Barriers to teacher educators seeking, creating and sharing Open Educational Resources. An empirical study of the use of OER in education in Italy

This contribution presents the results of research conducted as part of a European project, Share. TEC, which was dedicated to the development of a repository of Open Education Resources (OER) and commercial educational materials intended for teacher educators. This research involved inquiring into the pedagogical requirements of teacher educators for information and digital materials in order to understand their present comportment, habits and needs, as perceived through two indicators information literacy and user created content (UCC). By means of a combination of research methods dedicated to the observation of practice and the collection of user data, the investigation explored models of consumption, perception and needs regarding information for teacher educators with reference to Open Education Resources. © 2012 IEEE