Paper Title
RESEARCH ON THE ADOPTION MECHANISM OF OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES (OER) AND OPEN EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE (OEP) FOR FUTURES OF EDUCATION IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY IN BANGLADESH

Abstract
Open educational resources (OER) are the educational materials that are designed and developed for teaching, learning, and research under relevant intellectual property licenses such as Creative Commons. These materials are released in the public domain and permitted to access, use (re-use), adapt, re-purpose, retention, and redistribution. There are a variety of open educational resources: course materials, modules, textbooks, videos, live lectures, tests, software, and other tools that support access to knowledge and are published under an appropriate license. On the other hand, open educational practice (OEP) is a way of teaching and learning practices that have the characteristics to assimilate the OER materials, techniques, instructional design, and practice. It is an embedded framework of practice by the stakeholders of OER and OEP that utilizes the prospects of OER in practice. The current study investigated to answer a few academic inquiries regarding adopting OER and OEP in the tertiary educational setting in Bangladesh. The primary inquiry was regarding how much OER and OEP have already been introduced and adopted in Bangladeshi educational practice. The second inquiry was: what skills and competencies of stakeholders are essential to be available among the stakeholders to utilize the OER and OEP in the Bangladeshi educational landscape? The third inquiry was: what would be the benefits of applying OER and OEP in developing countries such as Bangladesh? Finally, the last one was: how and in which way (s) should theBangladeshi universities adopt the OER and OEP for the future? As this study was one of the frontier research in Bangladesh on OER and OEP, it required a wide range of data from a large population. Therefore, the current study adopted a mixed methodology, having the quantitative research method with the questionnaire and qualitative data collection method utilizing semi-structured in-depth interviews to collect the data from wide and in-depth participants. This study has found the status of preparedness of stakeholders for using OER and OEP, the condition of accessibilities to the ICT systems, the understanding and capacity of students and teachers, the challenges, prospects of OER and OEP in Bangladesh, the possible measures, and the recommendation and guideline for introducing and adopting OER and OEP in Bangladesh. The obtained data show that most stakeholders are interested in OER and OEP and want to develop their skills and competencies for adopting OER and OEP in their teaching and learning activities. However, the respondents and interviewees also reported that they use online materials without any concrete knowledge of the OER license, the way of application, the required infrastructure, etc. Therefore, this study has found that a well-developed framework is necessary to apply the OER materials and develop the OER practice. Therefore, this study recommends developing a national framework, making a national policy, and encouraging educational institutions to apply it in practice. Keywords - Open Educational Resource (OER), Open Educational Practice (OEP), Adoption Mechanism, Framework, Pedagogy, OER License, Infrastructure, Digital Literacy