Technology and resources use by university teachers

Overview & Synopsis

In this paper we introduce the study of the use of resources by mathematics teachers at university. The available resources evolve, in particular concerning Open Educational Resources offered on the Internet. Studying the consequences of these evolutions for the teaching and learning practices requires to introduce a comprehensive concept of resource. A resource for the teacher is defined here as anything likely to resource the teacher's practice: technologies, but also traditional textbooks on paper, or even discussions with colleagues. Teachers look for resources, transform them: we call this the documentation work of a teacher. Along this work, teachers develop documents, which associate resources and professional knowledge. The structured set of all these documents, developed along the years by a teacher is called his/her documentation system. Understanding the evolutions resulting from the use of different kinds of resources requires to study the teachers' documentation systems. We set up a study of these systems in the context of a university in France, investigating the work of six teachers with different profiles for their teaching in the first and second year of university with scientific students.