#OpenEd21

Knowledge is arguably the most valuable asset one can have. Even when shared, its value does not get any less. In most cases, when you share your knowledge with someone, you do not risk losing anything, unlike when you share money or any other materialistic objects, such as food, property, and so forth. In fact, sharing knowledge is a win-win situation for both the sharer and the receiver. For the former, sharing knowledge with others is an opportunity to engage in discussions that may broaden their already existing knowledge. For the latter, the newly gained knowledge is highly valuable and can be a tool to accomplish many things.

As an academic, and after using Open Educational Resources (OER) with my students, I realised that by using OERs, it is possible to make education more effective by providing every student with a personal, free, softcopy of the textbook for the subjects they study. However, in the Arab context, we struggle to find appropriate resources due to many reasons, the most important is language and different context.

Saudi Arabia has the National Transformation Program, which aims to improve all aspects of life, including aspects of educational technology, and realise the Saudi Vision 2030, which leads 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 about information quality, culture, and sharing. This model has been tested using SEM AMOS 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.