North Dakota University System faculty are just beginning to understand the potential for open educational resources. The Open Educational Resources Initiative in North Dakota is the result of a 2013 Legislative interest urging the North Dakota University System (NDUS) to reduce the cost of textbooks estimated to be $1,100 per year per student. The idea is now becoming a reality with the launch of a statewide initiative.

This study is a statewide replication of the Babson Survey Research Group national investigation of OER adoption and will be used as a benchmark, against which future advances will be measured. The North Dakota results, based on responses from faculty at the 11 NDUS campuses, are compared with those from the national sample of over 2,000 faculty members. Some of the key findings:

Faculty are not very aware of open educational resources. Depending on the strictness of the awareness measure, between two-thirds and three-quarters of all faculty classify themselves as unaware on OER.
NDUS faculty are more aware of open educational resources than their counterparts nationally.
Similar to their peers nationally, NDUS faculty are taking the initiative with OER adoption. NDUS faculty report similar barriers to adoption; however, they also report that they are currently using a variety of OERs for instruction (primarily videos).
More than half of NDUS faculty and those at national public institutions report that they are not sufficiently aware of OER to judge its quality.
The most significant barrier to wider adoption of OER remains a faculty perception of the time and effort required to find and evaluate it.
Faculty are the key decision makers for OER adoption. At the two-year Associates level, North Dakota University System faculty enjoy significantly more autonomy in the selection of course materials than their peers who teach at the associates level at public institutions nationally.
A majority of North Dakota University System faculty say that they “will” or “might” use open resources in the next three years.

Keywords

licenses · OER adoption · OER awareness · OER barriers · OER policy · OER vs. traditional resources