5 Pippa Thorogood McLennan – Measuring use of OERs at Pima Community College through a survey
Goal – To understand the awareness of OERs and their use at Pima Community College through a survey. Data collected from the survey will serve as a baseline for current OER awareness and inform next steps of a strategy to increase use of OERs at Pima Community College.
This activity will support a measurable from the internship to enhance understanding of OER and its impact on the library field, curriculum development, resource management, and student success.
Specific steps – To understand the awareness and use of Open Educational Resources (OERs) at Pima Community College through development of a survey for completion by current students and faculty. The activity will invite current students and faculty at Pima Community College in Fall 2024 semester to complete the survey. The survey will be available through the College’s D2L portal.
The survey is ten questions asking respondents about their current awareness of OER course content at Pima Community College, whether they are undertaking courses with OER course content and any benefits they have found in using OERs.
Collaborators on the development of the survey will be the Pima Community College OER Director, Chelsea James and Fall 2024 semester interns from the University of Arizona. Support to distribute the survey through Pima Community College channels is sought from the College’s D2L Administrator, social media teams and faculty to communicate the availability of the survey. Resources from across OERizona and other OER networks will be consulted to inform question structure and data collection.
To support this activity, engagement and advocacy from faculty and senior staff at Pima Community College is needed to increase awareness of the survey and completion. The activity is dependent on the integrity of the information technology platforms to support the survey format and collection of data which in turn will advise results and reporting. A lack of responses to the survey is a possible barrier to the success of this activity.
The survey be available on Pima Community College’s D2L portal at the end of Fall semester 2024. The end date is yet to be confirmed.
Notes on the process – The activity was discussed within the forum of the University of Arizona interns and OER Director during Fall 2024 semester. Including reasoning for survey, content of survey and how the benefits of the survey will support the other activities. Each activity produced by this semester’s intern group will support the development of the OER strategy at Pima Community College.
Conclusions: This survey is a first step is understanding the awareness and use of OERs at Pima Community College and part of a long term strategy to measure OER use across course content at the College. The results of this survey will be analysed with other statistics gathered at Pima Community College since 2023 on the use of course materials, the affect on cost of course materials on students and graduation rates of students from Pima Community College. The aim is to increase the use of OERs throughout the College’s course content to support student learning, minimise the financial load on students, increase enrolment across all courses at the College and graduation rates. Supporting the College’s commitment of equity and social justice.
Survey here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zMRx5P3ijrdLc6BVzzSzE0bBWlFQlGNHLdaNTsdCBJ4/edit
Supporting Resources:
James, Chelsea (2024) OER updates Fall 2024/Spring 2025 link here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zijH7guumrv3ViZp_jR2WNvhy4dT5o9u9Yg_Cwz1neU/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.pyoameivrjvb
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (2023) Open Educational Resources Promotions Guide: Measuring Impact LibGuides link here: https://guides.library.illinois.edu/OERGuide/MeasuringImpact