet explained that they had the right to withdraw from
41
the research at any time and not to have their data used at any point in the research process and
without any requirement to offer an explanation for this withdrawal.
All tape recordings were transcribed in full by an independent scribe and the recordings were then
destroyed. No names were used in this research and participants were referred to based on their
programme and year of study. All those taking part in the research were offered a 2 page summary of
the results of the research upon completion.
The study protected its participants in that there was no reason to suppose that they would suffer
physically, psychologically or personally as a consequence of their involvement. However, in the unlikely
event that unanticipated problems arose the information sheet had the names and contacts details of
the researcher and other senior university staff to whom complaints might be addressed should any
adverse events have occurred.
3.7 Data analysis and statistics
Questionnaire data was primarily analysed via SurveyMonkey (surveymonkey.com) and the descriptive
statistics (results figures and tables) derived from the service. The author also downloaded the data
onto Microsoft Excel and subsequently generated a database using Microsoft Access. This was then used
for gender, course and year of study comparison (Appendix 5) to analyse whether there are any
demographic factors that affect answers.
The Interviews were transcribed using an independent scribe into a Microsoft Word document, and was
then conceptualised based on similar themes arising from the answers given which were grouped
together and categorised using Excel. These were further grouped into more general themes until a
clear issue or a factor was apparent, this formed themative analysis.
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3.8 Complications arising
A number of factors arose during the period of data collection and data analysis that had to be
overcome. The first of these arose during the completion of the questionnaire. It was designed to be fast
and convenient whilst maintaining its inherent reliability. This is why it was generated online and was
purposed to be distributed online via email. This would ensure that a greater number of students were
reached thus further increasing its reliability and validity and increasing its generalisability. However
generalisability is not based on numbers per se, there is need for the answers and conclusions drawn to
be representative of (1) those included in the research compared to those in the research population
who do not take part and (2) how representative are DMU students likely to be of all UK university
students.
The poor questionnaire return resulted in alternative methods being under taken. Paper copies of the
questionnaire were distributed and completed among target students during their scheduled lecture
time. This approach ensured that the questionnaire was filled in by a captive audience and that a large
return was obtained increasing the methods strengths mentioned.
The second complication occurred during the analysis phase of the Interview data, more specifically post
transcription. The scribe did not link the transcription data to the voice, in an anonymous fashion, (e.g.
male 1, female 2 to each response), which meant that the researcher was unable to directly quote each
student respondent in data analysis. Further complications arose because this meant that the author
was unable to ensure avoiding the over-‐use of one individual to maintain validity and reliability.
Although this issue was not possible to be resolved directly, the author resulted in quoting particular
research groups which contained two or three people (e.g. Biomedical Science group 1). This is to ensure
43
that the author did not rely on any one single group for the majority of the analysis and views portrayed
within this work.
This chapter analysed the reasons behind using a mixed method strategy composed of a questionnaire
and semi-‐structured interviews. It was highlighted that this approach allows the study to draw on the
strengths of both methods by compensating for each individual method bias and weakness. The
selection of the student was discussed and the response numbers were also included. The research was
ethically approved and examples of the information sheets were provided and consent forms also.
Finally, any complications and their resolutions were discussed at the end of this chapter. The next
chapter will analyse the questionnaire data.
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4 Chapter Four: Questionnaire Data Analysis
The questionnaire investigated the student awareness and perceptions of Open Education Resources
(OERs) and their overall attitudes about sharing educational resources in general. The results are as
follows.
4.1 Student demographics
264 responses were collected from undergraduate student volunteers at the Faculty of Health and Life
Sciences at De Montfort University. There were a greater number of response from female students (n=
183, 69.3%) than male students (n= 81, 30.7%). This is largely due to the fact that nursing students were
included in the survey and such students are predominantly female.
Overall, students from six programmes answered the questionnaire. Responses were obtained from
students studying Biomedical Science (n= 116, 43.9%), Medical Science (n= 27, 10.2%), Forensic Science
(n= 54, 20.5%), Midwifery (n= 2, 0.8%), Nursing (n= 60, 22.7%) and Healthcare science (n= 5, 1.9 %). Due
to their low numbers the Midwifery and Healthcare Science responses were included with the Nursing
responses, making the total for Nursing and Health students n= 67 (25.4%) to be more representative of
the views of students whose subjects are very similar.
Table 3: Number of students responding to the questionnaire
Biomedical Science
Medical Science
Forensic Science Midwifery Nursing Healthcare
Science
Responses 116
(43.9%) 27
(10.2%) 54
(20.5%) 2
(0.8%) 60
(22.7%) 5 (1.9%)
Numbers and % responses of students across all six programmes of study investigated.
All three undergraduate years participated in the questionnaire (i.e. levels 4-‐6). The responses were
45
primarily from year 1 (n=186, 70.5%), whilst year 2 students and year 3 students provided n= 65 (24.6%)
and n= 13 (4.9%) responses respectively. This is mainly due to the fact that the researcher was able to
provide surveys during class time and found it difficult to reach participants out of scheduled time
tabling time. Year 1 students were the most accessible. Responses were received from students from a
range of ethnic backgrounds. The highest responses were White British (n= 119, 45.1%), Asian or Asian
British Indian (n= 52, 19.7%), Asian or Asian Pakistani (n= 15, 5.7%) and Black or Black British African (n=
30, 11.4%).
4.2 Student understanding of the term open educational resources
This section of the questionnaire aimed to establish student understanding of the term Open Education
Resources and whether the student had heard of them before. The reason behind asking this question
was to see to what extent the student could deduce the meaning from the name, and therefore how
useful the term might be in future communications and activities with students.
Question One “Have you heard of the term “Open Education Resources”?” aimed to establish whether
the student were familiar with the expression open education resources (which is not the same as being
knowledgeable about them). Of the 264 responses, 28% (n = 74) reported that they had heard of OERs
and therefore the majority 72% (n = 190) had not.
Question Two “…Do you feel you know what the term “Open Education Resources” means? aimed to
identify whether the student feels like they can identify the meaning from the given name, irrespective
of what they answered in Question One. A slightly higher number of respondents (n= 88, 33.3%) felt like
they were able define OERs compared to question one. However a clear majority n= 176 (66.7%) still
answered “No.”
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Question Three was an open ended question, “Could you define Open Education Resources in your own
words?” Although the some skipped this question (n= 58, 36%), even if they answered yes to the above
question, 103 of 161 responses at least capture one element of the formal definitions of OER. The four
main elements that might reasonably be said to characterise OERS are (1) Accessibility: that they are, in
principle, accessible and in the public domain; (2) Minimal Restrictions: that they have minimal
restrictions in terms of copyright; (3) Fee-‐free: that they do not involve a financial fee with respect to
their use, and (4) Reusable: that they are designed to be re-‐used or adapted by other educators.
Interestingly even if some of the respondents answered No to both questions above they still attempted
to define OERs (n= 28, 19%), n= 22 of which captured at least one element of the formal definition
(Table 4).
Table 4. Student suggested definitions of OERs, and numbers responding that identified elements of the formal definition.
Accessibility Minimal Restrictions Fee free Reusable Total
n=45 n=6 n=17 n=10 n=110 Table showing how many responses captured each element of the formal definition of OERs. Please note that in the above table, the total is not 103 but 110 because some students manage to capture more than one element of the definition of OERS
Question Four presented the students with a number of OERs which they may have come across in their
learning, including a number that they may have come across specifically because they are students in a
faculty where there has been significant development of OERS, namely within the Faculty of Health and
Life Sciences. The students were then asked to tick those they thought were individual OERs or
repositories for OERs, and results are shown in Table 5.
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Table 5. Table showing resources that were perceived to be Open Education Resources or Repositories for OERs by the students responding
OER
Virtual Analytical Laboratory (VAL)
YouTube EDU
De Montfort University DORA
JORUM Wikipedia Sickle Cell Open (SCOOTER)
Health and Life Sciences Open Education Resources (HALS OER)
Number of Responses 145 129 109 28 114 63 200 Percentage 54.9% 48.9% 41.3% 10.6% 43.2% 23.9% 75.8%
Numbers of students aware of a number of university and internet-‐based open education initiatives
including university OER projects (VAL, SCOOTER and HALSOER) and research repository (DORA).
Of the 145 students that thought the Virtual Analytical Laboratory (VAL) was an OER, 84 were
Biomedical Science students of whom 72% were from the BMS 1st year cohort. Twenty five were
Forensic Science students which translates to 46% of the overall Forensic Science cohort. Nineteen
students were Medical Science Students (70% of total Medical Science Cohort) and 17 were Nursing
students (25% of total). The high numbers for BMS and Medical Science are unsurprising as some of
these classes are tutored by a Lecturer who promotes OERs, especially VAL, SCOOTER and HALS OER.
The 75.8 percent rate for being aware of HALS OER is perhaps unsurprising as the name itself includes
OER.
Question Five aimed to identify whether the respondents thought that OERs were “…free to use under
open licensing in the economic (free from cost) sense?” 81.8 percent of respondents thought they were
(n= 216)
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Question Six was similar to question five, but aimed to establish whether they thought that OERs were
“… free to use under open licensing in the liberty (freedom to use) sense?” 87.9% (n = 232) thought that
they were. 204 students thought that OERs were both Economic and Liberty free. Because a large
majority of respondents indicated that they believed OERs to be free in both sense of the word suggests
that restricted understanding of the term open would not appear to be a widespread barrier to engaging
with OERs.
4.3 Student attitudes to sharing and open practices
The respondents were then given a summary and a definition of what OERs were before they continued
answering the questions;
“OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been
released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-‐purposing by others.
Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos,
tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. Open
source culture, is one in which these resources, works that would otherwise be entitled to copyright
protection, are made generally available. Participants in the culture can modify these and redistribute
them back into the community and other organisations” (Atkins et al, 2007: 4)
This definition therefore breaks down into four key factors, accessibility, minimal restrictions, fee-‐free
and reusable, discussed above.
Section three of the questionnaire aimed to analyse the students’ perceptions of OERs and of sharing.
The first question presented the students with a number of statements and they were asked to express
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their opinion on through a Likert-‐scale ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree. The results are
shown in Table 6.
Table 6. Student opinion to sharing
Table showing statements and student agreement/disagreement towards them. Data is given as a % and actual number ().
A large majority (72%) felt that their own university should share educational resources with students
from other universities without financial costs to the other students. A similar large majority (72%) felt
that this should also apply in the case of sharing with academics from other universities. Interestingly
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the majorities became even larger (76% and 77% respectively) when considering whether educational
resources produced in other institutions should be available to students and staff in their own
university. Thus about 5 percent are favouring sharing inwards to their benefit but without sharing
outwards. The numbers expressing this sharing orientation fell significantly when considering the
general public with less than 50% feeling that resources should also be made available to the general
public.
Question Two asked “what help do you think is required to get students to use Open Education
Resources?” This was an open ended question. 132 students answered and the majority of responses
fell into two main categories. Forty six percent (n= 61) thought that more advertisement of OERs was
required in order to raise awareness. Twenty three percent (n= 30) felt that OERs should be more
accessible, and this includes having the knowledge on how to use these.
Question Three was an open ended question for further comments. The majority of students skipped
this question. Of the remaining responses (n=12) the majority expressed their agreement with the
principles of OERs, for example
“if all universities can combine resources then this can only increase the knowledge of our generation”
Interestingly, one response stated
“if people can access the course material for free why are we paying to go here?”
Whilst the answer to that maybe the elements of examination and face to face time with tutors for
example, the above response delves into the issue of tuition fees and student attitudes to their learning
resources which will be discussed more in chapter 5 (analysis of interviews).
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4.4 Understanding student sharing behaviours and practices Section 4 aimed to analyse the students’ actual behaviours and working practices in terms of using and
sharing of resources in general. The first question aimed to identify how the student finds their
resources (Table 7).
Table 7. Reported student strategies for finding learning materials
Table showing how students indicated that they find their learning resources to support their studies.
Sixty six percent of students report that they are directed to their resources by their tutors. The same
percentage also states that they find their resources via internet search engines. Sixty two percent of
students claim that they find their resources through the institution library with 47 percent reporting
being directed to their resources by their peers. This suggests that, amongst other formal strategies,
students report tending to work collaboratively in support of their peers, at least in accessing resources.
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The next two questions aimed to identify which resources the respondents use in their lecture
supplementation as background reading to support their theoretical knowledge, and then in their
research to support academic coursework (table 8 and table 9).
Table 8. Which resources are used to supplement lecture notes?
Table showing the frequency at which students use resources in lecture supplementation
Table 9. Which resources are used in academic research for coursework?
Table showing the frequency at which students use resources for their coursework research.
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Fifty six point eight percent claim to use YouTube for their lecture supplementation whilst 44.3 percent
record using it for their coursework research. 89 percent say they use journal databases for lecture
supplementation and 93.9 percent use it for their coursework. 64.8 percent mention using Wikipedia to
supplement their lectures whilst 57.5 percent use it for their coursework. There is evidence of wider
claimed use of resources for lecture supplementation than for actual coursework. This begs the question
of what tutors are saying about credible sources of information that might influence students’ behaviour
to supplement their lectures rather than what they might be finding independently to support their
coursework?
Question Four in this section was one of the most important questions as it aimed to establish the
student culture pertaining to sharing. “In your academic learning, do you share information and
resources with your peers?” 92.0 percent of students said that they do share with their fellow students
(n= 243). This suggests that students have to be particularly skilled in their studies: collaborating
extensively at the point of searching and retrieving resources, but then being disciplined in not
collaborating in the composition of coursework in order to avoid collusion.
The final section of the questionnaire pertained to how the students share and their reasons behind
doing so. The first question analysed the way in which students share as shown in Table 10.
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Table 10. Ways by which students claim to share resources with their peers
Table highlighting the ways and extent to which students share with their peers.
86.8 percent of students said that they use email (sometimes, often, always) to some extent to share
resources with their peers and this is the highest reported mode for sharing, followed by physical hard
copies of the resources at 70.5 percent (total of students sharing sometimes, often, always). Next in
popularity was the use of Facebook with 59.8 percent of students in this survey said they use the social
networking site to share their resources. Other social networks such as YouTube and Forums did not
score above 25 percent as choices for sharing. The rating average was calculated by assigning each
choice a value, where “never” was 1 and “always” was 4. This average therefore demonstrates where
the peak of responses lies. For example for email, the rating average is 2.41, this means that the average
mode of sharing is between sometimes and often.
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Within the questionnaire there were a series of open-‐ended questions that aimed to identify why the
students chose to share their learning resources and to overall gain a sense of their culture. These
qualitative questions were designed to establish whether the majority of students share for the purpose
of being shared with or whether do not share because they are afraid of collusion or if there are any
other reasons that inform their decision to or not to share.
When asked why they share, the responses fell into two main categories, students who claimed to share
selflessly for no gain, and those who said that they chose to share for personal gain. Selfless sharing was
a phrase the author developed to capture the sense of sharing without a secondary agenda, which is to
say, sharing to help others without a personal gain. As students commented:
“To help peers, if they need help with their work” “Other people are entitled to see it, others should/ would do the same”
Sharing for personal gain refers to gaining an advantage from sharing with peers, the main one being a
trade off scenario, if a peer helps another, then they expect the same in return:
“to help and be helped by others” “share with people, then they share with you” “to help others and see other new parts on work”
Students who indicated that they did not share (earlier in the questionnaire) were also invited to expand
on their reasoning. Students were asked, “If you don’t share, why do you chose not to or why do you
think you cannot share?” The answers (n= 38 responses) fell into three main categories as follows:
• Do not see a reason to or feel other should put in the same effort (n=28); • Concerned about academic malpractice (n= 3); • Concerned about originality (n =7).
Students that claimed not to see a reason to share stated:
“others already use the resources that I know”
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“because no one asks for them, the topics are different”
Other students who claimed not to share learning resources were concerned about academic
malpractice and fears of not being original. Students were concerned that if they shared they might be
identified as colluding or plagiarising:
“due to plagiarism”
“don’t share in case duplicated and my work is not marked or accepted”
“because they’re mine, don’t want them to be copied – collusion”
Finally, students that preferred not to share talked about originality and wanting to hand in unique work
that reflected the effort and time taken to look for resources:
“because I want to stand out and do well independently as we are competing for jobs in the long run”
“I believe it is of my own finding and therefore others should put in the same effort”
“so no one can copy your info – be unique”
The final question in the questionnaire was open ended and allowed the student to express any further
and final comments with regards to Open Education Resources, use of learning resources in general as
part of their education and their sharing of resources with peers. The overall view was that OERs are
beneficial and that there should be more of them. Interestingly one student said they offer a way of
learning resources to be shared across universities:
“if a system were to exist that [allowed] students from different universities to share resources with ease, [so that] students on the same course can connect and share work that can be used as referencing for essays and further reading”
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In one sense such a mechanism does exist in the form of JORUM.ac.uk, a JISC funded OER repository to
collect and share learning and teaching materials, allowing their reuse and repurposing. However, the
comment suggests that such an exchange forum would need to be more widely known and perhaps be
set up in such a way as to enable students from the same courses to focus quickly down onto resources
of highest relevance to their courses.
4.5 Gender differences in awareness and attitudes to OER 183 (69.3%) of students that answered this questionnaire were female. Of the 74 students that heard of
OERs, 67 percent (n= 50) were female. This is 27.3 percent of the overall female total. 29.6 percent of
the males that answered this question said that they have heard of OERs before, indicating that levels of
awareness were similar across the gender groups
When asked which resource was an OER there appeared to be no substantial difference between the
answer given by each gender, with similar levels of awareness of what an OER might be or not. This is
also the case when the students were asked whether they share with their peers. 92.9 percent (n= 170)
of females report that they share and similarly 90.1 percent (n= 73) of males report the same.
Overall there was no data to suggest that gender differences to any of the questions posed including
their attitude toward sharing resources (data not shown).
4.6 Programme differences in awareness and attitudes to OER Differences in attitudes and awareness of OER was analysed across the four programme groups
(Biomedical Science, Forensic Science, Medical Science and Nursing).
Thirty three point six percent (n = 39) of Biomedical Science Students report that they have heard of
Open Education Resources. Only 3.7 percent (n = 2) of Forensic Science students said the same. 29.6
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percent (n= 8) of Medical Science and 37.35 percent (n = 25) Nursing students also claimed to be aware
of the term OER. This indicates the different levels of use of OER by programme teams. Table 11 shows
the different levels of awareness of OER repositories and projects by programme.
Table 11. OER and repository awareness by degree programme
Course
VAL
%
YouTube
%
DORA
%
JORUM
%
Wikipedia
%
SCOOTER
%
HALS
OER %
Biomedical
Science 72.4 52.6 41.4 13.8 44.0 33.6 78.4
Forensic Science 46.3 35.2 44.4 5.6 24.0 24.1 87.0
Medical Science 70.3 40.7 29.6 22.2 37.0 33.3 74.1
Nursing 25.4 56.7 43.4 4.5 59.7 6.0 62.7
Table showing awareness of OER and repositories across different health and life science programmes.
There appears to be an increased awareness of VAL in the Biomedical Science and Medical Science
students. This is likely because both courses are taught by staff who explicitly use VAL in teaching
sessions. Furthermore the academic uses VAL as a tool to introduce students to laboratory principles,
something which is very applicable for both Biomedical Science and Medical Science students. With the
exception of DORA and HALS OER (the latter in any case states OER in the name) the Nursing students
do not have an increased awareness of “specialist” OERs such as VAL and SCOOTER but are aware of
Wikipedia and YouTube as OERs to a greater extent. This is possibly due to the fact that these resources
are more applicable to these students and as such would use them more. Another reason behind this
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may be that there are perhaps fewer resources developed for nurses compared to scientists. As nursing
is a mix of science and social science, there is a question about the extent to which different subjects
lend themselves to different extents to creation of OERs.
It is interesting to note that awareness of YouTube is only around 50%. Not surprisingly awareness of
JORUM is low but interesting that some have claimed to be aware of it. Again Wikipedia awareness is
low. Further research would need to analyse this and look at the different factors to awareness. There is
difference between (1) awareness of it, (2) awareness of it as an OER (3) actual use of it as an OER and
(4) admitting use of it as an OER (possibly due to fears that it may be seen as of a lesser academic
credibility).
In a final piece of analysis, differences in attitudes toward sharing learning resources were compared
across the four health and life science programmes. The data is expressed of percentages of students
agreeing and strongly agreeing with the statements, and the results are shown in Table 12.
Table 12: Student attitudes toward sharing by degree programme
Statement BMS Agree
% Forensic Sci Agree %
Med Sci Agree %
Nursing Agree %
DMU Should share educational resources for free with students from other universities 69.8 66.7 92.6 71.6
DMU should share educational resources for free with academics from other universities 69.8 74.1 85.2 70.0
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DMU should share educational resources for free with the public 50.0 26.0 55.6 46.3
Lecturers Should use educational resources developed by other universities and institutions in their lectures 77.6 74.1 81.5 70.1
Students should use educational resources developed by other universities and institutions in their learning 81.9 81.5 88.9 67.2
As a student I would personally feel happy using Open Education Resources developed by other Universities and institutions 80.2 77.8 81.5 71.6
Table 12 showing the percentages at which students agree and strongly agree to “sharing” statements broken down by programme.
The above table displays perceptions on sharing. Each student was presented with a statement and
asked to strongly disagree, disagree, neither, agree and strongly agree. The above table summarises
responses that agree with the statements (agree + strongly agree). All programmes display a similar
level of agreement to each different statement. However Medical Science displays a higher level of
agreement throughout. This is especially true with regards to sharing with students from other
universities for free. 92.6 percent of Medical Science students agree with this whereas the other three
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courses average around 70 percent. Ninety one percent (n=106) of Biomedical Science students said
that they share with their peers. A large majority of Forensic Science, Medical Science and Nursing
students also agree, 87.0 percent (n=47), 100 percent (n=27) and 94.0 percent (n=63) respectively
4.7 Undergraduate student year (level) differences in attitudes and awareness of OERs
In a final comparison, the questionnaire respondents were categorised by year group. Year 1 (level 4),
year 2 (level 5) and year 3 (level 6) or final year undergraduates. The highest level of awareness of OERs
was clear in year 1 students. 33.3 percent (n=62) of year 1 students have said that they have heard of
OERs, whereas only 17.0 percent (n = 11) and 7.7 percent (n = 1) of year 2 and year 3 students
respectively have also said that they have heard of OERs. The awareness of OER resources and
repositories was also compared across year groups as shown in Table 13.
Table 13. OER and repository awareness by year of study
Year VAL %
YouTube EDU %
DORA %
JORUM %
Wikipedia %
SCOOTER %
HALS OER %
1 53.8 48.4 37.6 9.1 43.0 21.0 75.3 2 63.1 52.3 52.3 17.0 43.1 32.3 73.8 3 30.8 38.5 61.5 0.0 46.2 23.1 92.3
Table showing awareness of OER repositories in different years of study. Year 1 (n=186), year 2 (n=65)
and year 3 (n=13). Year 3 students seem to have a decreased awareness of VAL (30.8%). This could be
due to the reason that this OER is mainly used in year 1 for the introduction of laboratory skills. Student
attitudes toward sharing learning materials with their peers was also compared across year groups.
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Table 14. Sharing statement agreement year breakdown (i.e. total percentages of students agreeing
and strongly agreeing).
Statement Year 1 Agree
% Year 2 Agree
% Year 3 Agree
%
DMU Should share educational resources for free with students from other universities 68.3 81.5 76.9
DMU should share educational resources for free with academics from other universities 71.0 73.8 69.2
DMU should share educational resources for free with the public 44.6 47.7 30.8
Lecturers Should use educational resources developed by other universities and institutions in their lectures 73.7 81.5 69.2
Students should use educational resources developed by other universities and institutions in their learning 76.3 84.6 84.6
As a students I would personally feel happy using Open Education Resources developed by other Universities and institutions 74.7 84.6 84.6
Table showing the percentages at which students agree and strongly agree to “sharing” statements broken down by year of study.
The above table shows that there seems to be a consistent agreement towards sharing in all the
different year groups. There is however a clear disagreement when sharing with the public at no cost. It
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would be interesting to collect data from new student in takes as they pay £9000 cap tuition fees to
enable a key comparison. 92.0% (n=171) of year 1, 93.8% (n= 61) of year 2 and 84.6% (n = 11) of year 3
students have said that they share with their peers.
4.8 Differences in responses due to ethnicity
The research comprised of n= 83 Asian or Asian descent students, n = 38 Black or Black descent
students, n= 8 Chinese or Chinese descent students, n=125 White or white background students, n=6
mixed ethnicity and finally n = 4 other ethnic group.
There appeared to be no correlation between ethnicity and whether the student had heard of OERs nor
whether they successfully managed to capture at least one element of the definition of OERs.
There appeared to be no factor linking the student’s willingness to share resources with the public,
peers or other universities and their ethnicity.
4.9 Summary A survey, combining internet based responses and responses to a paper version of a questionnaire has
been administered to university students from four different health and life sciences programmes,
asking about their knowledge and attitudes to open education resources. Whilst most students (two
thirds) had not specifically heard of OERs, most claimed to have heard about a number of specific OER
projects specific to the university, and a number of repositories and social network tools that contained
OER. A number of students responding could identify at least one of the four key characterises of OERs
though none could pin down all four characteristics. In particular few sensed that OERs could be
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adapted and re-‐used and also that they were openly available, although few mentioned the use of an
open license as something of importance or to look out for.
A culture of sharing was evidenced amongst the majority of students with only a minority citing possible
accusations of plagiarism and self interest in standing out from others in a competitive way as reasons
not to share. In the next chapter we consider how students talk about OERs when given less structured
forums to explain their views, namely in interviews.
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5 Chapter Five: Interview Data Analysis
This chapter will analyse interview group data obtained from Health and Life Science students at De
Montfort University. The answers were subject to themative analysis whereby this chapter will follow
the structure of the interview whereby the most important and prevalent themes will be highlighted
and supported by verbatim quotations and finally followed by a summary. Several interviews were run
comprising of 27 year one Biomedical Science Students and 15 Midwifery year one student volunteers.
The interview students were divided into groups of three students within each course of study, where
Biomedical Science was divided into 9 groups and Midwifery into 5 groups. The data was audio recorded
and later transcribed by an independent transcriber employed by De Montfort University.
The overall aim of these interviews was to gain a deeper insight into the overall student’s perspective
and attitudes toward OER and sharing. Of particular interest was student sharing not only with their
peers but also with students from other universities and the general public, as the questionnaire
showed a lower response in the numbers of students suggesting they were willing to share learning
resources with the general public.
5.1 Student awareness of OER
Each group was asked whether they have heard of OER, and to define it, irrespective of whether or not
they claimed to have come across the term. As previously discussed, the definition comprises four main
categories that encompass the essence of OERs. These are accessibility, minimised restrictions, freedom
from fees and reusability. In contrast to the questionnaire where awareness of OER was around a third
of students, in the interviews, the majority of students questioned said they have not heard of OERs and
failed to define it. One Biomedical Science student defined OERs as the following,
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“Is it where there is like resources available for any person to use online through a website or through external links?” (Biomedical Science, Group 1)
The above BMS student mentions availability through online access and the fact that a resource is open
to anyone. This means that accessibility has been identified as one of the components that the student
perceives as an Open Education Resource. As the above answer is in the form of a question, it is not
certain whether the student has heard of OERs before or whether they have successfully managed to
deduce it from its name. An interesting issue here is that the student who is relatively affluent, young
and with access to the internet, conflates accessibility with something being on the internet. Resources
may be accessible without the internet and not accessible with the internet. Even more important is the
question of what types of students within the UK have internet access and what types of people globally
do and do not have access. Does having slow intermittent and unreliable access count as actually having
access?
Another year one BMS student said the following,
“I’ve come across it like on the internet. Is it not like where different institutions share like material between each other so it’s accessible, like everyone can access it sort of thing?”(Biomedical Science, Group 5)
The above student has again managed to identify accessibility as one of the components of OERs and
although they say that they have had a previous encounter with OERs on the internet, they are still
unsure of what OERs actually are. We can see this as the student is answering in the form of a question
so still seems uncertain as to how to define OERs.
A third Biomedical scientist has managed to identify cost freedom as one of the key characteristics of
OERs as well as accessibility.
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“It’s sort of things that people have put up on the internet or it’s like free for people to use without having to pay for anything. But I think it’s more to do with like different universities and different specific institutions” (Biomedical Science, Group 3)
Interestingly, all three of the above stated that they think it is accessible on the internet. There is no
evidence to suggest that they think OERs can take different formats such as a book. Is this because they
perceive digitised materials as easy to reproduce, free from cost, as there is no charge for physical
paper? Furthermore there is no evidence to suggest that they think OERs are also available to the
general public. The first BMS student does not mention this, but the other two clearly relate OERs to
institutions. This may suggest that they perceive OERs as materials designed for student, even university
student, learning as opposed to educational materials designed to be a point of information for
everyone to access.
In contrast, one Midwifery student has not only identified accessibility as one of the components, but
has also demonstrated that they think OERs are available to everyone and the public.
“It’s sort of access for everybody. If it’s online, it’s almost like a public library. You can go in, you can pick it up, get the bits out of it that you want and leave the bits behind that you don’t want. But it’s open, it’s open for everybody.” (Midwifery, Group 5)
The fact that she refers to a library suggests she sees OERs as (at least potentially) having significant
intrinsic value. The fact that she is aware that the user may choose to discriminate between aspects they
wish to use and those they do not suggests that she believes that quality is not only inherent but is
judged by the user. These issues are discussed further later in this chapter. Furthermore there is
evidence to suggest that this student perceives OERs as resources not specifically designed for student
use but rather as a portal to information as mentioned previously. She also states “…get the bit out of it
that you want and leave the bits behind that you don’t want.” Finally, this student also states that they
perceive OERs to be publicly available by saying “it’s almost like a public library.” This could perhaps be
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because as an already practising and established nurse, the Midwifery student will not only be used to
researching on her own but would also be potentially used to the public (relatives) researching illnesses
and treatments online in order to learn more about the patients ailments. This means that the
midwifery student would see OERs as publicly available whereas the BMS students would perceive them
as university and student orientated and accessible.
5.2 Student perceptions of OER and open practices In the next stage of the interview, whether they were correct or not in the definition of OERs in the first
part of the interview, each group was subsequently given the following definition:
“OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use or re-‐purposing by others. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. Open source culture, is one in which these resources, works that would otherwise be entitled to copyright protection, are made generally available. Participants in the culture can modify these and redistribute them back into the community and other organisations” (Atkins et al, 2007: 4)
In light of this definition, they were then asked how they feel about their university creating and then
sharing the learning materials for free. The aim of this was to pursue the students’ view on the financial
freedom of OERs with regards to access even though the students themselves have had to pay tuition
fees.
Two of the Midwifery students spoke directly about money.
“I know it sounds really cheeky but we live in a day and age where we’ve got to pay for it, why should everybody else get it free. But other universities, I think that’s a benefit because you can learn from each other then”(Midwifery, Group 4)
“It depends what materials are shared. If it’s like full course material then I don’t think that’s right but if it’s sort of snippets of information and sort of like just touching on things, a small example, then I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Because any student studying, whether they’re paying their fees or they’re being sponsored, those fees are being paid for access to that course material. So you could have somebody coming along and not, you know, and not paying
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for that. And to keep on producing quality material you’ve got to have the income coming in.” (Midwifery, Group 5)
The first Midwifery students talks about being in a “day and age where we’ve got to pay for it and why
should everybody else get it free.” This is an interesting view of OERs in relation to the tuition fee
system. The student pays to be examined by the university, to have tuition from lecturers and academic
staff and overall to have access to the university resources such as labs, computers and so on. But
currently they do not pay for the learning resources because a) they have to buy the books themselves
that actually aren’t provided by the lectures, or b) the resources that the students use are already
available on the internet anyway. This is with exception to the Athens account that universities use
which allows access to journals that would have otherwise have to be paid for, but which is inaccessible
to everyone else as well as the university Library. This corresponds to the Finch report (2012) to the
government, where green and golden access are mentioned. “A key feature of the international
environment over the past decade has been the growth of the open access movement. That movement
has many different strands, and definitions and distinctions have become increasingly important as it has
grown: between access without payment to a version of a publication through a repository (often called
green open access) on the one hand, or to the version of record via the journal’s own platform (often
termed gold open access) on the other; and between the removal of the payment barrier giving a right to
read the article (sometimes termed gratis open access), and the removal in addition of most of the
restrictions on use and re-‐use of the article (sometimes referred to as libre open access). The key points
here are that there are different routes to open access, and that it is not just a matter of removing
payment barriers, but of rights of use and reuse. Progress has not been as rapid as many had hoped, but
it is clear that we are already moving towards a regime in which more content is made accessible free at
the point of use to more people, in the UK and across the world”.
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So thus the tuition fees pay for these and not the learning resources, course notes and slides that are
potentially released as OERs which would have been accessible to the student regardless.
The statements show that it seems to be regarded as acceptable to share with different universities; it is
almost as if the tuition fees paid for a subscription that gives access to OERs regardless of whom it was
paid to. The second student talks about course materials as OERs that would be potentially shared. They
say that they would not view it as acceptable to share extensive amount of material with the public, but
they perceived “snippets” to be permissible. Again this highlights the perception that tuition fees should
give a higher access to information which should not normally be shared with the public. Sharing smaller
packages of information might be viewed as the equivalent of companies giving previews of their
products to entice for a full purchase. Finally, the second Midwifery student states that “to keep on
producing quality material you’ve got to have the income coming in” highlighting the need for funding
to further the production of OERs. Through this a self sustaining cycle would have been achieved.
Students pay an access fee, this pays for further development of OERs which then prompts continuous
subscription, as sharing within universities means that tuition fees are paid each year, and once those
payments stop, and the students stops studying and thus becomes a member of the public, their access
to new OERs would too stop. This however highlights the fact that when a student accesses information
or resources developed by their tutor or the university and archives it, they are still able to access it as a
member of the public. Currently there is no way of determining what resources a student may have
archived and thus contradicts the above model.
There were some interesting final points from Biomedical Science students regarding OERs:
“If you think about it that say on a bigger scale that every university does this and information is freely available then that will mean for first year students, for similar courses, you can compare what other students are doing and what’s being taught out there. Because some courses don’t have a governing body, such as IBMS (Institute of Biomedical Science), and also if there’s more people working towards one field, one goal, there can be more breakthroughs”(Biomedical Science, Group 1)
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“It would be a good thing because some of the information here might be explained better than that like the students that are using in other universities and their tutors might be explaining more different methods using a different method of explaining it than the lecturers here “ (Biomedical Science, Group 4)
Biomedical Science students seem to have a different perception towards sharing, seeing it as a way to
collaborate and further increase the overall knowledge. Further inter-‐institution sharing would allow the
students to gain different insights into the materials being offered. There seems to be no thought given
to sharing with the public as the answers mainly focus on sharing with other universities.
5.3 Student views of sharing OER with the general public
Whilst students seemed fine with the concept of sharing OERs within academic institutions, the
questionnaire revealed some reticence to share more widely with the general public. For this reason,
each of the interview groups were specifically asked how they feel about sharing with the public. There
seem to be four main reasons behind the students’ agreement or disagreement towards sharing with
the general public.
Two of the Biomedical Science students said the following,
“It’s just that we pay three grand a year for these resources. I mean in academic circles, yes, we can share and help each other but maybe the public, they may not use it in the right context sometimes and you don’t know how it’s going to be used and disseminated elsewhere.” (Biomedical Science, Group 6)
“I don’t know. I suppose we pay to come to university so it’s a bit kind of selfish but we paid for it so we should keep it” (Biomedical Science, Group 8)
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Both of the above students state money as one of the reasons behind not sharing with the general
public, as stated before it is as if they see the money as a kind of access fee. The first Biomedical science
student then goes on to explain that the public may use not the information in the right context, for
example they may not be able to understand it and therefore draw the wrong conclusions from it. This
brings into questions the public understanding of science, where the public, treated as an overly
homogenised whole and rarely viewed as differentiated in debates, reject science for a number of
reasons. (1) They have been excluded from determining the priorities, directions and resource allocation
in research and (2) they recognise in ways scientists themselves do not always do, the way science is
shaped by the career interests of scientists and finally (3) because in rejecting or resisting new science or
technologies they know something about the social context that some scientists do not.
The Biomedical scientists also feel that this information could then be used and disseminated elsewhere,
and whilst this would not be a problem with Open Education Resources, as they are free to be reused,
repurposed and shared under the creative commons license, the fact that the student feels that they
have paid an access fee in the form of a tuition fees would make this a negative comparable to piracy in
the entertainment industry. The elitism should also be pointed out in the first view, there is a long
tradition of scientists wanting to control the simplification of science that are made available for public
consumption (Kerr et al, 1997).
Another BMS student would see sharing as a positive step towards enhancing knowledge.
“Because then everyone can just share knowledge and then work on basic knowledge and then work on.”(Biomedical Science, Group 9)
This student assumes a similar view to that of sharing with other universities and that is the fact that
these shared resources can then be used to expand on, thus increasing the overall resource cloud, as
though this would prompt the development and availability of further resources. This would then pose
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further discussions as to who would have access to the resource cloud and who would be able to control
it?
Two Midwifery students stated that they consider sharing resources with the public as a positive step
for the following reasons,
“Because not everyone gets the same opportunities do they” (Midwifery, Group 1)
“Yes, they might not be able to afford it, especially e-‐journals and books and things” (Midwifery,
Group 1)
Whilst some of the students have the view that once they pay tuition fees they should be given higher
access to resources, they have failed to recognise the fact that some people may not be able to afford
this due to poverty and so on. The two statements from the midwifery students recognise this and also
state that not everyone may be offered the same opportunities so why should they be denied access to
resources?
The main reason that contradicts sharing with public is the fact that the information within the
resources shared may be misunderstood as demonstrated by the three following statements by
Midwifery students.
“I have no problem with the public having it, it’s what they do with it and what they understand by it and how would they access it.” (Midwifery, Group 2)
“Because, you know, if we’re paying for our education then we’re expecting, and also sometimes like knowledge, when people go onto the internet, can be quite dangerous if they don’t understand it and use it for the right reasons.” (Midwifery, Group 3)
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“I think that’s the problem in the medical profession anyway, when they Wikipedia things to death or anything like that and then they get 2 and 2 and come up with 9 and then an accident can be worse by the use of the internet” (Midwifery, Group 4)
The first response suggests that the student sees sharing with the public as acceptable. However, the
way in which the public might use and understand the information is viewed as a negative aspect of
OERs. This perhaps implies that the university student would have undergone prior learning and training
before coming to university and thus would be more likely to understand the information contained
within. However, a person that has not had this prior education may therefore misunderstand the
information, thereby potentially causing harm. The media may be one of the biggest culprits of this
causing public scares by incorrectly portraying information, this however assumes that there is an
unequivocal “correct” version.
The second Midwifery student confirms the above whilst also stating that the tuition fees mean that the
student should be given priority and access to this information. They then state that sharing with the
public can be dangerous as the information may be misused. This is especially true in the medical setting
as the general public may decide to treat illnesses using information found online whilst having had no
training which can be potentially lethal, although on the contrary the general public will also by
definition include trained scientists, midwives and science teachers.
This is supported by the statement from the third midwifery student which states that people often
misunderstand the information they are given and goes onto say that an accident can be made worse by
the use of the internet. On the other hand is it that doctors and midwives are sociologically uninformed
in that they fail to appreciate that any scientific information is apprehended by people in particular but
diverse contexts. Science is incorporated into existing systems of meaning and different social, political
and economic contexts.
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It should be noted that there is a whole sociology of health and illness but (1) health professionals are
themselves responsible for myriad of health problems, illnesses and deaths. The term for this being
iatrogenesis and (2) there are contradictory pressures on the public to not waste health professionals
time with minor problems but to consult “properly”. This leaves them to decide when they should “self-‐
medicate” and when they should not and (3) there is professional self-‐interest in control of information
because without professional expertise why should anyone pay for their service? (Illich, 1994).
5.4 Student working cultures
A fundamental part of the open educational resource philosophy is the notion of sharing content. In the
questionnaire, an overwhelming majority of students stated that they shared resources with their peers.
In the interviews therefore, this idea of sharing was explored more deeply to understand the
motivations and threats. There seemed to be three main reasons behind this. One of them was self-‐gain,
that is, showing others resources in the hope that they would share too. The second reason, which was
the predominant view among the midwifery students, is the notion of teamwork. This is the view that
the overall learning experience is enhanced if all of the participants work together to increase the
overall knowledge. This is perhaps because, as previously stated, many of the midwifery students have
been or are already practicing nurses and thus teamwork is important in their job roles. The last reason
behind sharing with peers seems to be a selfless willingness to help others, as the author can suggest no
alternative motive to explain this aspect of the evidence.
An example of the self-‐gain motives comes from two Biomedical Science students,
“You’d want somebody else to help you so you try and help somebody else.” (Biomedical Science,
Group 6)
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“Sometimes, To compare, like just to make sure if you’re right or wrong if you know what I mean”.(Biomedical Science, group 9)
The first student shows that the primary desire would be for help from others and this forms their
reason for helping their peers by sharing resources. A similar instance is found in the answer from the
second Biomedical Science student however they state that they would share resources to make certain
that their work is following the right path. Both answers thus suggest that they share resources for self
gain.
One of the midwifery students stated the following.
“What we do is we’re not doing a course where you do the course and then go off and become a whatever or have a degree in a certain subject, we’ve come from a team working environment, we’re already qualified nurses and we’ve been put in a situation where we’re going to be working as a team when we qualify as well. So getting us used to working with different people, although we’re all qualified nurses we all come from different areas of nursing and it’s useful when we can all share and collaborate together and work together and, you know, different ideas.” (Midwifery, Group 5)
The above student establishes that the Midwifery students come from a team-‐working environment as
they are already qualified nurses. The fact that they are studying Midwifery also means they are likely to
continue to practice in a team working environment post qualification. The student then goes on to say
that although they are all qualified nurses, they have different specialities and thus sharing and
collaborating together allows an overall advancement in the team’s knowledge.
Finally a Biomedical scientist stated the following when asked if they share with their peers and why,
“To an extent but not that I would put something up online kind of thing but if I found something useful and someone else was struggling I’ll send them that link or like go to this page, it’s quite helpful. Because I'm helpful” (Biomedical Science, Group 3)
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This student states that they only partially share their resources and would be willing to share these if
they saw that a peer was struggling. Their reason behind this is “because I’m helpful” and there is no
evidence to suggest an ulterior motive. Is it possible that this student would also expect others to share
with their peers if they saw signs of struggle? They state that “it’s quite helpful” so does this imply that it
would also be helpful to them? Another Biomedical Science student stated “They’re my friends, you help
them,”(Biomedical Science, Group 2) and whilst on the surface the statement does not pose evidence
for self gain, and would imply that the reason as to why this student shares with their peers is purely to
be helpful, there is more to be extrapolated. First, “They’re my friends” would also mean that these
friends regard the Biomedical Science student as their friend and secondly, the matter of fact “You help
them out” implies that this help would work in both directions. Friends help friends and because the
student is a part of this reciprocity then we begin to question whether they share their resources with
their peers because they are expected to as a part of this you help me, I help you system? Do they share
because they would want help in finding resources if they needed it?
One Biomedical scientist summarises the peer-‐to-‐peer sharing culture accurately, “We’re all in it
together really aren’t we?”(Biomedical Science, Group 6) Therefore implying that each student is aiming
towards the same goal, and mutual help along the way only benefits to enhance the journey towards
completion (of their course).
5.5 Student notion of resource quality and value
As part of this research, the author explored what students perceive to be a good quality academic
resource, and is this the same as what staff view as good quality materials? The next part of the focus
group aimed to establish what the student perceives as a quality resource.
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The majority of answers included criteria currently taught at degree level, as demonstrated by the
following Midwifery students answer,
“An accredited website, like a .org or something like that. You try and get things from universities or from our point of view it’s usually our core places like the Department of Health and NICE, proper research institutions that research into the specific thing that you’re looking for rather than just picking something off the net that’s written by anyone. A lot of journal articles, unless something has not been clinically updated or proven otherwise, you get the most up-‐to-‐date and you aim for the last 10 years.” (Midwifery, Group 4)
There are many criteria that make a resource high quality, many of which may have nothing to do with
OER status per se. The student aims to adhere to the hierarchy whereby a journal is of highest quality.
They also state that the date of publishing is important and whilst this is true, they have omitted to
mention the content of the resource as that’s where the quality would lie. The resources should be
interrogated by the person themselves, using their own critical faculties, as one measure of the quality
of that resources. If an institution produces a resource that’s very difficult to understand unless a
person is a specialist does that mean that the resource is of a high quality to the student? Is quality
relative to the reader’s ability to coherently understand the information within? A Midwifery student
had a different view on the quality of a resource, particularly regarding the subject.
“I think it’s what you’re interested in. Like when it comes to a dissertation I’m not going to do something I’m not interested in, you want to do it on a topic you’re interested in” (Biomedical Science, Group 1)
According to the above, it would seem that this student perceives quality to be relative and that quality
lies within the individual’s interest. However, there is again no mention of the actual content. Does the
format of the resource not influence quality? One would have thought that if it is easy to read and
follow it would be superior to material that is hard to follow to that particular person. This elicits the
question that since great literature is sometimes more inaccessible than pulp fiction, does it make it of
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lesser quality? In fact none of the responses contain substantial extensive reference to any form of
content, format or usability, referring to the difference between OER debates and about quality of
educational material debates. One Midwifery student did however mention quick access to the
information required.
“It depends what it’s for. If it’s for general learning, say for instance we’d had a lecture or you were reading an article and there’s a term or a word you’re not familiar with, I wouldn’t be too worried if I used something like Wikipedia if it’s just for what does this mean, in other words just a quick definition. If it was for an academic piece of work that I was submitting, then I’d want something to be far more solid and sort of valid, research based”(Midwifery, Group 5)
Although taught to be a poor resource at university, Wikipedia is suggested to be suitable for a quick
reference. This poses the question as to why? Many articles on Wikipedia are extensive and contain
vast amounts of information so what makes it usable? Does the fact that it contains a massive database
of articles add to its quality irrespective of possible mistakes? The student suggests that it is only for a
quick reference, does this mean that the articles are easy to follow and it is therefore simple to find the
information that’s needed? After all, the student makes her perception of a hierarchy of quality clear
with the following statement, “if it was for an academic piece of work that I was submitting then I’d
want something to be far more solid and sort of valid, research based.”
It would seem that value plays a major factor in the students’ decision to use a resource. The author,
date of publication, place of publication and the overall academic hierarchy all add to the status of a
resource but not necessarily quality and it is valuable resources that seem to hold an attraction to the
student. Is this because valuable resource would gain better marks, and that’s where the real interest
lies? The students were asked what makes an online resource valuable?
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As expected, the predominant value is given to accessibility; secondary elements contain usability, if the
resource is easy to understand and relevance. This is in accordance to the term “value” discussed in
Chapter two: Literature Review
Answers that stated accessibility as valuable were usually short and sharp. This suggests that the student
is confident that that’s where the true value lies, examples include “That it’s easy to access, you can get
it” and “Easy access” and “maybe it’s easy to get, you just have to find the books on shelves and stuff, it’s
easy to access.” (Biomedical Science, group 5)
One Biomedical Science student states that a resource is valuable “If it’s easy to understand. I like
pictures.” (Biomedical Science, Group 8) Another states that they are valuable “If they’re about the
subject you’re learning, if they’re good notes and they’re easy to understand I think they’ll be all
right.”(Biomedical Science, Group 2)
Finally usability is exemplified by the following student’s response,
I think it’s how it helps what you’re doing. Like say you have an exam or a practical, it’s how relevant it is to that. I think that’s probably the best way. (Biomedical Science, Group 4)
Accessibility could be related to the amount of time a person spends looking for a resource, common
sense would have it that the less time it takes to find something, the more accessible it is. Thus, from
this student’s point of view, less time spent searching adds to the perceived value of the resource. On
this basis, the students were asked whether the time they spend looking for a resource plays a factor
and why?
It is interesting to note the apparent need to save time. A plethora of responses seemed to have
urgency for a number of different reasons.
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“I think it does because the longer I spend finding it, I tend to lose my concentration and think about what I will do next.”(Biomedical Science, Group 5)
The above Biomedical science student states that time plays a factor because the longer it takes to find
a resource, the more likely they are to lose concentration. Another student states that the time spent
looking for a resource could be used doing other, more important things,
“Well yes because you could be spending that time revising, actually looking for the revision, so it does matter but within a limit it doesn’t bother me.” (Biomedical Science, Group 7)
The time spent looking for a resource could be used to revise as opposed to being used looking for the
material to use in that revision. Therefore, as mentioned above, accessibility adds to the overall value of
the resource. Some students state that they would stop their research if they spent too much time
looking for the resource.
“If you can’t find exactly what you want you’d give up. Yes.” (Biomedical Science, Group 8)
“It’s easy to get bored when you’re researching because you just go on one topic and then you’re not really reading the next page, you’re just going on it because you have to go on it.”(Midwifery, Group 1)
It is interesting that there seems to be an urgency culture, as if spending more time searching requires
excessive amounts of effort or mental capability, or does this mean that the attention span of a student
is not very long? One Midwifery student states that time does play a factor because if the resources are
easily accessible and easy to follow and understand then it is possible to go through and use more
sources of information, adding to the overall quality of the research,
“…the thing is, you know, when trudging through books for example, you never really know what you’re going to get without reading the index or the content and you still don’t know what you’re going to get until you’ve re-‐read that thing. Whereas on the internet or online you can just scan
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and have a quick look through and pick out so many key words for what you’re actually looking for and get the right research that you need” (Midwifery, Group 4)
Books are perceived as resources that consume a large amount of time. This is because it is not certain
what the book will contain, plus the student has to manually search it through the use of the index.
Online resources can be scanned and searched for using key words; this means that the results are more
likely to be relevant to the actual search. This means, that although books are perceived as higher
quality, as they can be written by a credible author, they are of a lower value due to the effort required
in research using that particular book. Thus it appears that students do not prioritize any sense of the
inherent quality in learning resources. Instead they place a high degree of emphasis on the perceived
value of a resource. The value of a resource to a student seems to comprise of; (1) status (a credible
source being viewed as likely to obtain them higher marks in an assignment; (2) accessibility in terms of
ease (so that their concentration does not waiver) and time efficiency (so that they can absorb
knowledge rather than search for it). Using online resources also means that the research can be
tailored through the use of the keywords which is not possible with books. Another Midwifery student
supports this,
“A lot of search engines and things now use key words on it for you to do some of it because it’s easy to find” (Midwifery, Group 4)
Taking all of these factors into consideration, the students were then finally asked what help they think
is required to persuade students to use Open Education Resources. As expected, awareness of OERs
was the predominant issue raised. The student stated that there should be more advertisement of OERs
in lectures and those resources should also be used by lecturers.
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“They should use them, like the teachers should use them in their lectures. They need to be more accessible, I wouldn’t know where to find anything” (Biomedical Science, Group 8)
Accessibility was another major issue that was raised, OERs that are more accessible, would be
perceived as more valuable and thus the student would be more likely to use them. Finally one student
suggested a platform onto which OERs would be uploaded and accessed from,
“I think just getting the word out about where to access information and how to actually go out and find the correct information easily. Even like if it can be all done on one platform, just one website, everything, that can take you, you can search through whatever you’re doing. Say for biomedical science you can search what module you’re doing and it will come up with all of the resources onto the same platform. So rather than going onto this site and going on to the next site, they’ll be all, so kind of like a search engine but specifically for what you’re searching.” (Biomedical Science, Group 1)
Although the student does not mention Jorum, their suggestion mirrors almost exactly what JORUM is
but only 10.6 percent (n= 28) of students stated that they were aware of JORUM (chapter four :
Questionnaire Analysis, page 36). This means that the tools suggested for an increased use of OERs are
already established and it is the lack of awareness and understanding of these that prevents the student
from using them.
5.6 Summary
In this chapter the author has examined the expressed views of biomedical science and midwifery
students who took part in interviews on OERs. It is clear that there is an overall lack of knowledge of
OERs particularly with regards to their access and usability and so more should be done to promote the
correct use of these. Sharing with the public is seen as more undesirable when compared to sharing with
other students from other universities mainly due the tuition fee system and an “I’ve paid for it so
should you” culture. This is irrespective of the implications on the student once they graduate and leave
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university. However some students recognise that not everyone has the same opportunities and so
should not be denied access simply because they may not be able to afford the fees. There seems to be
an overall concern for the misuse of OERs, particularly from the Midwifery students and whether the
general public would be able to draw the right conclusions. However overall, the students do recognise
that sharing and an open culture prompts an overall increase and enhancement in holistic knowledge of
subjects. Quality of a resource seems to be perceived to lie in the hierarchy of the scripture and the
overall status of its publishing place and it is the resources value that seems to influence the student’s
perception on usability, where accessibility is one of the most important and key components. This
seems to be influenced by the students desire to gain better marks and the desire to absorb information
rather than search for it.
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6 Chapter Six: Discussion
This chapter will summarise some of the key findings of this study and elaborate on the implications that
these pose for the future of the OER movement and OER research in general. It will be highlighted that
existing literature is sparse and a greater understanding of the student perception on OERs is required
because students form a large proportion of the OER target audience, as well as producers of OERs. The
findings from this research will be discussed in the context of the emerging literature.
6.1 Rationale for research
In their final report of the Learner Use of Online Educational Resources for Learning (LUOERL) project,
which was funded by the Higher Education Academy, Bacsich et al (2011) explicitly state that “the
literature on learner use of online resources is very immature”. Despite students and learners being the
primary users of OERs, little research had been done to evaluate student awareness and perception
toward OER and changing cultures of academia toward being more open.
There is also very little understanding of whether students use OERs in their academic work. In an online
seminar that looked at projects in the context of wider OER developments Beetham (2011) said “On a
broader scale, the lack of understanding of whether OERs are being used at all, by whom and in what
context – whether it’s highly supported by the curriculum or whether it’s in the wild…that’s something
that we really don’t have enough information about”.
Although there is a very small number of research studies looking at student sharing of learner
resources discussed in chapter one (OTTER, BrOME, MEDEV OOER projects), there is still a lack of
research looking at the specific sharing culture, and a consistent deficiency in understanding the
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motivations and barriers to sharing of learner resources, or with OERs as a specific focal point. There
appears to be almost no literature looking at the learner use of OERs and use in the student learning
environment, although in their review, Bacsich et al (2011) did describe research (Carsons MIT surveys
2004-‐2009) which showed that of students using OER, 44% said that it was to enhance personal
knowledge, 39% said that it was to complement a course and 12% said that it was to plan a course of
study.
6.2 Student Awareness of OER The student cohort included within this study was from the De Montfort University Health and Life
Science Faculty with the predominant respondents being Biomedical Science students and the year
group contributing most responses was first year students. The present research demonstrates that one
third of students claimed to have heard of the term OERs. From the term, many could define the salient
points that define an OER. The four defining aspects are accessibility, minimised restrictions, fee-‐free
and reusability. Of the students who that captured at least one characteristic of OERs, accessibility
comprised at least a half of the responses, so students felt that an open resource needed to be an
accessible one. This suggests that the students may have been deducing the inherent meaning of these
from the OER name and does not necessarily indicate therefore that they have a clear understanding of
OERs in terms of the importance of licensing for example. This is of particular importance because if
they do not know what OERs are, then students will not be able to make the most of the open licensed
learning resources available, or use open licenses as a means of searching for materials on some
internet resources. Most students claimed to have heard about a number of different OER projects
specific to De Montfort University, and a number of the students also claimed to have heard about
repositories and social network tools that contained OERs
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So how do students become aware of OERs? Stapleton et al (2011) found that a third of students are
directed to their resources by their lecturers. In the present study, two thirds of students said that their
tutors direct them to their learning resources which encompassed OER. Nearly two thirds of Stapleton et
al students said that they find their OERs via search engines, whereas two thirds said the same in the
present study. This would suggest that there is little inter-‐university variation in student resource
searching, and this raises the importance of academic staff as “gate keepers” to OERs, and also the
importance of publishers ensuring that OERs can be retrieved via search engines as a common means of
discovery.
6.3 Student culture of sharing There was evidence to suggest a culture of sharing amongst the majority of students, where both sexes
displayed willingness to share, with females marginally more willing than males. This is similar to the
findings by the OTTER project discussed in chapter two. This could be because of the cultural and social
upbringings of either sex. To the extent that they conform to societal expectations of gender roles, men
are more likely to be ruthless and competitive, and while these traits may still be found in women, they
still tend to be slightly more predominant to men. This could therefore lead to a slightly lower
willingness amongst males to share. This is in line with research published by Burford et al (1996) who
found that girls were more likely to share than boys, and that girls would negotiate more for the same
gender group. This research was carried out on pre-‐school aged children showing that such behaviour is
socially imprinted at a very early age rather than being innate. Burford (1996) further states that “…Boys
tend to be more interested in personal gain and girls in maintaining group harmony.”
When asked how they share their resources, over a half of students said that they use Facebook to some
extent, this is in contrast to the MEDEV OOER finding, where students expressed apprehensions about
enlisting social networking tools. This research found that Twitter or Google + was predominantly not
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used when sharing resources and as is the case with MEDEV OOER, the majority of sharing occurs via
email. This shows that whilst still willing to share, the fact that email is used predominantly suggests that
sharing information is not classed as a social exercise but rather an intellectual one. For example, one
often has access to university emails to a large group of peers who may not be accessible on a social
scale on social networks. Tutors also tend to share resources via emails which could influence the
students’ perception on the modes of sharing. Because of the advances in the past two years, social
networking has not only grown technology-‐wise, it has also become more acceptable as a mainstream
informal medium through which to communicate. This could explain the difference between the
findings of this study and that of MEDEV OOER. Websites are also increasingly encouraging sharing
information via social networking tools. For example, YouTube EDU integrates social networking buttons
on their webpages.
6.4 Other student learning and studying behaviours In the current study, understanding student motivations to share learning resources was a particular
focus of the research, since central to the underlying open education philosophy is the free sharing and
reuse of materials that belong to others. Students were questioned and interviewed about their sharing
practices. The majority of students claimed to regularly share materials with their peers, although a
minority of students who said they would not share with their peers because of possible accusations of
plagiarism and self interest in “standing out from others” in a competitive way as reasons for this
decision. It was interesting when students were questioned about the extent to which they would be
happy to share. The majority of students are amenable to sharing resources with students and
academics from other universities and vice versa, citing clear learning opportunities to viewing materials
produced by other academics. However, there was a distinction when considering sharing further afield,
and the majority of students were unsympathetic to the idea of sharing with the public. When probed
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further, students linked this to the idea of tuition fees. This may be particularly due to the tuition fee
system and a tuition fee for access culture, with no thought given as to what happens when the
students graduates and leaves university. One major point that could be raised is the fact that among
the “public” are people who have paid taxes (even the poorest pay taxes in the form of VAT). The
poorest often pay more tax as a proportion of their overall income than the rich (Sutherland et al 2008).
It then becomes unreasonable that these groups should be excluded from OERs. As most university
students are from more affluent backgrounds, their attitude shows more about their lack of social
awareness, in terms of where they stand in relation to their relative affluence in society.
Nevertheless, the tuition fee system is similar to the membership model discussed by Downes (2005).
Interested individuals would be invited to contribute a certain sum which would then take the form of a
subscription; this generates revenue and therefore prompts further development of OERs. Through this,
a self-‐sustaining cycle would have been achieved. Students pay an access fee, this pays for further
development of OERs which then prompts continuous subscription, as sharing within universities means
that tuition fees are paid each year, and once those payments stop, and the students stops studying and
thus becomes a member of the public, their access to new OERs would too stop. There was some
recognition to the fact that some students may not be able to afford the tuition fees and that not
everyone gets the same opportunities. This should not be the grounds on which the access to resources
is based.
Some interesting concerns were raised by students studying healthcare-‐related programmes within the
faculty. The midwifery students expressed an overall concern on the general public’s ability to draw the
“right” conclusions from openly available materials. However, overall the students tended to believe
that sharing and an open culture prompts an overall increase in holistic knowledge, but there were
worries regarding the making available of medical and professional educational content.
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There were concerns over quality and reuse. There may be a tension between the philosophy of OERs
(free and free for re-‐use) and the overall distribution of income and wealth (the already
disproportionately privileged students want to keep resources away from the already disproportionately
deprived general public). Furthermore, there is a tension between free to reuse and the midwifery and
scientist concerns that “the public” will misuse scientific information. For example, if it is free to reuse
then it is questionable whether we are in a position to say what it can and can’t be used for. On the
other hand, it is unclear whether there is a difference between reuse and re-‐interpretation, and if so,
how do we draw this distinction?
One midwifery student mentioned that we are in a “day and age where we’ve got to pay for it and why
should everybody else get it free.” This is an interesting view of OERs in relation to the tuition fee
system. The student pays to be examined by the university, to have tuition from lecturers and academic
staff and overall to have access to the university resources such as labs, computers and so on. But
currently they do not pay for the learning resources because they have to buy the books themselves
that actually aren’t provided by the lectures, or the resources that the students use are already available
on the internet anyway. This is with exception to the Athens account that universities use which allows
access to journals that would have otherwise have to be paid for, but which are inaccessible to everyone
else who do not have access to the university library. This corresponds to the Finch Report to the
government, where green and golden access is mentioned. “A key feature of the international
environment over the past decade has been the growth of the open access movement. That movement
has many different strands, and definitions and distinctions have become increasingly important as it has
grown: between access without payment to a version of a publication through a repository (often called
green open access) on the one hand, or to the version of record via the journal’s own platform (often
termed gold open access) on the other; and between the removal of the payment barrier giving a right to
read the article (sometimes termed gratis open access), and the removal in addition of most of the
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restrictions on use and re-‐use of the article (sometimes referred to as libre open access). The key points
here are that there are different routes to open access, and that it is not just a matter of removing
payment barriers, but of rights of use and reuse. Progress has not been as rapid as many had hoped, but
it is clear that we are already moving towards a regime in which more content is made accessible free at
the point of use to more people, in the UK and across the world”.
The statements of the respondents in this study show that it seems to be regarded as acceptable to
share with different universities; it is almost as if the tuition fees pay for a subscription that gives access
to OERs regardless of whom it was paid to. The second student talks about course materials as OERs
that would be potentially shared. They say that they would not view it as acceptable to share extensive
amount of material with the public, but they perceived “snippets” to be permissible. Again this
highlights the perception that tuition fees should give a higher access to information, which should not
normally be shared with the public. Sharing smaller packages of information might be viewed as the
equivalent of companies giving previews of their products to entice for a full purchase. Finally one
student observed that to keep producing good quality OERs would require income, highlighting the need
for funding to further the production of OERs. Through this a self-‐sustaining cycle would have been
achieved. Students pay an access fee, this pays for further development of OERs which then prompts
continuous subscription, as sharing within universities means that tuition fees are paid each year. The
students didn’t consider that once those payments stop, and the students stops studying and thus
becomes a member of the public, their access to new OERs would too stop.
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6.5 Limitations, Improvement and Future Research This research project evaluated student awareness and attitudes within a single health and life science
faculty, and future research would need to gain more representative data from a range of academic
specialties and across a number of institutions.
There were several other limitations encountered and raised by the scope of this study. In particular
when asked to comment on a list of websites to reveal which they thought was an OER or a repository
for an OER within the questionnaire, Wikipedia scored relatively low and YouTube was only mentioned
by around a half of the respondents. This raises the question of whether, by this point, the students
were confused by the question, or whether they were experiencing fatigue to the questionnaire for
what should have been an obviously positive response. Therefore questionnaire fatigue could be an
issue within areas of the survey as the student, or a participant in general can lose concentration and
not read or understand the questions posed in the manner intended by the researcher. To overcome
this, it would have been beneficial to divide the questionnaire into four sections which could be
randomly rotated between each student. This would eliminate some of the questionnaire fatigue for the
current latter sections.
When questioned about the resources that the student may use for their lecture supplementation and
their coursework assessments, over a half stated they used YouTube for both, whilst the majority
claimed to use journal databases for coursework much more than to supplement their lecture notes.
Wikipedia was a common choice to assists with both. Overall there was evidence to suggest that online
resources were more widely used to support lecture supplementation activities than for actual
coursework. This begs the question of what tutors are saying about credible sources of information that
might influence students’ behaviour to supplement their lectures rather than what they might be finding
independently to support their coursework. There is therefore need to research the tutors’ influence on
students, particularly with specific regard to their use of resources.
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The questionnaire mode of collection also appeared to have been an issue as although originally
purposed to be an online questionnaire, the students completed it via a paper form which was then
manually input online by the author. This was due to the low response rate of an email sent out to the
students inviting them to participate in the research, and as a compromise the author was forced to
produce paper copies for students to complete within teaching sessions. This actually assured a greater
response rate and gave students the option to complete the survey electronically or on paper, but
reduced the voluntary nature of the responses. More thought should have gone into considering how
participants would be selected prior to the start of the study to ensure a students with a range of
motivations would have been captured.
There were possible flaws in the interview transcribing process. Following the completion of the paired-‐
interviews, an independent scribe transcribed the audio data into a Microsoft word document. They
however omitted to identify each individual respondent separately which resulted in the author having
to refer to groups as opposed to each individual. This was a methodological error on part of the author
for omitting to include specific instructions to the scribe which should be rectified in future research.
There is an overwhelming need for further research looking at the student understanding of OERs and
their perceptions on these. For example, it would be interesting to see whether the results of this study
extend to different faculties, where different students may have different attitudes and approaches
towards their work. For example, art students might conceivably be more focused on being original as
this is what makes their work stand out whereas media students might plausibly rely more on group
work. Their academic thinking could be modelled via their courses and this could then potentially extend
to their attitudes towards sharing. There is also a need to examine students at a cross-‐ university level,
and also potentially students from the Open University who adopt more open study practices. There
may be a perception that in some universities students are more competitive and it would be interesting
94
to note whether this extends to attitudes towards OERs or whether they are as accepting of resources
from outside of their institution.
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7 Chapter Seven: Conclusion
7.1 Overview Open Education Resources (OERs) are teaching and learning materials whose key characteristics include
accessibility, minimal restrictions, fee freedom and reusability. Concepts underpinning the production
on OERs started in the USA in the late 1990s and the notion of open access is increasingly coming within
the view of policy makers, as evidenced by the Finch report into open access publications (Finch, 2012).
This dissertation has aimed to contribute to our understanding of how university students think about
and react to OERs.
Chapter one gave an overview of the OER definition and also provided a synopsis of the OER movement,
particularly with respect to the UK and the challenges that it faces moving forward. It was highlighted
that research focused on the student population was immature.
In chapter two we examined the previous literature on involvement with OERs with focus on staff and
student awareness and understanding of OER, and again it was noted that research with emphasis on
the student population is very limited.
In chapter three the methods to be employed in the dissertation were described, justifying why a mixed
methods approach incorporating both questionnaires, that are capable of proving a broad overview of
opinions, followed by paired interviews was adopted.
Chapter four presented and analysed data obtained from the questionnaire which analysed the student
awareness and perceptions of OERs and their overall attitudes about sharing resources in general.
Chapter five presented and analysed data obtained from the interview group students from the faculty
of Health and Life Sciences at De Montfort University. The most important and prevalent themes were
highlighted, discussed and supported by verbatim quotations.
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In chapter six we summarised some of the key findings obtained within this study and the implications
that these pose for the future of OER movement and OER research in general were elaborated. It was
also highlighted that the existing literature looking at the student population is sparse and a greater
understanding of the student perceptions on OERs is required because students form a large proportion
of the OER target users. Available literature was also used to compare the findings of this study.
7.2 Conclusions (A) Do students know about OERs and if so do they use them?
This study concludes that based on the results and research obtained, most students have not
specifically heard of OERs reflecting the infancy of OER activity in the UK and more likely reflecting the
fact that OERs were used on some undergraduate courses in the faculty and not others. Some students
have heard of projects specific to the university, and a number were familiar with repositories and social
network tools that contained OER. Students were also able to pin down one of the four main
characteristics of OERs although none were able to pin down all four. Few students sensed that OERs
could be adapted and re-‐used and also that they were openly available, although none mentioned the
use of an open license as of importance.
(B) What is the student academic sharing culture?
(C) What reasons underlie the academic sharing culture?
Central to the philosophy of open education is the sharing of resources, so it was interesting to get a
view on the sharing habits of students. A culture of peer to peer sharing was expressed by a large
majority. Accusations and worries about plagiarism and self interest in standing out from others in a
competitive way were the main reasons contradicting sharing. Although OERs are free resources, there
appeared to be a drop in willingness to share beyond the university system with the general public,
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instead students preferred to keep and share resources within and across different universities. This
appeared to be influenced by the tuition fee system and an overall “I’ve paid for it, so should you”
culture. Some students did appreciate the fact that not everyone has the same opportunities and so
should not be denied access simply because of their financial situation. Students do recognise that
sharing and an open culture prompts an enhancement in the holistic knowledge, although students felt
that some medical and professional subjects were not appropriate to be released to the public. The
quality of a resource seems to be perceived to lie in the hierarchy of the scripture and an overall status
of its publishing place. The resources value appears to influence the students’ perception on usability
and accessibility, with a preference by students to wish to absorb information rather than search for it in
the first place.
7.3 Implications for OER The implications for future education policy around OERs are that more needs to be done to increase
awareness of OERs and their value within the student population, with particular education focusing on
the four main beneficial factors of OERs (accessibility, minimal restrictions, fee freedom and reusability).
This in turn will prompt the students to access and use OERs and ultimately become producers and
participants in the culture, as is already happening. This would ease the sustainability challenge that the
OER movement is faced with. The creation of high quality of open materials is crucial to prompt the use
of OERs. To then generate further interest and traffic to these resources. Policy should further address
the accessibility and usability of OERs to ensure use by all learners without exclusion. This could
perhaps involve an OER website design template. If more OER websites were similar, then students
would be able to navigate such websites faster, and would be able to gain access to the required
information faster and so absorb it quicker. Currently, OERs are scattered within repositories, websites
and file sharing sites that hinder discovery and use.
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It is the recommendation of this study that research needs to widen the literature available on student
involvement, perceptions and attitudes on OERs. Cross departmental and inter-‐university wide research
would be beneficial in gaining a better understanding of the student standpoint on OERs as other
factors, such as which school they belong to, could play a factor influencing student attitudes. It is yet
unclear whether students on courses which are more competitive would also have competitive attitudes
towards OERs and vice versa. For example, will students on art courses, where there is a requirement for
originality, be less willing to share than students on a humanity course, where literature and views are
widely shared.
This study has raised questions regarding the sharing of resources with the public and the factors that
influence these, as there was a drop in willingness to share with the general population, that is,
population that is not enrolled on a university course and/or does not pay tuition fees. Understanding
this dynamic would be of interest to the OER community, and is something that is likely to contribute to
the sustainability challenge faced by the OER movement.
7.4 Final words To conclude, open education in the UK appears to be at a crucial crossroads, and whether or not OERS
come to dominate the future landscape of education seems to depend on the nature of the economic
relationship (if any ) between the student and the university, and the nature of the economic
relationship (if any ) between the university, the government, and as in the US, private enterprise.
99
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Appendix 1 – Questionnaire
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Appendix 2 – Paired Interview Topic Guide
Paired Interview Topic Guide
• Have you ever heard of the term open education resources? • Do you feel you can define open education resources in your own words? • Open education resources are teaching, learning and research resources that reside in the public
domain that have been released under an intellectual property licence. In light of that how do you feel about your university creating and sharing resources for free?
• How do you feel about the university sharing open education resources for free? • Do you share resources with your peers and why? • How do you feel about using resources developed by other universities and why? • What do you look for when evaluating a resource for quality? • What do you think makes an online resource valuable? • What help is required to get students to use open education resources?
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Appendix 3 -‐ Participant information sheet for Open Education Resources Research Version 1.01 04th December 2011 Study Number:
Open Education Resources Research
What is this study and what are its aims? This study aims to identify the student perceptions, awareness and understanding of Open Education Resources and the quality of these resources thereof through a series of questionnaires and focus groups.
What are Open Education Resources exactly? Open Education Resources are digitised materials, which can be reused for teaching, learning, research and more that are made available through open licensing. Essentially they are source materials which can be edited and used without having to worry about copyright.
Do I have to participate? Absolutely not, your participation is voluntary and you are free to withdraw at any time without giving a reason.
What research is involved?
Questionnaire -‐ You will be invited to take part in a short online survey (using SurveyMonkey) through the university student email system.
Focus Group – You will be invited to take part in a focus group. This will involve sitting in a small group of people and discussing Open Education Resources. Prompt questions will be given to help your group with the conversation.
Guided Observation-‐ You will be invited to sit by a computer and a research question will be given to you. You will then be asked to use the internet to find the answer to the question. A second person will be in the room and will record the pathway of your research.
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What will happen to the data then? All data will be held confidentially and none of the responses will be linked directly to you. Digital sound recordings will be transcribed and the recordings will be destroyed. All data will be kept anonymous and secure.
Do I have to sign anything? You will be asked to sign a consent form to show that you have given your permission to take part in this study and that you allow your data to be used within the scopes of the research.
Are there any risks? There are no expected risks associated with participation in this study.
What will I gain from taking part? You will most likely gain knowledge and an understanding of Open Education Resources. Your input will help to steer future Open Education Resource developments and you will also be given a summary of this study and its findings.
What if I wish to complain? Please raise any difficulties with Libor Hurt at [email protected]. If they are unable to give you a satisfactory answer please contact the research supervisors Dr Viven Rolfe [email protected] or Dr Simon Dyson [email protected]. If you have any major complaints please contact Professor Paul Whiting (Chair of Health and Life Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee at De Montfort University) [email protected]
Who is organising this study? This study is a part of Libor Hurts MSc by Research course and also forms a part of HEFCE funded project at De Montfort University titled HALS.
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Contact for further information: If you would like any further information about the study please contact Libor Hurt at [email protected]. If you would like any further information about HALS please contact Dr Vivien Rolfe at [email protected]
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Appendix 4 -‐ Participant Consent Form – Semi Structured Paired Interview Version 1.02 4th December 2011 Participant Identification Number for this study: Study Number:
Consent Form – Semi Structured Paired Interview
Title Of Project: A research project to evaluate De Montfort University Student perceptions of Open Education Resources (OER) and the quality thereof Name of Chief Investigator: Libor Hurt Name of Primary Supervisor: Dr Vivien Rolfe Name of Secondary Supervisor: Dr Simon Dyson
Please Tick 1. I confirm that I have read and understand the information sheet dated ………………..
(version…………….) for the above study. I have had the opportunity to consider the information, ask questions and have had these answered satisfactorily
2. I understand that my participation is voluntary and that I am free to withdraw at any time,
without giving any reason, without my education being affected
3. I agree to take part in the interview and for that to be audio-taped.
____________________ _______________ _____________________ Name of Participant Date Signature ____________________ _______________ _____________________ Name of Person Taking Consent Date Signature
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When completed; 1 for participant, 1 for researcher site secure file Appendix 5 – Database Preview