Awareness and the use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) among Academics and Students in Teaching-Learning process: A case study at Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are useful tools in teaching and learning process and are widely used throughout the world. It can be used to make the teaching learning process more effective in higher education and when the number of students is increasing day by day with limited resource capacity. Faculty of Agriculture, University of Ruhuna also has been using OERs since recently. However, no attempts has been made to evaluate to what extent the OERs are used by the students and academics. The present study was done to explore staff and students' awareness and attitudes towards OER as an effective tool to increase the quality of the university education. The objectives of this study were (1) to Find out the available OERs in agriculture, (2) to assess the awareness on OER of stakeholders and (3) to evaluate the attitudes on using and sharing OER. Primary data were collected using a questionnaire survey and formal discussions. The analysis revealed that Agora and AIMS were the most important agriculture related OERs. The awareness about the OER among students was low compared with staff members. Majority of staff members preferred to upload their documents. Also most of students preferred to get lecture notes via web. Both, the staff and the students accepted OER as highly helpful for the academic purposes and to acquire the extra knowledge. The faculty administration can search possibilities for improving the facilities for e-learning using the OER facility.