Research

Within the Together Nursing project, research was conducted into whether a professional community contributes to the open sharing of educational resources by educators. Information was collected through a baseline measurement, a final survey, document analysis and interviews with individual educators and a focus group.

At this time (November 2020), a full analysis of all the information has not yet taken place and it is our intention to interview a few more instructors. What can be deduced from the comparison between the results of the baseline measurement and the latest survey is that the value of the subject community is recognized and acknowledged. That value is not yet directly linked, however, to creating, sharing, and reusing OERs. We expect, however, that this positive attitude toward the subject community is a favorable starting point in the expected role that the subject community should have/adopt in making open educational resources more sustainable.

Based on the initial analysis of the results, the following conclusions can be drawn: 

• There is unfamiliarity with both Wikiwijs and the community, especially among members of the project (not core group). In the follow-up project, much attention should be paid to this.
• Despite the relative unfamiliarity, there is much appreciation for both platforms. The value of Wikiwijs has become particularly clear in the recent crisis period. 
• Instructors experience Wikiwijs and the subject community as two unrelated platforms. 
• The value of Wikiwijs for instructors is diverse. Wikiwijs has direct, potential, applied, and realized value. The direct value is primarily that Wikiwijs serves as a source of inspiration and the ability to view education at other universities. The potential value is having the ability to search for educational resources in the future. The applied value has been achieved because several educators have used resources from Wikiwijs in their own teaching. The realized value is visible in the experience that instructors have begun to look more critically at the quality of their own resources.  
• The value of the professional community for instructors is primarily potential; they know they can go there if they have questions. It has also had a positive effect because a number of instructors have set up collaborative projects because they have been able to find each other in the community. 

Download research raport