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Dive Brief:
A third of teachers report being aware of open educational resources, the highest level measured since 2018-19 by Bay View Analytics, a statistical research firm. The level of teachers reporting they are somewhat-to-very aware reached 32% in 2023-24, up from 28% the year prior.
Newer teachers with less than 5 years of experience tended to have less knowledge of open educational resources, which are free curriculum materials sometimes modified by teachers for their own use. Middle and high school teachers showed much greater levels of awareness than teachers in lower grades.
The transition to digital materials that surged during the COVID-19 pandemic has since slowed, according to the report. While a majority (70%) of teachers agree to an extent that digital materials provide more flexibility for students compared to print, most teachers still report that they prefer print materials.
Dive Insight:
Last year, survey findings from Bay View Analytics suggested that teachers were becoming more familiar with open educational resources. More than three quarters of teachers said in 2022-23 they created their own classroom materials to supplement or replace textbooks and said they found supplemental materials online when sourcing non-textbook materials.
This year, the nationally representative survey gathered responses from 1,377 teachers and 206 administrators across 48 states and the District of Columbia in April 2024. Open educational resources were used mainly as supplemental materials, rather than required materials, in 2023-24.
“Sometimes I provide [OER] as supplemental materials, or exchange material from the curriculum the district uses to something that I think will support the majority of my students better,” said an unnamed 6-8 grade natural science teacher interviewed in the report.
Teachers are most familiar with copyright licenses, followed by public domain and Creative Commons resources, according to the report, which is the fifth in an annual series that began in 2018-19 to track curricula discovery, selection and adoption in K-12.
“I wish I had more time to explore them and really dig in,” the natural science teacher said. “There is just not enough time to plan for what I need to plan, and to also explore enough to shift.”
Professional development was among suggestions by the William & Ida Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University, which collaborated with the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction to evaluate open educational resources in the K-12 curriculum and obstacles to implementation.
The report suggested that transitioning to open educational resources had the potential to reduce costs, personalize instruction and build a capacity within districts to support open educational practices.
It recommended school and district administrators to consider the following when overcoming obstacles to implement open educational resources:
Organizational capacity, such as assembling a team to support implementation and providing training.
Curating high-quality resources, including assuring quality and taking inventory of what’s already available or needed.
Coherence and consistency, like considering how resources can complement existing curriculum.
Time and money, such as how existing staff and resources can be used to support the oepn educational resources initiative and how to access ongoing funding.
Planning & evaluation, like determining what a successful implementation would look like and how to monitor it.
