Self-assessed Online Listening Tests as an OER: The Senior English Educators’ Perspectives Based on UTAUT Model

 Abstract —With the advent of e-learning, in which instruction is done remotely and on digital platforms, education has experienced a profound upheaval as the sole means of ensuring the continuation of academic activities due to the disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak. This crisis appears to have created a perfect environment for creating freely available, publicly licenced course materials known as open educational resources, or OER. Boon Yih Mah initiated the self-assessed online listening tests (SAOLT) as one of the OER to provide English as a second language (ESL) learners with a platform with relevant and supporting content to practise their listening skills in a test format. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to measure the perceptions of senior English teachers from different education sectors about the usefulness, ease of use, attitude toward use, and behavioural intention to use SAOLT in their teaching of listening skills. A survey was conducted using a purposive sampling method comprising ten English educators from different types of institutions with 16–40 years of teaching experience. The items in the questionnaire were adapted based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology or UTAUT to suit the study’s objectives using five Likert scales for measuring the perceptions. Based on the findings after performing the descriptive data analysis, this survey has shown positive responses among the senior English teachers from different education sectors about their perceptions of the usefulness, ease of use, attitude toward use, and behavioural intention to use SAOLT in their teaching, particularly for listening skills.


I. INTRODUCTION
The COVID-19 epidemic seized the world by storm in early 2020. The economic and social activities were on lockdown, which has caused school closures across the world. Over 1.2 billion youngsters worldwide are not in school [1]. Several challenges have arisen worldwide, especially in China, including lack of preparation time, teacher or learner isolation, and the need for effective pedagogical approaches [2]. As a result, education has undergone a radical transformation with the emergence of e-learning, in which instruction is done remotely and on digital platforms [1,3]. Hence, e-learning has been embraced as the only way to secure the continuation of academic activity during the COVID-19 epidemic.
More online materials have been adopted [4] because of the tremendous increase in online classrooms. According to The  research, online learning has been demonstrated to boost information retention and take less time, implying that the changes created by the coronavirus are here to stay [1]. COVID-19's disruption appears to have produced ideal ground for the growth of freely available, publicly licenced course materials known as open educational resources, or OER [5]. The use of OER is also the outcome of numerous studies in the field of English teaching and learning; for instance, it entails strategically employing movies and television shows as effective tools for teaching and learning English [6].
To help overcome the problem of limited time to prepare online learning content, teachers can use the thousands of OER available in other national and international repositories, as well as public online tools, platforms, and enabling technologies. Teachers also can design their courses around OER and ask their students to find content to solve problems, write reports, or conduct research to keep learners active and engaged in addressing the issues of teacher or learner isolation and the need for effective pedagogical approaches [2].

A. Problem Statement
While rising in popularity in higher education, OER reflects an underutilised notion for expanding student access to learning in all academic settings. According to a study conducted by Orwenjo and Erastus [7], most teachers were unaware of the existence of OER; those who were aware of them were unsure how to access them. ICT has been identified as one of the enduring challenges to implementing OERs in many educational settings. This supports the highlight by Altunay [8] that a lack of Internet connectivity or financial means to purchase technological equipment or software might restrict students or teachers from accessing these resources.
In addition, the spread of COVID-19 has forced many instructors and students to rethink their old methods of teaching and learning, as well as grow more comfortable with accessing numerous internet resources [9]. As COVID-19 pushed educators to embrace digital texts, they were more likely to be aware of-but not use-free, publicly licenced resources [4]. As highlighted by Doug [5], the greater awareness of open educational resources did not convert into higher use of OER as mandatory materials during the COVID year.
In common, the learning materials are traditionally issued under copyright, and their usage necessitates payment or permission from the copyright holder. Some educators have begun to use open textbooks and other OER learning materials to enhance equality by boosting student access, particularly for those experiencing basic need vulnerabilities. However, linking learners with resources is never enough for learning, especially during a pandemic [3], which resulted in significant challenges for English as a second language (ESL) learners.
In the realm of English language teaching (ELT), teachers also have difficulties with listening comprehension. In fact, it is frequently taken for granted or ignored in the classroom [10]. OER materials for listening practices are lacking especially in an exam format. There is also a scarcity of useful studies or research on using OER; though they are established, this may not always be simple to achieve [8]. If available, most listening texts are based on a single type, which may not be helpful for ESL students who wish to practise more audio formats. The educators' perceptions of the integration of OER into their teaching are questionable.

B. Objectives of Study
The primary goal of this study is to assess senior English teachers' perceptions of the usefulness, ease of use, attitude toward use, and behavioural intention to use the self-assessed online listening tests (SAOLT) in their classroom instruction. Thus, the four research objectives of this study are listed as follows: 1) To identify the senior English teachers' perceived usefulness of SAOLT in their teaching of listening skills; 2) To identify the senior English teachers' perceived ease of use of SAOLT in their teaching of listening skills; 3) To identify the senior English teachers' attitude toward the use of SAOLT in their listening skills; and 4) To identify the senior English teachers' behavioural intention to use SAOLT in their teaching of listening skills. Based on the above objectives, four research questions are formulated as follows: 1) What is the senior English teachers' perceived usefulness of SAOLT in teaching listening skills? 2) What is the senior English teachers' perceived ease of use of SAOLT in their teaching of listening skills? 3) What is the senior English teachers' attitude towards using SAOLT in their listening skills? 4) What are the senior English teachers' behavioural intentions to use SAOLT in their teaching of listening skills?

C. Significance of Study
UNESCO has stressed the need to make more high-quality OER content available to instructors and students [9]. According to Jane-Frances Obiageli Agbu, the ICDE Chair in OER, the pandemic triggered a consensus at governmental and institutional levels on a strong need to develop OER when online and digital learning became the new normal for learning globally [11]. Academic librarians also are starting programmes to encourage teachers to use OER, which helps students by saving money and providing a better learning experience [12]. It increases flexibility and equal opportunity in learning resources, resulting in improved accessibility and enhanced openness in education [13].
OER increases access, lowers students' attendance costs, increases their access to higher education, and improves their learning experiences [14]. According to research findings, teaching with OER increases students' access to learning materials and improves student learning experiences. Student responses on the OER utilised in a teacher education course during the fall 2019 semester verified that the resources were simpler to access [15]. By considering the capacity to deliver affordable and accessible education made possible by digital resources, technology, and ongoing innovation to students, SAOLT were initiated for ESL learners to practice their listening skills.
The movement for students' ongoing learning progress and how they experience themselves in learning comes from educators. Still, educators play a critical role in disseminating and supporting what needs to be viewed as an iterative and ongoing evolution of practice that can then inform curriculum and assessment reforms [16]. As educators are best placed to choose how students should engage with learning resources [3], their perceptions towards using the OER resources to match their instructional objectives need to be measured.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW
A. The Origin of SAOLT Self-assessed online listening tests, or SAOLT, initiated by Boon Yih Mah as the OER formulated based on Relevance, Accuracy, Clarity, Quality, Accessibility, Interactivity, and Licencing (RACQAIL) attributes. These attributes are a set of OER assessment rubrics adopted from the Institute of Continuing Education and Professional Studies (iCEPS), Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM). SAOLT offers ESL learners a platform with appropriate and supportive content-news items, talk, and conversation-to practise their listening skills in a test format.
As defined by UNESCO and the Creative Commons, OER refers to teaching, learning, and research materials that are either in the public domain or licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities: retaining, remixing, revising, reusing and redistributing the resources [17]. SAOLT is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). It allows adaptations of SAOLT to be shared alike by others. It prohibits the commercial use of SAOLT [18].
SAOLT is a well-designed and easy-to-use open-access resource for listening practices in an exam format. It explores one of the university's diploma English courses for listening skills, which can be served as a supplementary and extra listening practice besides doing the course book's exercises [18]. It also facilitates self-access and self-assessed instructional approaches, promoting active learning, class participation, and opportunities for students to test their listening skills based on the three types of listening texts. webpage for learners and teachers before attempting SAOLT. If the user is a learner, he or she can put the answers in the Comments section below the YouTube video and check the answers later through the Reply of the Comments. If the user is a teacher, he or she is free to use these videos in his or her listening lessons.  Fig. 1. Teachers can provide the entire SAOLT webpage link to their students to do the listening practices. Teachers also can provide the specific YouTube listening video link to their students to do the specific type of listening practice.
Likewise, teachers also can discuss with their students by referring to the provided answer keys that have been verified. Students are motivated by seeing the thumb-up and love icons received from the admin in their comments. Students can complete the listening practices on the go via various mobile devices like mobile phones, tablets, and computers. If students have queries, they can reply to the admin's replies for further explanations. Students also can submit their answers by posting their comments to the listening videos on YouTube, and they will get feedback from the admin to perform the self-check.

III. METHODOLOGY
A survey was conducted in July-August 2021 using a purposive sampling method where the subjects fit the criteria set by the researchers [19]-it includes English teachers and lecturers with 16-40 years of teaching experience. A total of 10 senior English teachers and lecturers from six types of institutions were involved in the study. They had a week to browse and explore SAOLT before completing an online questionnaire via a Google Form link sent through WhatsApp message. The results analysed from the survey are shown in Figs. 2 and 3 respectively.
The descriptive data analysis was used to gather and analyse the actual data based on the English instructors' perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude toward usage, and behavioural intention to use SAOLT. The questionnaire items were developed based on the UTAUT [20] to meet the study's aims. 13 related items were categorised into four clusters based on UTAUT about the perceptions of 10 senior English teachers from seven learning institutions. Each item is measured using five Likert scales for gauging perceptions: strongly disagree, disagree, neutral, agree, and highly agree. The items are listed below:

B. Perceived Ease of Use (PEU) 1) Learning to use SAOLT for my students to practise
listening skills is easy for me. 2) I find it easy to use SAOLT for my students to practise the listening skills that I want them to learn. 3) I find SAOLT easy for my students to practise listening skills.
C. Attitude towards Use (ATU) 1) Once I start using SAOLT for my students to practise listening skills, I find it hard to stop. 2) I look forward to those aspects for my students to practise listening skills that require using SAOLT. 3) I like my students to practise listening skills with SAOLT.

D. Behavioural Intention to Use (BIU) 1) I intend to continue using SAOLT for my students to
practise listening skills in the future. 2) I expect to use SAOLT for my students to practise listening skills in the future. 3) I plan to use SAOLT for my students to practise listening skills in the future. As depicted in Fig. 2, there are three respondents from public and private universities (30%), two respondents from university colleges (20%), two respondents from secondary schools (20%), one respondent from matriculation college (10%), one respondent from an institute of teacher education (10%), and one respondent from college (10%). The ten senior English educators were teaching students at six different education levels as shown in Fig. 3: five at degree level (50%), one at certificate level (10%), one at pre-diploma level (10%), one at pre-university level (10%), one at the upper secondary year 2 level (10%), and one at the upper secondary year 1 level (10%).

IV. RESULTS AND FINDINGS
The related items and analysed results about the perceptions of 10 senior English teachers from the six types of learning institutions are shown in Figs. 4, 5, 6, and 7. These responses show their perceptions of the usefulness, ease of use, attitude toward use, and behavioural intention to use SAOLT in their teaching, particularly for listening skills. The positive feedback in general from the educators promotes the development of comprehensive listening tasks and test items in a blended EFL classroom to increase students' learning autonomy and attain advanced English listening abilities..

A. Perceived Usefulness (PU)
International Journal of Information and Education Technology, Vol. 13, No. 7, July 2023 Based on Fig. 4, no one was found to be neutral, disagree, or strongly disagree with the usefulness of SAOLT in practice speed, improvement, teaching productivity, and efficacy for students to practise their listening skills. According to the findings, half of the senior English instructors agreed that adopting SAOLT allows their students to practise listening skills more rapidly and enhance their listening performance. Furthermore, 60% of respondents strongly agreed that SAOLT boosts their productivity to improve their students' listening abilities. Regarding efficacy, 70% of senior English instructors strongly felt that SAOLT improves their teaching by allowing pupils to practise listening skills. As a result, it demonstrates positive reactions among senior English educators from various education sectors about their assessments of SAOLT's usefulness in teaching listening skills. Their favour of using SAOLT corresponds to the foreign language educators' encouragement to innovate their teaching using new educational resources like SAOLT [10]. Based on Fig. 5, no one was found to be neutral, to disagree, or strongly disagree on the ease of use of SAOLT in terms of learning to use SAOLT, practising with SAOLT, and using SAOLT for students to develop their listening skills. Based on the findings, 60% of senior English instructors strongly believed that learning to apply SAOLT to their students' listening skills was easy. Furthermore, 70% of respondents strongly agreed that it was simple to utilise SAOLT for their students to practise the listening skills they wanted them to master. SAOLT was found easy for their students to practise listening skills. Hence, the positive responses from those senior English educators from various educational sectors found SAOLT easy to use in teaching listening skills. As highlighted by Hao and Chen [9], a wide range of interactive listening videos made available for educators to use for their students to watch and immerse in different authentic contexts will ease the language learning process.

C. Attitude towards Use (ATU)
International Journal of Information and Education Technology, Vol. 13, No. 7, July 2023 Fig. 6. Analysis results of the selected items from the questionnaire.
Based on Fig. 6, no one was found to disagree or strongly disagree with the attitude toward using SAOLT in terms of ceasing to use SAOLT, anticipating SAOLT components in listening practice, and enjoying SAOLT for students to exercise their listening abilities. Following the findings, 40% of senior English instructors strongly agreed that once they begin utilising SAOLT for their students to practise listening skills, they find quitting difficult. Furthermore, 50% of respondents strongly agreed that they look forward to the aspects of practising listening skills that entail the usage of SAOLT. 60% strongly agreed that using SAOLT to practise listening skills benefits their students. It elicits a positive attitude from senior English educators regarding their views of using SAOLT in teaching listening skills. The benefits of the SAOLT reflect the positive feedback from the educators in improving language skills in listening, which is reflected in another OER project as reported by Orwenjo and Erastus [7] for better communication. Fig. 7. Analysis results of the selected items from the questionnaire. Based on Fig. 7, no one disputed or strongly disagreed with their behavioural intention to utilise SAOLT in terms of continuity, anticipation, and future planning to use SAOLT for students to practise their listening skills. Based on the findings, half of the senior English instructors strongly agreed that they aim to continue utilising SAOLT for their students to practise listening skills in the future. Furthermore, 60% of respondents strongly agreed that they intend to use SAOLT for their students to practise listening skills. In addition, 60% strongly agreed that they want to use SAOLT to help their students practise listening skills in the future. In conclusion, it indicates the positive behavioural intention to use SAOLT in teaching listening skills among senior English educators. Some learners, for example, may prefer OER to develop their listening abilities and employ the audio-visual exercises featured in them [8]. This may be also due to the impact of the coronavirus that has caused the rapid growth of online teaching and learning [9].

V. CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Overall, this survey has shown positive responses among the senior English teachers from ten education sectors who have vast experience in teaching English at six different levels of education on their perceptions of SAOLT to use in their teaching of listening skills. The findings have also answered the four stipulated research questions on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude towards the use, and behavioural intentions to use SAOLT in their teaching of listening skills. Teachers should play roles based on their expertise in the educational process, particularly in selecting learning resources for their students to interact with.
Teaching has always been a vocation in which educators share resources for the benefit of their students; hence, the relevance of OER is undeniable online and in the future of education. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, online teaching and learning were frequently seen as supplements to classroom instruction. However, because of the pandemic, many educators and students worldwide have turned to online teaching and learning. The conduct of web-based synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning with better resources should be prepared in advance by educators [9]. Therefore, the obtained positive perceptions of SAOLT among senior English educators can ensure the effective use and prevent the misuse or underuse of SAOLT from benefiting ESL learners. FUNDING This work was supported by Universiti Teknologi MARA, Cawangan Pulau Pinang, for their assistance in gathering data for this study.