Crossing the boundaries through OER adoption: Considering open educational resources (OER) as boundary objects in higher education

Abstract

Advocates who argue for the use of open educational resources (OER) promote the cost benefits in comparison to traditional course materials, reducing the expense of higher education for students. If institutions and their libraries are going to invest resources to assist their faculty in OER adoption, then we must understand how OER utilization could affect college instructors. OER are fundamentally different than traditional resources, in licensing and composition, therefore instructors will likely have to go beyond their usual boundaries of practice to implement OER. This small, qualitative study examines the impact of OER adoption on college instructors by investigating if OER can act as a boundary object, by analyzing if boundary crossing phenomena is present in implementation processes of instructors. By knowing this, institutions of higher education and their libraries could better allocate their resources to support faculty OER adoption.