Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) is a common technique utilized in the development of assessment instruments. The key question when performing this procedure is how to best estimate the number of factors to retain. This is especially important as under- or over-extraction may lead to erroneous conclusions. Although recent advancements have been…

One particular topic likely on the minds of many university faculty, staff, and administrators starting a new academic year is budgets. While budget constraints are nothing new to libraries, many academic departments are starting to see more cuts in areas of faculty research and curriculum development. Academic libraries are in a prime position to…

As states and districts transition to college- and career-ready standards and aligned assessments, the need for high-quality instructional materials is clear. Open Educational Resources (OER) offer a low-cost solution with high potential to assist teachers nationwide in helping students meet the demands of higher standards. More and more…

Purpose: The purpose of this work is to present a prototype of the system and the results from a technical evaluation and a study on possible effects of recordings with active camera control on the learner. An increasing number of higher education institutions have adopted the lecture recording technology in the past decade. Even though some…

The global open education movement is striving toward openness as a feature of academic policy and practice, but evidence shows that these ambitions are far from mainstream, and levels of awareness in institutions is often disappointingly low. Those advocating for open education are seeking to widen engagement, but how targeted and persuasive are…

This study is designed to explore the process by which faculty members select the educational materials that they employ in their courses. The most common of these is the required textbook--faculty members typically select one or more books that all students are required to use through the duration of the course. Faculty also employ a wide range…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand whether certain theoretical benefits that open educational resources (OER) might have on teacher practice were being realized by a group of secondary teachers using open science textbooks. In surveys and interviews, teachers were asked to describe their classroom practice before and after…

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the appropriateness of open-access reading materials for an intensive English for Academic Purposes (EAP) course, and to provide teachers with a set of criteria to select online texts systematically and efficiently. The Corpus for Veterinarians (VetCorpus) was compiled and analyzed using Lextutor corpus…

The paper describes the concept of a federated ecosystem for Open Educational Resources (OER) in the German education system. Here, a variety of OER repositories (ROER) (Muuß-Merholz & Schaumburg, 2014) and reference platforms have been established in the recent past. In order to develop this ecosystem, not only are metadata standards…

The Government of Kenya has in the recent past been on a serious footing to put in place ICT initiatives and projects aimed at realizing the potential within its recognition of ICT as a foundation for a knowledge economy as per vision 2030. The tempo has risen several notches higher with the current intention and initiative of making available…

The Open University (OU) makes a proportion of all its taught modules available to the public via OpenLearn each year. This process involves the modification, of module excerpts, showcasing subject matter and teaching approach. This activity serves both the University's social and business missions through the delivery of free courses to the…

Since the publication of the IMS Learning Design (IMS LD) specification in 2003, many initiatives have been undertaken to build authoring tools that are simple enough to be used by non-technical instructors and teachers. IMS LD's technical complexity is believed to be a major burden for the adoption of the specification. We have developed a new…

Current education standards in the U.S. require school students to read and understand complex texts from different subject areas (e.g., social studies). However, such texts usually contain figurative language, complex phrases and sentences, as well as unfamiliar discourse relations. This may present an obstacle to students whose native language…

As concerns about the skyrocketing costs of a college degree have converged with the increasing availability of open educational resources (OER), higher education administrators are asking faculty and curriculum designers to use OERs to design courses and programs. This case study explores the decision making process and outcomes of an online,…

Introduction: Even though the current publishing model is based on digital dissemination, it still utilizes some of the basic principles of printed culture. Recently a policy emphasis towards open access has been set for publicly funded research. This paper reports on a study of the practices, business models and values linked with scholarly…