Needs for and utilization of OER in distance education: a Chinese survey

Abstract

The recent developments within open educational resources (OERs) and open licensing have generated considerable interest among distance educators since open and distance learning is supposed to be the largest consumer/user of and contributor to OER. In China, given the policy of development and use of elaborate courses, conversion of radio and television universities into open universities, establishment of the China Open Resources for Education, and adoption of Creative Commons by the Chinese government, there seems to be further expansion of OER movement in the country. Against this backdrop, it was imperative to know how distance education/open university teachers use OERs and what constraints they face in doing so. This study reports a structured questionnaire and open-ended interview findings on all the 74 teachers of the Beijing Open University for four variables: awareness, needs, utilization, and constraints. The findings show that while the teachers were generally aware of OERs, they misunderstood all web resources as OER; the Chinese elaborate courses dominated the perception and use of OER; and those who used OER mainly required it for teaching content, relevant research, and for adopting teaching methods. Searching for OER, choosing appropriate OER and copyright issues were the common constraints to effective use of OER. These results have been discussed further in relation to international research studies on OER, the context of Chinese distance/open university education, and the Chinese OER policy.

Keywords:

• open educational resources
• need and utilization of OER
• Chinese open university
• distance teachers

Acknowledgments

The authors thank Beijing Open University for supporting the implementation of online questionnaire and interviews in this study.