Open content licensing for educators/Course dashboard/Announcements/14.02 Survey results

Hi everyone,

We promised to share the results of the fair and reasonable practice survey. You can access the live results as responses are submitted online.

If you haven't done so yet, please take a few minutes and [ submit your response online] - even if you're a quiet OCL4Ed observer or not participating actively in the course. We've been collecting this international data since March 2011 and your responses will help us track changes in perception over time.

There are limitations with this format of data collection as the instrument does not provide adequate opportunities for respondents to articulate the nuances underpinning the rationale of their choices. Nonetheless, it does provide a rough indication of what participants consider fair and reasonable.

The majority of respondents have heard of the concepts of Open Educational Resources (71%) and Creative Commons (83%) prior to joining the course. We can reasonably assume a considerable halo effect in these results given that learners are largely recruited from an audience that is already interested in OER. Notwithstanding the interest in OER, the majority of participants 55% have not or not sure of applying a Creative Commons licence to their own work before.

Educators appreciate the value of sharing learning resources with 88% of respondents agreeing that learning materials should be free for all learners. Of interest is that quality is frequently cited as a barrier for not using OER. It is refreshing to note that 88% of our respondents disagree that they are reluctant to use OER generated by other authors because there is no guarantee of the quality of the materials. Of course, professional teachers can discern the quality of the materials they're using to support learning - but I'm intrigued by the references educators sometimes make about quality concerns associated with OER.

Are there any other results which you find interesting or surprising? Feel free to share your thoughts in the [ open forum] or microblog post.