In India, the phenomenon of open educational resources (OER) is made possible by the widespread use of information and communication technologies (ICT) and open source technologies. Over the last decade, national institutions have embraced the concept of collaborative teaching and learning practices. The idea of shared resources has been successfully mooted by initiatives such as the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), the Open Source Courseware Animations Repository (OSCAR), the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTEL), the Virtual Academy for the Semi-Arid Tropics (VASAT) and Indira Gandhi National Open University’s(IGNOU) FlexiLearn. Further, there is substantial policy support and public funding for such initiatives, thanks to the provisions made in the 11th Five Year Plan of the Government of India.

Whilst knowledge resources are widely available, India’s OER movement is still in its infancy. This is because the term “open” in OER not only implies availability of educational resources for free use by teachers and learners, but also necessitates the free use of software tools, licences and best practices. Also, the 4Rs of OER (Wiley, 2009) demand a paradigm shift in the way individual teachers, learners and institutions perceive the culture of sharing.

Knowledge, Attitude, Practice (KAP) is a well-accepted method used by social scientists to study prevalent beliefs and misconceptions amongst people regarding any new idea or phenomenon. The KAP approach tells us what people know about certain things, how they feel and how they behave(Kaliyaperumal, 2004, p. 7). By applying the KAP framework to survey responses, we are able to understand perspectives, experiences and insights across an entire range of stakeholders, as well as capture a range of responses from each of the stakeholders.

In this report, we wish to examine the extent to which individuals and institutions in India are ready for the OER phenomenon. Our report is structured around the following signposts:
• Overview of higher education in India.
• Impact of ICT on higher education.
• Precursors to OER in India.
• Quantitative analysis of the survey data.
• KAP as a model for a qualitative study of the sample collected by the project team at Wawasan Open University, Malaysia, as part of the International Development Research Centre-funded PANdora project.
• Conclusions and future pointers.

Keywords

collaborative learning and teaching · India · KAP · OER · open source technologies