Textbook costs remain a significant barrier to student success in higher education. Open Educational Resources (OER) offer a promising solution by reducing costs and allowing content adaptation. This study examines the perceptions and use of OER by 70 faculty members at a small liberal arts college (Franklin College) through a campus-wide survey assessing faculty knowledge, motivations, challenges, and experiences with OER. Results show growing awareness and use of OER, especially for improving student affordability and access. However, many faculty still need more support to adopt and adapt OER in their courses fully. The study identified a group of experienced faculty who are not only using OER but also actively adapting and remixing materials to fit their teaching needs. Most discovered OER through online repositories, general internet searches, and recommendations from colleagues. Overall, faculty rated the quality of OER positively, though gaps in subject-specific content and in alternative formats such as datasets and assessments remain. Based on these findings, the study offers recommendations, including institution-based training programmes, peer-led workshops led by experienced faculty, and incentives for OER adoption and creation. Overall, faculty are motivated by equity and effectiveness, and with proper support, can play a key role in expanding OER use. These insights offer a roadmap for institutions seeking to scale OER use while fostering a collaborative, inclusive, and innovative teaching culture.

This editorial reflects on the seismic shifts brought by generative AI in academic publishing, coinciding with the journal's 30th anniversary. It explores both the promising advancements and ethical dilemmas presented by AI tools, specifically the generative applications built on Large Language Models (LLMs). AI offers opportunities to streamline editorial processes, enhance discoverability, assist with manuscript screening, basic editing, and identify peer reviewers, thereby accelerating publishing. However, the rise of AI-generated content poses significant challenges, including concerns over accuracy, originality, and misinformation. Ethical dilemmas surround authorship, ownership, and academic integrity, with AI tools explicitly not considered authors due to a lack of accountability; human authors must take full responsibility for AI-generated output. Journals are developing robust policies emphasising transparency and disclosure, requiring authors to specify the AI tool used, its purpose, and its location within the manuscript. The editorial advocates for open access as a crucial countermeasure to potential AI misuse, promoting transparency, scrutiny, and equitable knowledge dissemination to amplify ethical AI applications. Ultimately, the journal calls for responsible AI integration as an "augmented intelligence" tool, enhancing human intellect while upholding academic integrity in scholarly communication.

This book review critically examines Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online (Howard et al., 2025), identifying it as a crucial intervention that bridges a significant gap in contemporary scholarship by envisioning online learning through the lens of feminist pedagogy. The collection challenges dominant instructional design norms and technological culture, underscoring fundamental values of care, equity, reflexivity, and social justice. Structured into four thematic parts, the book consistently emphasises praxis, showcasing practical tools like social annotation and cryptoparties to foster equity and collaboration in e-spaces. Its primary strength lies in modelling feminist pedagogical principles through collaborative and student-centred approaches. While praised for its diverse contributions, the review notes some chapters could benefit from more analytical engagement with structural barriers to feminist agency in institutional settings. It acknowledges potential conceptual repetitions for novice readers. Nevertheless, the book is considered a vital resource for all e-learning stakeholders, promoting value-driven, ethical, and transformative online learning environments.

This article explores the ideal educational ecosystem for Aotearoa New Zealand, integrating distance and in-person learning within schools. Based on interviews and focus groups with distance learning leaders, we identify four essential features of this system: it must prioritise student agency and choice, ensure equity and inclusivity, be cohesive and coordinated with consistent approaches and equitable regulatory frameworks, and be innovative and future-focused. Participants highlighted critical areas for attention, including leadership and policy reform, sustainable resourcing, enhanced infrastructure, redefined teacher roles, and improved accreditation. Recognising that some recommendations were influenced by organisational self-interest, we propose a comprehensive roadmap structured around the four ideal ecosystem characteristics. This roadmap outlines immediate, implementable steps within current frameworks alongside long-term transformational goals requiring broader policy reform. Achieving a more adaptable education system demands synchronised changes in regulations, teaching, and resources, coupled with bold leadership and a willingness to challenge traditional assumptions. The COVID-19 pandemic underscored the necessity and possibility of this transformation, emphasising that integrated distance and classroom learning is the natural evolution of education in the digital age.

This study investigated the readiness of university faculty for online/distance learning (ODL) after two semesters of pandemic-driven remote teaching. We focused on faculty with prior ODL course design and online teaching experience, examining various aspects of their readiness: comfort with risk, identity disruption, teaching norms, equity and tenure norms, and lifestyle readiness. We also explored how these factors related to age, years of teaching experience, and ODL course design experience, as well as the connections between lifestyle readiness and other readiness aspects. We surveyed 114 experienced faculty at a U.S. research university, achieving a 56% response rate. Our findings revealed that while faculty felt comfortable with ODL risks, they expressed uncertainty regarding identity disruption, teaching norms, equity and tenure norms, and lifestyle readiness. This suggests that even experienced faculty may not have felt fully prepared for ODL post-pandemic. While age and teaching experience weren't significant factors, prior ODL course design experience proved crucial, differentiating faculty readiness levels. Furthermore, lifestyle readiness showed significant positive correlations with other readiness aspects, highlighting its importance. This study's holistic view of faculty ODL readiness offers valuable insights for university administrators and faculty developers to better support experienced faculty in online teaching.

Open universities face an unprecedented future of uncertainty, competition, disruption, and mission ambiguity. Many institutions are considering a strategic reset and restructuring of their primary missions to become more responsive and agile in meeting the needs of employers, students, and funding reductions, as well as a competitive landscape dominated by online delivery and innovations in AI. This article argues for the creation of a formal taxonomy for classifying different types of open universities./ Stated more succinctly, the author argues that an open university taxonomy would provide greater mission clarity; realignment with societal, government and employer needs; reassessment of the institutional credential continuum; a catalyst for targeting key market niches within a national footprint; alternative funding and budgeting models; and improved academic quality. In conclusion, a taxonomy would serve as a vital catalyst for improving communication among open universities and leaders, expanding strategic thinking about market differentiation, and promoting innovations and partnerships that will benefit all open university stakeholders.

This South African based exploratory study examines the differing experiences of higher education facilitators who were faced with having to rapidly transition to fully online engagement as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown regulations that were implemented as a result. Using a qualitative case study approach, this study sought to understand why some facilitators were able to rise to the challenge with relative ease, while others struggled to cope, citing feelings of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and low levels of personal achievement, each an associated dimension of burnout. Engaging with these facilitators, and the thematic analysis which followed, led to four major themes: balance is everything, technology as help or hinderance, adaptation rather than replication, and a loss of agency, with its associated sub-theme: everyone is exhausted. What the findings revealed was that those who presented with high levels of self-efficacy were able to avoid the onset of burnout during this time of crisis, while those with relatively low self-efficacy levels could not. Interestingly, emotional exhaustion featured as a significant factor across all participants, even those with high levels of self-efficacy. These findings underscore the importance of implementing support strategies that will assist all facilitators in bolstering their levels of resilience in order to mitigate the impact of the next crisis, whatever form it may take.

This article explores the practice of virtual learning in New Zealand schools. It reports on a study that examined how virtual learning has evolved over the last 30 years, how it is currently experienced by students and teachers, and makes recommendations for the future. Research participants were teaching principals selected from eight small rural New Zealand primary schools who were all active in Virtual Learning Network Primary School online programmes. The participants’ experience of virtual learning highlighted a wide range of benefits for both themselves and their students, in providing access to a wider curriculum, developing digital fluency, reducing professional isolation and relieving workload. Recommendations are made to school communities on how they can move forward with learning online; and to government on how they can develop policy and provide resourcing to support virtual learning in schools. It is suggested that with fast reliable internet, the small school that is open, networked, and collaborative can increase its capacity to provide learning opportunities for both students and teachers through virtual learning.

In recent years, online learning has become ubiquitous in tertiary and higher education institutions; yet many teachers are not sure how to design more blended approaches to enhance the learning process. This qualitative interdisciplinary research took place in two iterations of a first-semester undergraduate course in the Bachelor of Teaching (ECE) at a tertiary institution in Aotearoa New Zealand. Based on the experience of two teachers and their students, this paper explores online opportunities for a design to support students with developing digital literacies and, in particular, digital information literacy (DIL), for their ePortfolio assessment. The paper outlines the development process to highlight the steps required to meaningfully integrate technology features at course and curriculum levels. Research instruments included questionnaires and focus groups with students, and interviews, conversations, and reflections with staff. The paper shows that the development process—based on preferred teaching strategies—resulted in an innovative plan to increase practice, reflection, and feedback opportunities, using online tools in the institution’s learning management system. The article identifies opportunities and challenges that will apply in other tertiary and higher education learning situations, including similar national and international contexts where educators can draw on the findings to apply in their own settings.

Joint Editor Alison Fields bids farewell after over a decade in the Editorial Team. This issue shares five articles related to online and virtual education. They explore facets of learning experience, highlighting benefits and challenges, and influencing factors for both students and teachers across educational levels and geographic locations, including New Zealand, Brazil, and South Africa. Key conclusions include that, in New Zealand primary schools, blended learning was considered more important than fully online approaches. For adult disabled learners in open distance and flexible learning (ODFL) contexts, the biggest positive difference is attributed to the disability confidence of staff. Research on a systems thinking MOOC found that participants were primarily seasoned educators and mid-career professionals and, despite some AI use, their learning was very effective. When designing blended learning to foster digital information literacy, conclusions draw attention to the importance of leveraging online qualities, integrating contextualised learning, incorporating culturally responsive practices, and offering diverse options. Finally, a study on higher education facilitators during the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the critical role of self-efficacy in coping with challenges, but also highlighted that emotional exhaustion was a significant factor for all participants.