Who Are Using Open Courseware and Why and How Do They Use It? An Exploratory Study From a Chinese-Based Open Courseware Portal in Taiwan

Open Educational Resource (OER) movement has reached its tipping point in recent years due to advancement of technologies. The OpenCourseWare (OCW) of MIT, for instance, has inspired higher education institutions around the world to deploy OCW systems. In Taiwan, the Opensource Opencourse Prototype System (OOPS at www2.myoops.org) plays a significant role in enabling Chinese-speaking users to benefit from this global movement. Although OOPS has attracted hundreds of thousands of users with open courses in Chinese directly translated from non-Chinese open course portals around the world, our understanding on who these users are and how and why they chose this particular venue to advance their knowledge remains elusive. This exploratory study, based on more than 1,000 participants’ responses, offered a glimpse of OOPS users. Furthermore, we recommend the utilization of online communities of practice to better engage OOPS users thus sustain the desired level of user traffic.