Open Educational Resources Katie Brantley, Kelsey Kane, Stephanie Zimmer, Victoria Geier Introduction Open Educational Resources (OER) is teaching, learning, and research resources available online, through a property licensed organization. Theses materials provided range from learning objectives to textbooks or the courses themselves. OER branched from the Open Educational Resource movement in 2001, and was pioneered by the Hewlett Foundation. The main concept of OER is for the teacher to take information from the internet and bring it into the classroom. The other resources may be available online for the students use outside of the classroom. OER would be used in the classroom to enhance the information that the teachers can provide to their students. For the purpose of the survey we focused on using OER in the classroom. Methods After conducting our research about OER we came up with two research questions to determine if future teachers believed that they would benefit from OER. - Should teachers make Open Educational Resources a core reference to their teaching? - Should they base their whole educational approach on this one resource? Our survey was created and conducted through Survey Monkey, an online survey website. The questions consisted of three short answer, two yes/no questions and five multiple choice questions. The survey was emailed to a Winona State University organization, Education Minnesota Student Program. Sixty four future educators participated in the survey. The questions on the survey are as follows: How do you feel about incorporating computers into class work, whether it be inside the classroom or outside? What is the most prominent flaw to teaching children through computers? Less child-child interaction Not reaching all children’s learning styles Less teacher-child interaction Dependence on technology to learn 3. Is the Internet a viable source to teach learners of all ages? Yes No 4. Open Educational Resources is a worldwide learning network of shared teaching and learning materials made freely available online. What type of information would be beneficial for teacher through Open Educational Resources, OER? a. Lesson plans b. Research from others c. Ratings about personal posted work d. Other 5. At what point should a teacher look into referencing OER? a. After their career has started b. Before they enter college c. Once they want to be educators d. After all other options for references are exhausted 6. At what grade should teachers introduce OER to their students? a. Elementary School b. Middle School c. High School d. College 7. In your opinion, whom would OER benefit most? a. Teachers b. Elementary students c. College students d. Middle/high school 8. What concerns would you have with allowing OER in the classroom? 9. Do you believe OER is a reputable enough organization for teachers and students to trust? 10. As a professional, how would you utilize OER in your classroom? Findings This chart shows that 52 percent of the future educators surveyed believe that the internet is a viable source to teach learners of all ages, and 48 percent did not. This information was taken from question 3 of our survey. This chart represents what type of information that future educators believe will be most beneficial if they were to use OER. 83 percent of the future educators believe that they would benefit from the most. 13 percent said that research from others would be beneficial, followed by 3 percent with ratings about personal posted work, and 1 percent saying other. These findings came from question 4 of our survey. This chart represents what grade future educators believe that teachers should introduce OER to their students. 43 percent of those surveyed believe that middle school is when teachers should introduce OER. 41 percents believed elementary school, followed by 15 percent that chose high school and 1 percent that chose college. These results came from question 6 on our survey. In general the rest of our survey questions proved that many future educators believe that Open Educational Resources can be beneficial for them and their classroom. However there were some concerns about reaching all children’s learning styles, and also the dependence on technology as a result. We believe that those future educators that participated into the survey had the right idea but did miss understood the idea that the teacher is using the computer to bring information from the internet into the classroom, rather than that students physically utilizing the computer in the classroom. Therefore we feel that the data that we collected could be a skewed because they did not have the best understanding of what the questions were asking. Conclusion From our findings we believe that although many future educators found Open Educational Resources to be beneficial, we believe that they did not fully understand the concept of OER. If they were able to do their own research they may be able to better understand exactly how OER works. Not only the research, but a clear understanding of what OER is could give the future educators a better idea of whether or not they could OER in their classroom. Through out our research we have learned that utilizing open educational resources is a controversial topic when weighing the pros and cons. On a personal level we are on the fence about whether or not Open Educational Resource is a useful tool, because information when researching is limited and not clear on how to access the information that’s provided. With further research and a better understanding of what resources are exactly provided we feel that we could use this in our own classrooms. References Baker, J. (2007, June 20). OER introduction. Retrieved from http://cnx.org/content/m14466/latest D’Antoni, S. Open Educational Resources: reviewing initiatives and issues. Open Learning: the Journal of Open and Distance Learning, 24(1). Retrieved from http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/section? Content