Digital classroom materials are ubiquitous across classrooms. Faculty and teachers are regularly using digital versions of textbooks, homework, quizzes and more, and the levels of use are high even for fully in-person courses. Open educational resources (OER) have become a major source for many of these digital materials, especially textbooks. This presentation reviews the level of awareness of openly licensed course materials demonstrated by teachers, faculty, and administrators using data collected from surveys conducted from 2012 through 2024. The results will be compared by grade level, from elementary school, middle school, high school, and through college. The factors associated with the growth of open licensing awareness and sentiments of the respondents will be reviewed. This project is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The responses come from nationally representative samples of Higher Education and K-12 administrators and teachers from all fifty states.
Attendees of this session will be able to:- Understand how awareness of open licensing has grown over time among US education
- Recognize factors that have impacted this growth of open licensing awareness
- Draw connections between awareness of open licensing and awareness and adoption of Open Educational Resources
- Contextualize OER within broader digital course material adoption, including digital textbooks
- Compare OER awareness and adoption across grade levels
