A study on the university students’ use of open educational resources for learning purposes

It is undeniable that open educational resources or OER have been widely used by university students for learning purposes. Over a decade, OER have been gradually evolved in different forms, including open courseware and materials, open online courses and tutorials, open e-books and e-journals, and open-source learning tools. This paper investigates the university students’ use of OER for different learning purposes such as supplementing course textbooks, doing assignments and projects, and preparing tests and examinations, based on an online survey conducted to the full-time students of the Open University of Hong Kong in 2016–17, 2017–18 and 2018–19. It is revealed that the majority of students very often or often use OER for learning purposes, and more students consider OER very useful or useful for supplementing course textbooks and doing assignment and projects than for preparing tests and examinations. Among other cateogries of OER, open courseware, open course materials, open e-books, and online dictionaries are generally considered as to be very useful or useful. On the other hand, from the students’ viewpoints, the accuracy and comprehensiveness of OER contents are the major concerns in using OER for learning purposes.