Awareness and Attitudes to the Open Content Movement

This research investigates the current awareness of, and participation in, the Open Content Movement at one UK Higher Education Institution.

The Open Content Movement and Open Educational Resources (OER) can be seen as a potential method for reducing time and cost of Technology Enhanced Learning developments, however it’s sustainability, and to some degree, it’s success, is dependent upon a critical mass and large-scale participation. Teaching staff were invited to participate in a questionnaire. Respondents (n=59) were open to the idea of sharing their own content, and similar to other studies, demonstrated existing practices of sharing resources locally, amongst colleagues, however there was little formal, large-scale sharing using suitable licenses. The data gathered concurs with other research suggesting a lack of awareness to the Creative Commons licenses as well as a lack of participation with large Learning Object Repositories.