To Share or Not to Share, That Is the Question Students and Their Attitude Toward OER

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) are considered to be of central importance in the [German] federal government's OER strategy (BMBF 2022). The university described in this paper is particularly committed to promote OER, which is being implemented in an OER competence center. Until now, the focus on OER has been on teachers. Students played a secondary role. This is set to change in the spirit of co-creation of materials: Students are to be actively involved in the OER cycle and their participation evaluated. To this end, the competence center conducted an online student survey on their attitudes toward sharing learning materials. A total of 322 students of all faculties participated. Based on the evaluations by Grimm und Rödel (2020), Chen und Hendricks (2023), and Buntins et al. (2024), the questionnaire deals with students' attitudes and knowledge of OER and Creative Commons licenses, as well as the platforms used and the conditions under which learning materials are shared. Based on the research questions, the selection and design of the research method, the evaluation procedure, and selected results are described. Of particular note are the findings on student attitudes toward openness and concerns about sharing. A critical reflection will also be made on whether the evaluation method and survey design were suitable for answering the research questions and what would need to be revised for a new survey.