A Comparative Study on Converting Educational Materials into OER: ConvOERter vs. Manual

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) are considered a crucial building block in digitizing teaching and learning processes. They also play an important role in improving education around the world by providing free access to high-quality digital educational resources. However, there are many challenges that still hinder the proper utilization of OER. One of them is the lack of technical tools that support producing or converting already existing materials into OER. In order to overcome this problem and support the conversion of already existing educational materials semi-automatically into OER, the web-based tool convOERter has been developed. To evaluate the functionality of the tool and investigate how the semi-automatic conversion of materials can be beneficial compared to the traditional manual conversion process, we designed and conducted a series of OER workshops as a comprehensive user study with 91 participants. In this paper, we will present the design of the workshops and the results of the study. The results show that using the semi-automated conversion tool accelerated the conversion speed and enhanced the license quality of the converted materials. Finally, we will conclude the paper by introducing the limitations of the developed tool and the conducted study and introduce some suggestions for future work and further enhancements. As a future work, we plan to develop the tool further and improve its functionality so that the community of educators and instructors can use it to produce more OER.

Authors 3

1. Lubna Ali Aachen Learning Technologies Research Group

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Learning Technologies Research Group, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

2. Rene Roepke Aachen Learning Technologies Research Group

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Learning Technologies Research Group, RWTH Aachen University, Germany

3. Ulrik Schroeder Aachen Learning Technologies Research Group

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Learning Technologies Research Group, RWTH Aachen University, Germany