A Study of STEM Usage and Perceptions of OER at a Large Research University
Fig . 11 . The reason why to use OER
It was evident from the survey that OER is an important resource for faculty and graduate students ( Table 1 ). The use of OER is gaining importance in higher education with the availability of more resources ( McKenzie 2017 ). The greatest challenge is how librarians can find a platform to initiate a conversation to work with campus stakeholders when identifying OER for the curricular and
research needs at the institutional level , and for library liaisons to work with academic departments they support to raise awareness about OER in any medium for a specific discipline or field of study . This final question is somewhat troubling internally for libraries but can be seen as an opportunity to create new marketing and branding initiatives that promote OER .
Table 1 : How important are OER in academia as a whole or in a specific field of study ?
Number of faculty
Number of graduate students / post-docs
Extremely important |
6 |
14 |
Very important |
20 |
20 |
Moderately important |
13 |
9 |
Slightly important |
13 |
6 |
Not at all important |
6 |
3 |
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