A Study of Academics’ Perception of OERs at Saudi Arabian Higher Education Institutions

Proceedings of The 4th World Conference on Future of Education

Year: 2021

DOI:

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A Study of Academics’ Perception of OERs at Saudi Arabian Higher Education Institutions

Sami Almousa

ABSTRACT: 

Saudi Arabia has the National Transformation Program, which aims to improve all life aspects, including educational technology aspects, and realise the Saudi Vision 2030, which led to the establishment of the National Centre for E-Learning (NCEL). The centre plays the role of a supporter of e-learning for public and higher education. In 2018, this centre launched “SHMS” as an OERs platform for educational institutions. The platform is dedicated to connecting people and ideas for the enrichment of all communities and is committed to improving educational outcomes through sharing and collaboration. As the adoption of this platform is new in my country, it is vital to study OERs implementation in Higher Education (HE). Thus, this study aims to understand the academics’ perceptions of the use of OERs, and determine how to mainstream OERs in HEIs. To achieve this, a mixed-methods approach for data collection was adopted through two stages, distributing questionnaires to the universities academics, as well as conducting semi-structured interviews with the academics and eLearning assistants. This presentation will report the findings of the first phase which was a questionnaire method used to evaluate the developed Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model, which were, information quality, culture, and sharing. This model has been tested using SEM PLS which has the ability to estimate and present the model. After participating in this session, attendees will be able to Identify the factors that influence  OERs adoption by university academics in the Saudi higher education sector.

keywords: Technology adoption; UTAUT; SHMS; University Academics; Unified theory of acceptance and use of technology.