IMPACT OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF GOVERNMENT AND PRIVATE SCHOOLIN ERODE DISTRICT, TAMILNADU

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) are the recently emerging concept in education across the world. The rapid technological advances in the current era have placed a demand of everything to be available on the fingertips. Also, there is a demand for self-paced, independent learning experience from the learners. These developments have opened up newer possibilities for alternate channels of dissemination of information and knowledge. Also, with the creation of new knowledge, proficient sharing of resources is an essential for a healthier tomorrow. Therefore, OER is considered one of the most important means of sharing knowledge, learning and teaching. Open educational resources (OER) are digital content, available online, free of copyright issues and licensing limitations and at no cost for lifelong learning. Hence, the researchers planned to make a comparative study on the impact of open educational resources among selected students between government and private school in Erode district, Tamilnadu. To achieve the study objectives, the sample size (n=50) has been selected by the researchers like 25 government school students and 25 private school students. To understand the responses of school students regarding their demographic profile and impact of OER, a well-structured questionnaire has been designed and spread among the population of this study. The collected sample data have been put into tabulation by approaching MS-Excel software and investigated by utilizing the statistical techniques such as percentage analysis, mean score analysis, standard deviation and paired ‘t’ test with the help of SPSS 22.0.  The result from analysis confirmed that most of the students used laptop both government and private school have perceived high level impact of open educational resources. Further, most of the students who allotted 3 hours in government school and 2 hours in private school allotted for e-learning have perceived high level impact of open educational resources.