Are we ready to go open? Faculty preparedness for adopting OERs in their courses at FCCU

In today’s rapidly changing economy, the rising costs of traditional textbooks and issues of affordability by students are a primary concern for the library, faculty and students. The conventional learning formats are limited in terms of access & use which may affect the student-success ratio. Therefore, it was the need of the hour to introduce Open Educational Resources (OERs) in our academic teaching culture as they are dynamic, open, fair and flexible to use & reuse. In order to do so, we at FCCU are aiming to assess the faculty’s current practices of creating course packs for students followed by determining their awareness & readiness for adopting OERs in preparing their course packs for the future. We started off by searching for an appropriate faculty awareness survey toolkit on OERs. Two surveys were helpful, one obtained from Gonzaga University (a reference to OpenEd Conference 2022) and the other from the American University of Beirut. We adopted the surveys and created a modified questionnaire which reflects our faculty considerations. This poster presentation will share the survey results of faculty’s recent pathways, their awareness & readiness to take up this challenge of moving from traditional copyrighted material towards open learning & pedagogy. We will also be able to determine the need for staff & faculty training to adopt and create OERs, making further arrangements for campus marketing, and initiatives to encourage faculty to build their interest in using OERs.