Type of Presentation

Individual paper/presentation

Conference Strand

Critical Literacy

Target Audience

Higher Education

Second Target Audience

Higher Education

Location

Ballroom C

Relevance

Information literacy is key for a good Use of Open Education Resources. The information literacy instruction provided to faculty and graduate students by librarians is being assessed in this presentation to understand how it impacts the use of open education resources, an increasingly relevant input for teaching and learning in higher education.

Proposal

Access to Open Educational Resources (OERs) by university libraries and through online sources is trending among academics and students in Nigeria, particularly given the emphasis on it by the National Universities commission in recent times. Extant literature points to low level of use of OERs among faculty and students, and there is an urgent need to understand the extent to which their information literacy (IL)skills can explain this and how IL drives OERs practical use for academic purposes. Thus, the paper investigates the perceived information literacy of faculty and graduate students in using open educational resources in federal universities in South-West, Nigeria. Survey research design of the correlation type was adopted and population consisted of 5,250 faculty members and 24,931 postgraduates in the five universities. Multi-stage sampling procedure was employed and the proportionate stratified random sampling was used to select 5% of faculty (262) and 2% of graduate students (500) in the selected universities. A response rate of 209 (79.8%) and 450 (90%) was achieved for faculty and students respectively. The instrument used for the faculty and students include OER use (α =0.78), frequency of use of OER (α = 0.83), information literacy (α = 0.80), and OER use (α = 0.80), frequency of use (α = 0.83), and information literacy (α = 0.79) respectively. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The faculty and students used OERs such as Directory of Open Access Journals (90.0%), College Open Textbook (85.6%), Coursera (78.7%) and so on in their universities. They also used Connexions and NOUN OER Repository frequently. Many OERs were however less used. The perceived level of information literacy for faculty and students 3.49) in using OERs was moderate. Information literacy skill positively predicted OERs use for both populations (r = 0.363**; P< 0.05). Information literacy enhanced the use of OER in the universities. The study recommends adoption of OER policy and capacity development for the staff and students to enhance their knowledge, skills and competencies in the use of OERs for effective and efficient teaching and learning.

Short Description

The presentation shall be for 15-20 minutes using PowerPoint software. It will bring to the fore the utilization pattern of Open Educational Resources (OERs) in Nigeria universities by the faculty and graduate students. An understanding of information literacy skills of the respondents will crucially help the optimum use of OERs to improve teaching and learning, shaping OER policy and practices positively in the institutions

Keywords

Open educational resource, Information literacy, Faculty members, Graduate students, Nigeria

Publication Type and Release Option

Presentation (Open Access)

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

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Feb 6th, 3:15 PM Feb 6th, 4:00 PM

Assessing the Information Literacy Skills of Faculty and Students in Using Open Educational Resources in Nigerian Universities

Ballroom C

Access to Open Educational Resources (OERs) by university libraries and through online sources is trending among academics and students in Nigeria, particularly given the emphasis on it by the National Universities commission in recent times. Extant literature points to low level of use of OERs among faculty and students, and there is an urgent need to understand the extent to which their information literacy (IL)skills can explain this and how IL drives OERs practical use for academic purposes. Thus, the paper investigates the perceived information literacy of faculty and graduate students in using open educational resources in federal universities in South-West, Nigeria. Survey research design of the correlation type was adopted and population consisted of 5,250 faculty members and 24,931 postgraduates in the five universities. Multi-stage sampling procedure was employed and the proportionate stratified random sampling was used to select 5% of faculty (262) and 2% of graduate students (500) in the selected universities. A response rate of 209 (79.8%) and 450 (90%) was achieved for faculty and students respectively. The instrument used for the faculty and students include OER use (α =0.78), frequency of use of OER (α = 0.83), information literacy (α = 0.80), and OER use (α = 0.80), frequency of use (α = 0.83), and information literacy (α = 0.79) respectively. The data was analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics. The faculty and students used OERs such as Directory of Open Access Journals (90.0%), College Open Textbook (85.6%), Coursera (78.7%) and so on in their universities. They also used Connexions and NOUN OER Repository frequently. Many OERs were however less used. The perceived level of information literacy for faculty and students 3.49) in using OERs was moderate. Information literacy skill positively predicted OERs use for both populations (r = 0.363**; P< 0.05). Information literacy enhanced the use of OER in the universities. The study recommends adoption of OER policy and capacity development for the staff and students to enhance their knowledge, skills and competencies in the use of OERs for effective and efficient teaching and learning.