Students’ Awareness and Usage of Open Educational Resources (OER) as Learning Tool in their Course Studies at the University of the Philippines Open University (UPOU)

The abundance of technology nowadays is contributing to the development of learning practices. This gives learners greater opportunity to find, access, and use resources to benefit learning. Open educational resources (OER) are one of the few educational developments that emerged with technology. While it is true that there are a lot of OERs available on the internet, it is unsure how many learners are aware of their existence. This research aimed to identify how many students are aware of OERs, where they use OERs, and whether the educational institution encourages OERs. The researchers surveyed several students within the University of the Philippines Open University. The survey included learner demographics, statistics on learners' awareness and usage of OERs, learners' OER access locations, and the challenges they encounter when using OERs. The survey showed that the learners, regardless of age, are aware of OERs. They mostly access videos, research, and journals on web pages and Wikis. They find the OERs accessible and relevant, but reliability and visibility are challenging.

Implementation of Total Quality Management in Textile Industry of Pakistan

Pakistan textile industry contributes more than 60% of the country's total exports but the country is at 8th position of the largest exporting countries of Asia and the reason of such low export is poor quality in textile products. The study was conducted to find out the effect of TQM implementation on business performance in textile industry of Pakistan. TQM is a management method used to enhance quality of textile products and productivity of the textile firms. The study may be helpful in the fully implementation of TQM in order to improve quality of the textile products and increase in export value. The research is based on primary and secondary data. Primary data is collected through questionnaires from employees/employers of the firm. While secondary data is collected from six composite textile firms. For primary 11 factors of TQM implementation and 4 factors of business performance were selected and responses were measured on 5 point likerts scale. The results indicate that TQM has positive effect on overall business performance and leadership plays critical role in TQM implementation. It is not essential for all the factors to be presented to guarantee the success of TQM programme of overall business performance. Leadership, product quality, customer satisfaction and strategic business performance are found to be the most effective factors of TQM implementation in business performance.