Open Educational Resources and Barriers to Adoption at Hudson County Community College

Abstract

This quality improvement project looked at the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) at Hudson County Community College (HCCC). The OER Project Steering Committee at HCCC was interested in understanding faculty perceptions of OER and identifying barriers to the use of OER, and it was critical to the mission of the college and the strategic plan to find a sustainable solution to support high quality and affordable educational resources. Challenges facing the OER Project included the rate of adoption of OER and the limited data on take-up. The goal was to collect data in order to understand stakeholder perceptions of OER and faculty use, or barriers to use. To do this, I asked the following questions: 1) How did the OER Project at HCCC develop since fall 2019? 2) What factors did stakeholders perceive played a role in the adoption of OER? 3) What were the barriers to take-up and use of OER at HCCC? I found that adoption of OER increased since the start of the OER Project, and even more faculty were using OER than was reported on the OER Project website. I also found that coordinators played a key role in OER adoption, and that faculty perceived that creating an OER course was time- and labor-intensive. Furthermore, student involvement in the OER Project was very limited, and faculty awareness of incentives for developing OER courses was inconsistent. Based on these findings, I offered the following recommendations. First, continue to study adoption and use, and provide easy pathways for reporting. Second, develop a plan to recruit, train, and support coordinators in the adoption of OER. Third, create a marketing and awareness campaign to highlight existing initiatives. Fourth, establish multiple touch points for student education, involvement, and data collection. Finally, if HCCC can solidify funding and allocation structure for OER course development, establish distribution procedures, and publicize incentive programs, I expect faculty take-up will increase significantly.