What are the trends in OER awareness and adoption in higher education? This is a question I wonder about. Tonight I watched an Open Ed 2021 session that addresses OER awareness: Julia Seaman the Director of Research at Bay View Analytics talked about “OER Awareness and Adoption Trends in US Higher Education through the COVID-19 Pandemic.”Julia and Jeff Seaman have been conducting educational survey research on higher education for decades. The goals of the surveys were to understand the role of OER in higher education and to quantify the perceptions and awareness of OER. The respondents were geographically diverse and representative of the institutions. The William and Hewlett Foundation, Sloan Foundation, and Kaplan sponsored the surveys. Julia Seaman explained that they have conducted the survey over the last seven years with similar questions year to year. Seaman polled the audience to ask how much do you think OER awareness has changed since the 2014-2015 academic year? In the fall of 2020, most faculty were aware of open educational resources. OER awareness on its own may not be a great measurement was Seaman’s conclusion: it depends on the categories used! Seaman revealed that since 2014 OER awareness increased by 20%. Further, the cost is a common factor for OER awareness. OER use overall is less than awareness. Not surprisingly, instructors teaching introductory courses used OER more often. Seaman shared quotes from respondents about how OER is still not well understood. The next series of questions were responses from faculty during the pandemic. Largely institutions were hands-off regarding options and initiatives for updating course materials. Seaman predicted higher awareness of OER initiatives but it barely changed compared to prior years, and her prediction was that faculty were probably very busy during the shift and it was difficult to identify these initiatives. Interestingly, they concluded from their survey data that “there was limited impact to OER awareness and use.” Next, Seaman spoke about their interest in identifying factors that impact and drive OER adoption. The major factors that helped were faculty with digital experience or making changes to their courses were more likely to adopt OER and this grew during the pandemic. Julia Seaman mentioned that commercial publishers have caught up with OER in many features and this includes cost. During the question and answer session, they mentioned that all of the reports are published on their website. Julia Seaman mentioned that they are standardizing and testing questions about open pedagogy. I am interested in this and will keep Bay View Analytics in mind.
