Press Release:

Level of OER awareness among U.S. K-12 teachers reaches an all-time high

The growth comes as teachers find both benefits and drawbacks for using digital materials.

OAKLAND, Calif. – Nearly one-third of K-12 teachers in the U.S. are aware of open educational resources (OER)—teaching and learning materials that are free to use, adapt, and share—according to the latest annual survey of K-12 educators conducted by Bay View Analytics. This level of awareness represents an all-time high in the five years of the survey and an increase of four percentage points since last year. In addition, 30 percent of teachers report using OER.

“More and more K-12 schools and districts have been turning to OER over the past several years, and this year, we’ve seen openly licensed materials likely reach a tipping point,” said Dr. Julia Seaman, Research Director at Bay View Analytics.

Teachers commonly report using OER as supplemental and required material to enhance their existing materials, creating personalized content for individual students or groups. Teachers also report using OER to provide content in areas where students were struggling or to flesh out more advanced topics.

This growth in the awareness and use of OER is coupled with an increased (though not universal) interest in digital materials. The majority of K-12 teachers (79%) offered their required textbooks in a digital format for their students in the 2023-24 school year. Over half of all teachers (57%) agreed with the statement, “students learn better from print materials than they do from digital materials,” but a larger majority (70%) agreed with the statement, “digital materials provide greater flexibility for students.”

"Teachers are becoming increasingly comfortable with digital materials, which actually supports greater OER adoption," said Seaman. "There isn't total acceptance for digital, as print has its strengths, but teachers are embracing the flexibility that digital tools can provide."

Other key findings from the survey include:

Only 10% of K-12 teachers report teaching any instruction over the year that was not fully in-person.
Most teachers supplement to enhance existing course materials with different formats (e.g., videos, games) and to customize specific content.

These results are part of an annual survey of educators conducted by Bay View Analytics, tracking curricula adoption decisions in K-12 in the U.S. The project is supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and Online Learning Consortium. The complete report, Conflicted Digital Adoption, has been released under a Creative Commons license and is available for download at https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/reports/oer_2024_k12_conflicted_digital_adoption.html. The entire series of reports for this project and for reports on higher education are available on the OER section of the Bay View Analytics webpage: https://www.bayviewanalytics.com/oer.html.

About Bay View Analytics

Bay View Analytics is a statistical research firm focusing on survey design, implementation and analysis. The scope of Bay View Analytics' consulting engagements includes scientific statistical analyses, clinical trial statistics and survey designs for a range of topics, with a particular focus on online education. Bay View Analytics has been conducting research and publishing reports on the state of online education in U.S. higher education for twenty years. Visit www.bayviewanalytics.com for more information or contact us at www.bayviewanalytics.com/contact.