Advantages and Limitations of Usage of Open Educational Resources in Small Countries

Abstract

Educational resources in the competitive world of higher education were often considered as key intellectual property, so access to those resources was restricted to privileged groups of students and professors, which is unacceptable in today's networked society. Today, an increasing number of institutions and individuals share such digital resources via the Internet free of any legal, financial or technical barriers. Open Educational Resources (OER) are the right way which enables free and accessible education to everyone and access to knowledge as public good. OER cherish the culture of participation, collaboration and sharing and with an open access to scientific information it brings a notable contribution in knowledge society development. The implementation of OER has certain limitations, in particular for small countries which use a non-English language, have limited resources and support to customize and create OER, their educational practice is founded on traditional teaching methods with occasional use of digital contents and ICT. The awareness raising and positive attitudes about OER are the first important step towards its acceptance. The empirical part of this paper is analysing attitudes toward OER among the scholars at few smaller public faculties in Croatia and their practice of sharing knowledge and teaching materials.