Do Open Educational Resources Help Contingent Sociology Faculty Acquire Teaching Resources and Form Collegial Relationships?

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Abstract

Access to resources and social relationships are important for teacher development. Unfortunately, within higher education contingent faculty often are under resourced and poorly integrated into their department’s social network. This shortfall could be addressed by Open Educational Resources (OERs), which are websites that freely distribute pedagogical resources and provide a platform for educators to form collegial relationships. The current research focuses on the OERs that have formed around American sociology to assess the characteristics of the faculty who use them, the pedagogical resources they acquire from them, and how often their users form collegial relationships online. Analysis of an online survey of 275 sociology OER users finds that contingent faculty are acquiring resources from the sites. While only a small percentage of faculty are forming collegial relationships via these sites, they are doing so without occupational status, gender, or racial differences.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)119-134
Number of pages16
JournalThe American Sociologist
Volume49
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 1 2018

Keywords

  • Collegial relationships
  • Contingent faculty
  • Higher education
  • Open educational resources
  • Sociology

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