Teachers' Perception on the Use of ODS Portal to Support Advanced Technologies in Order to Provide Open Access to Learning

Abstract

The aim of this research work is to assess the degree of usability and usefulness of the Open Discovery Space portal for educational resources according to the perceptions of its users, namely teachers in primary and secondary education. Open Discovery Space has among its aims to serve as an instrument to share, reuse and put together the extended collection of educational content available in Europe. First, it involves school communities in innovative learning and teaching practices through the effective use of online learning resources. Besides, it promotes community building among schools in Europe by offering the chance to use, share and exploit resources collected in a wide collection of educational repositories. Finally, it promotes an European Web portal intended to satisfy the educational needs of the aforementioned communities. This portal has been designed as a community-oriented social platform where educators, students and parents can discover, acquire, analyse and adapt eLearning resources. This paper is focused on the usefulness of this portal, and includes details about a workshop developed by University of Vigo, Spain in the framework of the content and services usage and usability assessment activities in the framework of the Open Discovery Space project.