Open learning activities in Spanish institutional repositories

Abstract

Currently, the most widespread OER are open textbooks, which are seen as a solution to the access and affordability (Hilton, 2016). However, other less prominent OER, such as learning activities and assignments, have been gaining popularity. These assessment resources (together with essays, quizzes, tests, exams, etc), have been identified in OER repositories (Santos-Hermosa, Ferran-Ferrer & Abadal, 2017). While educational repositories,such as OER Commons, include specific categories for learning activities and large amounts of them, this kind of OER is a rare find in institutional repositories. For instance, in the Spanish institutional repositories (REBIUN, 2019) the assessment activities only represent 26.4% of the total number of OER, a small percentage when compared with the more common type: classroom materials(over 60% of the total). Of this small percentage of Spanish institutions with learning activities collections, the case of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) is the most recent. For the first time,the UOC's institutional repository, O2, includes four collections of continuous assessment activities. This is thanks to a pilot test run with the Faculty of Economics and Business with the support of the Library.