Open Educational Resources Movement Research Articles

Intergovernmental Organisations (IGOs) and Governmental Open Educational Resources (OER) Policies: Instruments of International Policy Influence

Intergovernmental Organisations (IGOs) have been playing a prominent role in the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement in advocating for and supporting the development of governmental OER policies. Research shows that IGOs perform multiple roles in influencing national and global education policy processes and possess multiple policy instruments with which they can assert their influence. We adopted the conceptual framework of policy instruments to understand the types of policy instruments applied by the selected IGOs. We carried out semi-structured interviews with representatives from four important IGOs. Results show that the selected IGOs collectively used discursive dissemination, funding, technical assistance, standard-setting and coordinative functions OER policy instruments to influence the development of governmental OER policies. We report on the perceived and observed successes of these IGOs OER policy instruments and the related challenges. We discuss relevant findings and their implications for further research and activities of IGOs.

How do we respond to generative AI in education? Open educational practices give us a framework for an ongoing process

With the release of ChatGPT in November 2022, the field of higher education rapidly became aware that generative AI can complete or assist in many of the kinds of tasks traditionally used for assessment. This has come as a shock, on the heels of the shock of the pandemic. How should assessment practices change? Should we teach about generative AI or use it pedagogically? If so, how? Here, we propose that a set of open educational practices, inspired by both the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement and digital collaboration practices popularized in the pandemic, can help educators cope and perhaps thrive in an era of rapidly evolving AI. These practices include turning toward online communities that cross institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Social media, listservs, groups, and public annotation can be spaces for educators to share early, rough ideas and practices and reflect on these as we explore emergent responses to AI. These communities can facilitate crowdsourced curation of articles and learning materials. Licensing such resources for reuse and adaptation allows us to build on what others have done and update resources. Collaborating with students allows emergent, student-centered, and student-guided approaches as we learn together about AI and contribute to societal discussions about its future. We suggest approaching all these modes of response to AI as provisional and subject to reflection and revision with respect to core values and educational philosophies. In this way, we can be quicker and more agile even as the technology continues to change. We give examples of these practices from the Spring of 2023 and call for recognition of their value and for material support for them going forward. These open practices can help us collaborate across institutions, countries, and established power dynamics to enable a richer, more justly distributed emerging response to AI.

Learning Management Systems Evaluation Using Frizzy DEMATEL

E-learning is the process of learning through digital instruments. One of the most common tools is distance learning, followed by learning management systems. However, hybrid interactions and partnerships are reshaping the world of online learning. The emergence of social networking and online learning groups, the widespread use of smartphones, and a growing understanding of the potential for computer games to revolutionize learning are recent developments. Other significant breakthroughs include improvements in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, the free Open Educational Resources movement, and the development of immersive environments that let users interact with virtual worlds and enhance their perception of the physical world through technology.

Primary Education Undergraduates’ Awareness and Perception on the Utilization of Open Educational Resources for Learning in University of Ilorin

The use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in this present dispensation is considered to be very essential. It is indicated that students use a limited range of technologies for learning, with established technologies such as VLEs, Google and Wikipedia being the most frequently used, based on the previous findings it is observed that utilization of OER is not common among primary education undergraduates. Therefore, this study investigated the awareness and perception on the utilization of OER for learning among primary education undergraduates in University of Ilorin.The study adopted the descriptive research of survey type. This study was limited to the primary education undergraduate students in Adult and Primary Education Department, University of Ilorin. 150 undergraduate were randomly selected from the department. Structured questionnaires was used to elicit response from the respondents. The finding of this study shows that undergraduate students are aware of OERs learning tools. Primary education undergraduate students’ perception towards OERs tool for learning is positive, there are factors inhibiting effective use of OER for learning among students, undergraduate students used OERs site for learning, and there was no significant difference between male and female undergraduates’ perception of OER tools for learning.Based on the findings of this research, the following recommendation were made. Lecturers should endeavor to put their scholarstic publications in the public domain of their institutions, as this will help student layhands on more quality materials and the government should provide fund to ensure the stability of OER movement.

OER Certification of Individuals and Organisations in Higher Education: Implementations Worldwide

The initiative “Open Education Austria Advanced” develops infrastructures for open educational resources (OER) in higher education. One part is the development of certification procedures to point out OER competencies of teachers in higher education and OER activities at Austrian universities. We present the results of our research on existing OER certification procedures from the German and English-speaking world. We started by searching in the OER World Map and there listed OER policies of universities worldwide and then tried to find examples for existing OER certification for people and organisations. There are several examples for certifications of persons such as in MOOCs on OER, university training on OER or the Creative Commons certification itself. We found only a few references of (partly) OER certificates for organisations. The publication then describes ambitions towards openness of the OER movement regarding possible certification procedures, namely open development, open content, open assessment and open certificates.

Digital resources and English as an additional language in higher education: possibilities for internationalization

Given the recognition of the Open Education Resources (OER) movement in the global scenario, this paper provides an overview of the OER implementation efforts, based on two documents: OER Global Report 2017 and Ljubljana OER Action Plan 2017. The first analyzes the OER progress from 2012 to 2017. The second presents recommended actions and strategies to harness the potential of open-licensed resources. We argue that these documents helped to compose the actions and strategies from the 2019 UNESCO OER Recommendation, which, in turn, motivated UNESCO and partnerships to produce an OER guide under the Pandemic COVID-19, following the 2019 OER Recommendations. Aligned with the innovative experiences brought by the guide, we emphasize the relevance of OER for knowledge sharing.

Developing Institutional Open Educational Resource Repositories in Vietnam: Opportunities and Challenges

The introduction of open educational resources (OER) provides new opportunities for learners worldwide to access high-quality educational materials at the lowest cost. As a developing country, Vietnam is one of the countries that can most benefit from the OER movement. However, the concept of OER in Vietnam remains little known to the public, with few institutional OER repositories (IOER) developed. This study contends that IOER development in Vietnam is complicated and constrained by many contextual difficulties; it was designed to explore the challenges and opportunities. After a literature review, 20 semi-structured interviews were conducted with relevant stakeholders. Building on the findings from the literature, this study found that IOER development in Vietnam is constrained by five categories of challenges: (a) technological and infrastructure matters, (b) economic constraints, (c) sociocultural characteristics, (d) pedagogical concerns, and (e) legal limitations. Many of these challenges are not identified in the literature and provide insights into potential implications and solutions for future IOER in Vietnam and other countries.

Effectiveness of the use of open educational resources in the development of students’ foreign language speech skills

The article discusses the importance of using open educational resources (OER) and the need to use the technology for the development of speaking skills in the foreign language as well. The concept of OER first emerged in the 1990s and Open Educational Resources Movement announced in 2001 that MIT's entire course catalog was being put online and the project was going to be launched at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2002. This technology has a number of advantages. For example, the use of OER provides free access to textbooks, allows maximizing time efficiently, increases the interest and motivation of students and helps teachers transform classes. However, it is difficult to deny the existence of some problems regarding OER. The main disadvantages include the quality of the educational resource and the lack of Internet access in all regions of the world. But shortcomings are a ‘temporary issue’ and in the future OER will be adapted in all countries of the world to a greater extent. It will be productive to develop foreign language speech skills using OER, since it allows students to acquire new knowledge more quickly and effectively. The developments of such skills will undoubtedly occurre directly as a result of the continuing use of various authentic materials and the frequent use of these materials by foreign language teachers in the classes is a topical issue. As a result, teachers may encounter problems related to lack of suitable language teaching materials. An important condition for solving the problem is the use of OER, which helps the teacher to develop students’ required skills in the learning process.

A History of Instructional Media, Instructional Design, and Theories

This paper discusses the history of the instructional design and technology field in four major time periods: (1) 1900s – 1930s, (2) World War II – 1970s, (3) 1980s – 1990s, and (4) 21st century. Since the 20th century has been discussed in detail in earlier works, this paper puts more focus on the 21st century section, which includes discussions of social media, online and blended learning, mobile learning, the open educational resource (OER) movement, massive open online courses (MOOCs), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), digital game-based learning (DGBL), gamification, the maker movement, new instructional design process models, and instructional-design theory. While previous discussions of the history of the field focused on the history of instructional media and instructional design and the evolution of learning theories, this paper includes the discussion of the evolution of instructional-design theories and models, which have received relatively less attention.

Affordances, challenges, and impact of open pedagogy: examining students’ voices

ABSTRACT Open pedagogy has emerged as an important teaching and learning practice while the current global open education resources movement has developed. The present research addresses the need to develop and conceptualize open pedagogy models in higher education contexts. This case study examined student perspectives on the affordances, challenges, and impact of an open pedagogy approach implemented within the context of three higher education courses. Various renewable assignments were integrated into face-to-face, blended, and online courses. Data sources consisted of reflection reports and semi-structured interviews conducted with 13 student participants. The qualitative analysis revealed six themes that conceptualized student engagement with open pedagogy: content curation, peer feedback, community engagement, development, reflection, and scaffolding. We discuss the impact of these practices on the participating students’ knowledge and awareness of open access and student agency. The results present an open pedagogy in action model with recommendations for future research and practice.

Contribution of Library Professionals and Libraries in Open Educational Resources in Indian Scenario

Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching and learning content that live in public domain and are free to use or reuse. The present study examines the contribution of Library Professionals and Libraries in dealing with OERs in India. A self-designed structured questionnaire was circulated online through blogs, discussion forums, social media groups and personal e-mails among library professionals, faculty and students for random data collection. The findings of the present study reveal that though majority (93 %) of library professionals are aware of the concept of OER but they are unable to guide the OER movement because their parent institution (70 %) have no policy guidelines on design and development of OERs. Library professionals play multiple tasks in dealing with OERs, most prominent being promotion (15.63 %) and Identification (14.02 %) of OERs. The study further reveals that 25.48 per cent library professionals believe that through use of OERs the patrons get benefit of gaining access to high quality learning material. While 21.3 per cent library professionals feels that lack of awareness on the existence of OERs because of rapid technological advancement is the major challenge faced by them. The study recommends that there is an urgent need to sensitise institutions about the benefits of OER.

“Is nicht egal“: Guided Multimodal Reading of a Music Video Advertisement

AbstractThis case study addresses the language‐culture divide contributing to curricular bifurcation in many collegiate language departments and presents a lesson plan to help language instructors bridge the gap. The lesson on public transportation is designed for first‐semester second language (L2) German students and focuses on a guided reading of a music video advertisement – the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe (BVG) spot “Is mir egal,” featuring Kazim Akboga (2015). The instructor and the L2 learners, using these guided reading strategies (Kern, 2000; Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2016), collectively unpack the text and make meaning – culturally, linguistically, and in‐between. This article presents data in the form of written student reflections on the video advertisement and guided reading strategies as well as instructor observations. The lesson is designed according to the FLLITE Project (Foreign Languages and the Literary in the Everyday, https://fllite.org/), dedicated to the free use of the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement, thus allowing instructors to adapt it to their specific needs.

Bridging the Gap: Rural Librarians’ Journey to Understanding Students’ Role in OER Outreach

Literature detailing how small, rural academic institutions have implemented initiatives for Open Educational Resources (OER) is limited; most articles focus on university systems, state schools, and R1 research institutions. Our outreach—conducted over the past year at rural Adams State University—initially targeted faculty. However, after encountering silence from this group, we sought to explore the largely uncharted possibility of engaging students as advocates. While our continuing efforts will certainly seek to promote faculty awareness and address barriers to adoption, we have come to understand two things: that faculty engagement is not enough and that student advocacy can play a great role. The librarians’ first goal in our nascent OER initiative is to educate and empower the student body, and by doing so, help bridge the gap between librarian advocates and faculty adopters. Our initial outreach effort to measure student awareness and interest had two aspects: in-person and online. The first step was to talk to students face-to-face about textbooks and associated costs, while informing them of the existence of OER and alternative textbook sources. The second step was to engage students online via a survey. This helped us gain insight into their perspectives regarding the problems they face due to textbook prices. Going forward, we plan to create a two-pronged outreach method: some continuing education of faculty, but more emphasis on students. Our goal is to equip students with the knowledge to advocate for OER to faculty, administration, peers, and even family. Final takeaways from this project include the need to involve students in outreach efforts and to encourage them to participate in future OER planning and projects. No single group can solve the problem of outrageous textbook costs; it is only by faculty, librarians, and students working together that Adams State University will join the nationwide OER movement, not just as participants, but as contributors.

ОРГАНИЗАЦИОННЫЙ АСПЕКТ ОТКРЫТЫХ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНЫХ РЕСУРСОВ

Движение за открытые образовательные ресурсы (ООР) быстро растет с 2001 года, чему способствуют финансовые средства различных благотворительных фондов, а также бесплатное предоставление образовательного контента учреждениям и учащимся по всему миру. Отдельные лица и организации мотивируются различными факторами для создания ООР, как альтруистических, так и корыстных. В данной статье рассматриваются различные способы организации инициатив ООР и спектры возможностей для составления ООР.

Integrating Open Education Resources (OERs) in College Courses: Student Contributions To OER Creation

Location: JC Room G Nowadays, the primary concern in the use of open educational resources (OER) in teaching and learning is that these open and free resources are used merely to promote free access to knowledge online. The need for evidence of the effectiveness of OER in teaching and learning is eminent as it highlights the necessity of the emerging shift from considering OER as open content to considering it as open educational practices (OEP) in order to enhance the innovation in teaching and learning practices. The open educational resources (OER) movement is an established phenomenon in the ‘open’ movement, based on the idea that knowledge is freely available on the internet and open for use with few or no restrictions. Wiley (n.d) introduced the 5Rs (Retain, Reuse, Revise, Remix, Redistribute) framework of permissions for using OER: (a) retain refers to permission to preserve the authorship of the original work and control copies of the content; (b) reuse refers to permission to reuse the materials exactly as they are; (c) revise refers to permission to adapt, modify, improve, and change the content, including translating into different languages; (d) remix refers to permission to mix and incorporate the original content with other material to produce new materials or content; and (e) redistribute refers to permission to distribute revised and mixed original copies among educators and friends. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (2013) produced a set of goals stating that by 2017, OER would be significantly integrated into all educational systems at different levels. However, the current status of OER adoption in education is variable, and it has not expanded in higher education due to several obstacles such as discovery issue, remixing issue and quality assurance issue that hinder the spread of OER at the local and national levels (Allen & Seaman, 2016, Al Abri & Dabbagh, 2018). In addition, several scholars (e.g., Pit, 2015; Wiley, Webb, Weston, & Tonks, 2017) believe that OER might have other potential capabilities alongside the sharing of knowledge and providing cost-saving alternatives to expensive textbooks. Among these capabilities, it is believed that OER can promote innovation in pedagogical models when OER become the central focus of teaching and learning practices. However, these perceived benefits of OER cannot be robustly demonstrated without empirical evidence. As a result, the absence of empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of OER in teaching and learning leads to posing questions about the features and characteristics of courses-supported OEP that can encourage faculty to change the current pedagogy practices and engage students to be co-creators of OER. From this spirit, the OER community encourages researchers to explore how the possibilities of OER in innovating pedagogical models can be put into practice in authentic contexts. Advocating the shift from using OER as mere open content to use it as open educational practices emphasize empowering students ‘contribution to the world of knowledge. Recently, there has been renewed interest in making students’ assignments matter by engaging students in OER creation. The discussion regarding students’ contribution to OER knowledge has engendered the concept of renewable assignments, also called student-created OER. Renewable assignments defined as students’ engagement in creating artifacts that have personal meaning to them and can be shared publicly under the Creative Commons license (Ross, 2018; Wiley, 2017). These artifacts with CC license are students’ OER renewable assignments they executed in courses and published them online for others to use it by practicing the 5R activities (Ross, 2018). Regarding the ethical concern by faculty members of using student-created OER in future courses is that students’ contribution to making their assignments under CC license is optional and they have the right to turn it to OER or to retain it in the university Blackboard. According to the university copyright law, students earn the copyright of their own work. Thus, they have the right to contribute it as OER or to not make it OER. Students who will make their assignments under CC license, they need to understand the different types of CC licenses and the permissions they will grant future students to use it. References Al Abri. M. & Dabbagh. N. (2018). Open educational resources: A literature review. Journal of Mason Graduate Research, 6 (1), 83-104 Allen, I. E., & Seaman, J. (2016). Opening the textbook: Open education resources in U.S. higher education,2015-16. Retrieved from http://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/openingthetextbook2016.pdf

Great expectations: a critical perspective on Open Educational Resources in Brazil

ABSTRACTNearly two decades have passed since the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement was launched. Its success in Brazil can be illustrated with the establishment of a UNESCO Chair in Open Education in 2014, in one of the country’s most prestigious universities. Crucially, OER were included in the 2014–2024 National Education Plan, a key piece of national educational legislation, as a category of educational technologies framed as tools. Assuming metaphors such as this play a key role in the ways we think, speak and act, this article presents a critical perspective on OER in Brazil. Examining the implications of the main metaphors used to construe OER in local media and academic sources, the text argues that these metaphors reflect hegemonic discourses on educational technology, concealing the non-neutrality of technological artefacts, obscuring issues concerning curriculum and pedagogy, and overlooking actual local needs. The article discusses issues concerning local OER advocacy, positioned in respect to specificities of a context where education, albeit a constitutionally established right, may be poised to undergo radical changes in the near future.

Business Models of Sustainable Open Educational Resources (OER)

This article conceptualizes four business models for sustainable open education resources (OER) at four levels: the social level, the education institutional level, the OER community level, and the individual faculty member level. The business model at each of the four levels has its application realm. At the social level, social benefits of OER are the central motivation of the OER movement. At the institutional level, education institutions are facing challenges of student enrollment increase. At the OER community operational level, communities of practice must be established. At the individual faculty member level, the key players of OER must take effective actions for OER. Sustainable OER can be achieved only when the stakeholders at the four levels collaborate towards the common objective of sustainable value creation. The comprehensive set of business models can be used for all parties involved in OER to define and implement strategies for sustainable OER. The article also provides recommendations for future research into tests of the conceptualized business models for sustainable OER.

Testing the Intervention of OER Renewable Assignments in a College Course

The purpose of this study was to explore students and instructor perceptions of the concept of renewable assignments in the open educational resources (OER) movement. Mixed methods were used, with a combination of a survey and semi-structured interview, administered at George Mason University in the United States. Eleven graduate students enrolled in the Instructional Design and Technology program in the course Advanced Instructional Design were invited to complete an online survey. A face-to-face interview was conducted with the instructor of the course. Descriptive statistics and thematic analysis were used to examine the results of the study. The data analysis found that only a small number of students were knowledgeable about OER, but the majority of participants indicated that they were very satisfied with the concept of renewable assignments. The findings suggest further investigation of the pedagogical models that tend to support student-generated OER.

The undefined figure: Instructional designers in the open educational resource (OER) movement in higher education

The paper aims to discuss the role of instructional designers (IDs) in supporting the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement in higher education. Due to the increasing cost of higher education, previous studies indicated the feasibility of adopting OER to lower students’ educational expenses and to equalize their learning opportunities (Murphy in Distance Education, 34(2), 201–217, 2013; Okamoto in Public Services Quarterly, 9(4), 267–283, 2013). However, many instructors and staff are facing various barriers to adopting OER, such as the lack of time, motivation, and knowledge of quality evaluation (Taylor and Taylor in Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration, 21(2), 1–8, 2018). IDs often serve as learner analysts, instructional innovators, and leaders in educational technology to assist instructors in developing teaching materials. However, limited research studied their partnerships to overcome the barriers of creating and adopting OERs in universities and colleges. Hence, the paper will propose a viable solution to include IDs in overcoming OER adoption barriers and promoting the OER movement in higher education. The findings may contribute to the field of OER movement and pave the way for future research.

Designing Open Server for Educational Question Resource

Information technology has become a vital component in modern teaching. Today’s educators have significantly depended on the internet to increase the quality of the education especially in accessing new content for teaching material. Hence, it is important to aid the teacher by providing a well-structured and high-quality content. The Open Educational Resource movement, initiated by UNESCO in 2002, is aimed to perform the aid for teachers. In this paper, we propose an architecture of an open server for educational questions. The purpose of the system is to provide freely-accessible high-quality questions that can be used by educators to evaluate the study result. By providing enough information regarding the content, teachers can develop a well-structured test to be used in their classes.