In the period from May to June 2022, HIS-HE conducted an online survey in the twillo project network among central institutions of the universities in Lower Saxony — including management and staff of the competence centers for university didactics, service centers for teaching and support facilities for digital teaching at the universities. The aim of the survey, in which central institutions from 13 of the 23 state-funded universities in Lower Saxony took part, was to identify measures for the use of OER as well as factors and incentives for greater provision and adaptation of OER at universities, in addition to a status quo survey on the importance of OER. The survey results of the unpublished study indicate that free teaching and learning materials have so far only been a very limited focus of the advisory activities of central institutions at universities in Lower Saxony.
On behalf of the twillo project network, Dr. Tina Ladwig also conducted a survey to promote the acceptance of OER at universities in Lower Saxony, which included not only the target group of advisors and university didactics experts, but also the target groups of lecturers, course directors, dean’s office directors and faculty directors. As part of this further study, Dr. Ladwig conducted a total of 15 qualitative expert interviews at universities in Lower Saxony between March and April 2022. The evaluation of the interviews indicates that OER has so far “hardly played a role in everyday university life. Despite numerous efforts to promote OER, especially in a state-specific context, expectations regarding the use of OER have unfortunately not yet been fulfilled.” The study showed that deficits are already apparent in the information and persuasion phase, which in many cases have a negative impact on the likelihood of OER being adopted in university practice. With regard to the adoption of OER in everyday university life, the relevant target groups should therefore first be identified, information gaps should be closed by means of various measures and the purpose of OER should be meaningfully linked to other strategic goals and processes of the university (e.g. internationalization or digitization), according to the author’s conclusion.
The latter, commissioned by the twillo project network and funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Science and Culture, was published as Working Paper No. 64 at the Hochschulforum Digitalisierung and can be downloaded online.