Perception of educators on open educational resources (OER) repositories in higher education

Abstract:  Objective:  Repositories of open educational resources (OER), driven by national and institutional policies, have been created by different countries to support teaching and learning. Considering the various functionalities that OER repositories present, this study aims to capture the perception of educators from higher education Brazilian institutions about the importance and the use of these repositories for research, use of OER and support for teaching practices.

Methods:  In addition to qualitative and exploratory research, this study adopts quantitative methods, aiming to analyze and compare the responses obtained through the application of a questionnaire with 130 respondents.

Results:  Based on the results, most of the features of the OER repositories obtained a medium and high degree of evaluation regarding their importance and use. It was also observed that the assessed items were assigned a higher degree of importance than degree of use.

Conclusions:  Thus, it is concluded that although most of the functionalities of the repositories are important and used by educators, it is necessary to explore those that demonstrate medium and low valuation in importance and use, in order to promote OER in teaching and learning practices, with the aim of support of incentive policies for the creation of OER and guidelines for the adoption of OER, considering open licenses for use.