LEARNING OBJECT REPOSITORIES CHALLENGING GOOGLE - THE USERS' POINT OF VIEW

Open Educational Resources (OER) are most commonly accessible through Learning Object Repositories (LORs) or databases allowing users to search by the metadata records (e. g., information on contents, target group, legal aspects) attached to the resources. Many LORs are currently not being used for their full potential. This paper examines how repositories can be used beneficially for teachers to find resources for their lessons in comparison to efficient search engines like Google. In our study, we analyze how teachers-the key target group of users-search for OER by using the search engine Google as well as using Learning Resource Exchange (LRE), an LOR with a considerable collection of OER. Based on a experiments along with a quantitative empirical study, we survey which searching features seem to help teachers in locating relevant resources for their lessons. Based on our findings, we derive recommendations for searching OER as well as setting up Learning Object Repositories which would serve the users and therefore generate more re-use of the existing OER.