Overcoming Cultural Distance in Social OER Environments

Henri Pirkkalainen, Jussi P. P. Jokinen, Jan M. Pawlowski, Thomas Richter

2014

Abstract

Open educational resources (OERs) provide opportunities as enablers of societal development, but they also create new challenges. From the perspective of content providers and educational institutions, particularly, cultural and context-related challenges emerge. Even though barriers regarding large-scale adoption of OERs are widely discussed, empirical evidence for determining challenges in relation to particular contexts is still rare. Such context-specific barriers generally can jeopardize the acceptance of OERs and, in particular, social OER environments. We conducted a large-scale (N = 855) cross-European investigation in the school context to determine how teachers and learners perceive cultural distance as a barrier against the use of social OER environments. The findings indicate how nationality and age of the respondents are strong predictors of cultural distance barrier. The study concludes with identification of context-sensitive interventions for overcoming the related barriers. These consequences are vital for OER initiatives and educational institutions for aligning their efforts on OER.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Pirkkalainen H., P. P. Jokinen J., M. Pawlowski J. and Richter T. (2014). Overcoming Cultural Distance in Social OER Environments . In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-020-8, pages 15-24. DOI: 10.5220/0004719300150024

in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu14,
author={Henri Pirkkalainen and Jussi P. P. Jokinen and Jan M. Pawlowski and Thomas Richter},
title={Overcoming Cultural Distance in Social OER Environments},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2014},
pages={15-24},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0004719300150024},
isbn={978-989-758-020-8},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - Overcoming Cultural Distance in Social OER Environments
SN - 978-989-758-020-8
AU - Pirkkalainen H.
AU - P. P. Jokinen J.
AU - M. Pawlowski J.
AU - Richter T.
PY - 2014
SP - 15
EP - 24
DO - 10.5220/0004719300150024