Abstract

 A approach to catching-up with functional education and g-oduate employability is by the deployment of open educational resources (OER) -in teaching. A practice enabled by information and communication technology (ICT). Hence, today's professional educators need OER tools and ICT skills to address this changing nature of education especially in teacher preparation for the millennium. This study assessed the awareness and use of -OER by the participant's, tertiary educators from two Nigerian Universities Faculty/College of Education directly involved in teacher preparation. It also explored the relationship between the participants' perception of computer self-efficacy and their general self-efficacy because OER is technology driven. Four research questions guided the study. Survey research design was adopted. Fifty (50) professional educators were randomly selected as samples within the population. Three basic research instruments were used to collect data: A survey questionnaire designed to obtain personal information from, the participants and for them to self describe/assess their level'- of awareness of OER in teacher preparation. The computer self-efficacy scale (Askar & Umang, 2001) and the general self-efficacy scale (Schwarzer & Jerusalem, 1995). The data were analysed with the use of descriptive statistics Analysis of variance and correlational analysis. The result indicated that the deployment of ICT by the professional educators is very encouraging but their awareness of OER need a boost to leapfrog them into the modern day needs and practices for functional education and for the production of teachers for the 21st Century challenges. The authors recommend that programmes for teacher preparation should include training in the rudiments of OER and computer literacy courses as it is becoming a global practice while continu.ig professional development is recommended for the professional educators to update them with OER issues.