The Use of Open Educational Resources as Teaching Tools in Primary Education: Activities by Postgraduate Students of the Hellenic Open University

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the views of postgraduate students of the Hellenic Open University on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) as teaching tools in teaching and learning for primary school students and more specifically the potential and limitations of OER. In this context, the research sample consisted of twenty-six (26) postgraduate students of the Hellenic Open University, who simultaneously worked as teachers in various Primary Schools in Greece. The sampling method followed was “convenience sampling”. The research tool for data collection was the use of an appropriately designed anonymous questionnaire in the form of a written questionnaire. It contained two open-ended questions which were considered - for the purposes of the research - as a questionnaire in the form of an open-ended structured interview.  From the analysis and processing of the research data, the main conclusions are: i) the main potentials of OER as teaching tools recorded by the research subjects are open and easy access to information and virtual environments, reuse and continuous adaptation, modernization and innovation, variety and different forms of OER, saving financial resources, saving time for the teacher, etc. ii) the main constraints are the difficulty of quality control of OER, copyright restrictions, the lack of pedagogical and teaching criteria, the lack of logistical infrastructure, the need for internet access, the amount of time the teacher has to spend to identify them, the lack of knowledge and training on OER, the difficulty of finding OER relevant to the subjects, the lack of accessibility tools for students with special educational needs.