At OER conference, speakers push for academic libraries to promote adoption @insidehighered

" ... The conference, which concludes today, comes on the heels of two reports suggesting that adoption of OER has the potential to grow dramatically in the next three years -- if faculty members are able to discover the resources they need. One survey, conducted by the Babson Survey Research Group, found that nearly three-quarters of faculty member respondents in the U.S., or 73.4 percent, said open resources offer the same or better quality as traditional textbooks. Also of importance to the OER movement: 77.5 percent anticipated they either will or might use open resources in the next three years. Only 6.2 percent said they were not interested. Another report, released as OER advocates gathered for the conference's first day on Wednesday, contained good news about student attitudes toward open resources. Research out of the OER Research Hub, housed at the Open University in the United Kingdom, found 55.7 percent of surveyed students in 180 countries said open resources improve student satisfaction. Another 60.1 percent said they were more interested in the topics taught in courses using open resources than those in courses using traditional textbooks ..."