Framework to understand postgraduate students’ adaption of academics’ teaching materials as OER
Date
2012
Authors
Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl
Paskevicius, Michael
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Open Educational Resources and Social Networks: Colearning and Professional Development
Abstract
This chapter addresses a way of responding to one of the key challenges of OER contribution, namely academics’ lack of time to re-purpose teaching materials originally intended for campus-based face-to-face lectures as stand-alone Open Educational Resources (OER). It describes how masters’ students, tutors and interns at the University of Cape Town have been engaged to support the innovative practice of adapting academics’ existing teaching materials into OER.
COLEARNING OBJECTIVES
This paper identifies that there are relatively few studies that have investigated the role of postgraduate students in the OER creation process, even though this process may be happening in practice. Moreover it suggests that there is a lack of information about why postgraduate students are motivated to assist their lecturers to adapt materials as OER. It uses Rogers’ (1983; 1995) Diffusion of Innovation theory and specifically his theory of Perceived Attributes and its extension by Moore and Benbasat (1991) as a framework for understanding these postgraduate students’ willingness to participate in this innovative practice.
REUSABILITY
This chapter can by be reused by those who are grappling with ways to encourage and support academics to contribute their teaching materials originally used in face-to-face lectures as publicly available OER. It can also be used by those who might want to appoint postgraduates as OER assistants to academics and help them identify the key attributes and factors that seem to influence OER adoption by postgraduate students.
Description
Keywords
Open Educational Resources (OER), teaching materials, postgraduate students
Citation
Hodgkinson-Williams, C., & Paskevicius, M. (2012). Framework to understand postgraduate students’ adaption of academics’ teaching materials as OER. Open Educational Resources and Social Networks: Colearning and Professional Development, 1-15. http://oer.kmi.open.ac.uk/?page_id=2337.