Date of Conferral

5-13-2024

Date of Award

May 2024

Degree

Doctor of Education (Ed.D.)

School

Education

Advisor

Jamie Patterson

Abstract

The problem explored in this study is the limited use of Open Educational Resources (OER) by health career community college faculty. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate local community college faculty members’ perceptions about the use of OER in their program classrooms, the barriers to its use, and what resources they need to overcome the barriers. The unified theory of acceptance use and technology (UTAT) pertains to attitude, performance, expectancy, technology self-use efficacy, and facilitating conditions; it will be used as the conceptual framework for this basic qualitative study. This study explored community college faculty perceptions about OER use in their health career curriculum, barriers community college faculty experience with OER use, and how community college faculty overcome barriers to use of OER in health career curriculum. The six participants for this study took part in one-on-one interviews both in person and on Zoom. Analysis of collected data followed using Saldana’s 3 cycle coding process, which is inductive, open coding to identify emergent themes. The findings of this study indicate that health career faculty would use OER if it were easily accessible. Participants overwhelmingly felt the need for support in this manner, with high quality resources, support, and ease of access. Positive social change implications of this study include supporting health career students who cannot afford to purchase textbooks or course materials as these students are further underserved and denied opportunities for successful learning. Additionally, faculty need a solution to limited access, lack of funding, and lack of time to design something themselves; they need a toolkit that identifies best practice guidelines for OER use in health care curriculum.

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