research paper on open educational resources

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

Do open educational resources improve student learning? Implications of the access hypothesis

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation OpenStax, Rice University, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Roles Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing

Roles Supervision, Writing – review & editing

• Phillip J. Grimaldi, 
• Debshila Basu Mallick, 
• Andrew E. Waters, 
• Richard G. Baraniuk

• Published: March 6, 2019
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508
• Reader Comments

Open Educational Resources (OER) have been lauded for their ability to reduce student costs and improve equity in higher education. Research examining whether OER provides learning benefits have produced mixed results, with most studies showing null effects. We argue that the common methods used to examine OER efficacy are unlikely to detect positive effects based on predictions of the access hypothesis. The access hypothesis states that OER benefits learning by providing access to critical course materials, and therefore predicts that OER should only benefit students who would not otherwise have access to the materials. Through the use of simulation analysis, we demonstrate that even if there is a learning benefit of OER, standard research methods are unlikely to detect it.

Citation: Grimaldi PJ, Basu Mallick D, Waters AE, Baraniuk RG (2019) Do open educational resources improve student learning? Implications of the access hypothesis. PLoS ONE 14(3): e0212508. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508

Editor: James A.L. Brown, National University Ireland Galway, IRELAND

Received: December 20, 2018; Accepted: February 5, 2019; Published: March 6, 2019

Copyright: © 2019 Grimaldi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: Data used in this report were generated via code, and are available on GitHub ( https://github.com/openstax/oer-simulation-study ).

Funding: Authors PJG, DBM, and AEW are employees of OpenStax, a non-profit OER textbook publisher based out of Rice University. RGB is the founder. OpenStax provided support in the form of full or partial salaries for authors PJG, DBM, AEW, & RGB, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.

Competing interests: Authors PJG, DBM, and AEW are employees of OpenStax, a non-profit OER textbook publisher based out of Rice University. RGB is the founder of OpenStax. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Introduction

The textbook has long been a critical component of the education system at all levels. In addition to providing a scaffold for content discussed in a course, textbooks have historically been the primary learning resource for students. For a variety of market-based reasons, the price of textbooks has risen dramatically over the last two decades, outpacing the price increases of all goods and services by almost four times [ 1 ]. Within higher education, these price increases ultimately fall on the students, who are responsible for procuring their own course materials. In response to these price trends, many educators have turned to open educational resources (OER) [ 2 , 3 ]. While OER refers to any educational resource that is openly licensed and freely distributed, for the purposes of this document we will limit our discussion to OER textbooks. Over the last decade, OER has risen dramatically in popularity. According to OpenStax, the leading producer of OER textbooks, adoption of OER textbooks has saved students an estimated $500 million dollars since 2012 [ 4 ]. Moreover, recent survey data [ 5 ] suggest that OER textbooks now rival commercial textbooks in terms of overall market share. More importantly, textbook prices appear to have recently leveled off for the first time in three decades, an effect which is partially attributed to increased competition from OER alternatives [ 6 ].

While the OER movement has been successful in reducing the cost of educational materials, many have wondered whether adoption of OER affords additional benefits, such as improved student learning outcomes [ 7 ]. This question has motivated a flurry of empirical research comparing the grades of students who used OER textbooks to students who used a commercial textbook (for a recent review, see [ 8 ]). Overall, this research has produced somewhat mixed results. Several studies have found no significant differences between OER and traditional textbooks on student grades [ 9 – 12 ]. Occasionally, however, negative or positive effects are found. One study [ 13 ] found no significant difference in regular exam scores, but did find a benefit of OER adoption on a specialized exam score. Another study [ 14 ] compared OER and traditional texts across seven high school classes and found a negative effect of OER in two classes, and no significant difference in the other five classes. In a study comparing OER and a commercial textbook across fifteen courses [ 15 ] a negative effect of OER was found in one course, a positive effect of OER in five courses, and a non-significant difference in the remaining nine courses. A six-semester study comparing OER to non-OER [ 16 ] observed a negative effect in two semesters, and a positive effect in one semester. However, a later analysis revealed these effects were likely artifacts of confounding variables. A study comparing digital and print OER books to traditional print text across three course exams [ 17 ] found a positive effect of digital OER on only one exam. A large scale evaluation of OER [ 18 ] found positive effects of OER adoption on student grades. It is worth noting that this research varies considerably in terms of quality and rigor. Nearly all used quasi-experimental designs, and some failed to control for possible confounding variables (e.g., [ 18 ]; see [ 19 ] for a discussion). Nevertheless, the important thing to note is that the majority of comparisons in the literature find null effects of OER adoption on learning outcomes.

Why do most comparisons of OER to traditional materials fail to find a positive effect of OER? On one hand, the primary goal of OER is to offer an alternative to commercial textbooks that are comparable in quality, but free and openly licensed. Assuming an OER textbook is no different in quality, then there are no meaningful differences to explain effects on learning outcomes. License and cost certainly should not affect learning at a cognitive level. In this sense, the frequency of null effects is expected. On the other hand, the price of a textbook can affect whether a student decides to purchase a textbook, and a student cannot learn from a textbook they do not have. If we reasonably assume that having a textbook is better for student learning than not having a textbook, these students would then be at a learning disadvantage. Thus, adoption of OER would be effective as a learning intervention because it ensures that all students have access to the textbook, and would therefore result in better learning outcomes (for similar discussion, see [ 8 , 15 , 18 ]). We refer to this idea as the access hypothesis .

If access is the primary mechanism for how OER might affect learning outcomes, then we can see that current research approaches are not well suited for detecting an effect of OER adoption. In most educational research, an intervention is expected to impact all students who receive the intervention, and its impact is measured by comparing students who receive the intervention to students in a control condition. However, the access hypothesis predicts that an OER intervention should only affect a subset of students—specifically those who would not otherwise have access to the textbook. Students who are willing or able to purchase the textbook should not be affected. Yet, every study that has evaluated OER efficacy to date has treated OER as any other intervention, specifically by comparing an entire sample of students who received the OER intervention to a sample of students who did not. Indeed, this is the approach recommended by the most active researchers of the field [ 20 ]. The problem with this approach is that the effect of the intervention is washed out by students who are not expected to be affected by the intervention. To draw an analogy, the current research approach in OER is the equivalent of measuring the effect of a pain relieving drug on a sample of people who are mostly not in pain. In this sense, we should not expect to observe effects of an OER intervention, even if we believe that having access to a textbook is beneficial to learning.

If the impact of OER is measured across an entire sample of students, then it is necessary for researchers to consider the textbook access rates prior to implementation of OER. Past research reveals some insights as to what the expected textbook access rates are in a typical classroom. A recent survey of over 22,000 Florida students enrolled in public universities and colleges found that close to 66.5% of students reported not purchasing a textbook at some point in their academic career [ 21 ]. While this statistic is concerning, the data are limited in that they do not indicate what the access rates are in any given classroom. Just because a student avoids purchasing a textbook once does not mean they will repeat the behavior for all of their classes. Indeed, more targeted research reveals that access rates can be very high. A survey of 824 University of Colorado at Boulder Physics students [ 22 ] found that 97% purchased the required texts. Another survey of 1023 students at an undisclosed university across a range of introductory level science courses [ 23 ] found that 96% of students reported purchasing their required texts. A survey of 162 students in a political science course [ 12 ] found a 98% access rate. We can imagine that if an OER intervention were conducted on these samples, it would be very difficult to observe a positive effect because the existing access rates are already so high. Of course, we cannot expect access rates to be high in every classroom. An internal survey at Virginia State University [ 24 ] reported that only 47% of students purchased textbooks. Unfortunately, they did not report how many students were included in this sample. Regardless, it is fair to say that the rate of textbook access will vary across contexts and student populations. As we will see, the access rate of any given population can have a profound effect on the results of research aimed at evaluating the impact of OER adoption.

In this paper, we argue that the standard approach taken in past research on OER efficacy is severely limited in its functional ability to properly evaluate the impact of OER. This functional limitation is controlled by the existing textbook access rate prior to an OER intervention. In order to formally illustrate this point, we conducted a series of simulated experiments designed to mimic a typical study on OER effectiveness. We used these simulated experiments to measure the likelihood of a standard OER efficacy study to correctly reject the null hypothesis (i.e., statistical power [ 25 ]). A simulation study is useful because we can examine the expected results of an experiment in perfectly controlled conditions. Most real world educational research is plagued by instructor artifacts, confounding variables, and random differences between groups. Moreover, it is incredibly difficult to implement a randomized control trial with real students. In a simulation, we do not have to worry about any of these constraints. A simulation is also necessary in this case, because traditional power analysis does not allow us to vary the number of students who might be affected by an intervention, as is predicted by the access hypothesis. The primary goal of these simulations was to examine the influence of access rate on statistical power in a typical study of OER effectiveness, and make inferences about the likelihood of detecting a positive effect of OER adoption in a real world study. We then apply this model to evaluate existing studies that have already been conducted.

Simulation Study

For each simulated experiment, we first generated a sample of n student scores s from a normal distribution s ∼ N ( μ , σ 2 ), truncated between 0 and 100. These scores represented the final grade of each student in the course on a 100 point scale, where μ was the sample mean and σ was the sample standard deviation. Second, students were randomly determined to have access to the textbook at a rate of a , and not have access at a rate of 1 − a . Third, students were randomly assigned to either an OER or Non-OER condition with the constraint that both conditions must have an equal size. Fourth, in order to simulate the effect of access, we decreased the score of the students in the Non-OER condition who were previously determined to not have access to the textbook. The scores of students in the OER condition were unaffected, representing the fact that all of these students now have access to the book. The magnitude of the score decrease was equivalent to dσ . The parameter d represents the effect size [ 26 ] of having access to a textbook. Finally, we fit a regression model that predicted student score by condition, and tested the condition coefficient against 0 by using a standard t-test. An overview of the simulation is shown in Fig 1 .

• PPT PowerPoint slide
• PNG larger image
• TIFF original image

For each experiment, a sample of student scores were generated, and students were determined to have access or not to the textbook. Students were then randomly assigned to either an OER or Non-OER condition. The effect of access was simulated by reducing scores for students determined to not have access, but only in the Non-OER condition. Lastly, a statistical test the OER and Non-OER conditions was performed. See text for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508.g001

Parameter values.

For determining the value of n , we wanted to use similar sample sizes as studies that have examined OER in past research. Of the 42 direct comparisons of OER and non-OER materials on course grade [ 9 , 12 , 14 – 18 , 27 , 28 ], 95% involved sample sizes smaller than 5000 students. Thus, we examined levels of n between 100 and 5,000. We address sample sizes larger than 5,000 later in this report.

For generating our sample distribution, we set μ to 70 and σ to 20. We chose these values because we felt they were representative of a typical classroom, and similar to those we have observed in past research. However, because the effect of an intervention is measured by relative differences in scores, the actual values used here do not have much influence on the outcome of the simulation.

For the a parameter, which represents the proportion of students who are expected to have access to the textbook, we wanted to examine access rates that would be expected in a typical college classroom. We examined 6 different levels of a − 40%, 50%, 60%, 70%, 80%, and 90%. This range is likely to cover most student populations that might appear in OER research.

The d parameter represents the effect of having access to a textbook versus not having access to a textbook. We anticipated the literature would provide a clear direction for setting this parameter. To our surprise, despite the ubiquity of textbooks in higher education, there are few studies examining the effects of textbooks in general (both OER and non-OER) on learning outcomes. To our knowledge, there are no experimental studies that would afford calculation of a reasonable effect size of textbook usage. There are some correlational studies that at least show positive relationships between textbooks and learning. One study [ 22 ] reported moderate correlations between the amount of reading assignments a student completed and their final course grade for conceptual physics courses ( r = .45), but no correlation for calculus based physics ( r = .07). Another study [ 23 ] found that students who reported regularly reading their textbook had higher grades than students who read their textbooks only occasionally. However, they also found no difference between students who never read their books and those who read regularly. A positive relationship between student grades and engagement was found between student grades and engagement with a digital textbook, even after accounting for general student aptitude [ 29 ]. In sum, these studies show at the very least that use of the textbook can be beneficial to learning. We concluded that if there is an effect of textbook access on learning, it is likely to be small. Thus, we set d to a value of 0.25, which is considered to be the minimum effect size necessary for an educational intervention to be substantively important [ 30 ].

For each level of n and a , we repeated the experiment 10,000 times and recorded the p -values of each experiment. Statistical power was computed as the proportion of studies with p -values lower than α . All simulations were conducted using R [ 31 ], and based on code presented in [ 32 ]. The full code used for the simulations is available on GitHub ( https://github.com/openstax/oer-simulation-study ).

We examined the proportion of simulated experiments that rejected the null hypothesis at the standard α of.05 (i.e., power). The results are shown on Fig 2 . As is the case of all experiments where samples are drawn from normal distributions, the probability of success increases with n [ 25 ]. However, we also see that access rate ( a ) plays a strong influence on the ability to detect the effect of OER. When access is very low, experiments have a much higher likelihood of correctly rejecting the null hypothesis with smaller n . This makes sense, because there are more student in the sample that can be impacted by the intervention. However, as a increases, it pulls the probability of success down. Indeed, when a is large, it requires very large numbers of students to detect a significant effect. To illustrate the strength of this relationship, an OER experiment with 10,000 students will have a 89.3% chance of success when the access rate is 70%. However, the same 10,000 student experiment conducted on a sample with an access of 80% will only have a 56.5% success rate. The situation gets considerably worse when the access rate is 90%. This experiment would only have a 19% success rate. The fact that an experiment with 10,000 students would have such a low chance of correctly rejecting the null hypothesis demonstrates the influential role of access rate.

A study sample’s access rate to textbooks prior to adopting OER can severely hinder the likelihood of detecting an effect of OER, even at large sample sizes.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508.g002

Examination of past studies

The results of these simulations beg the question—how are we to interpret previous studies that have examined the effects of OER interventions on learning outcomes? To this end, we used the simulation procedure described previously to conceptually replicate prior studies on OER efficacy, with the goal of estimating the probability that such a study would have detected an effect of OER, given the reported sample sizes used in those studies at different levels of access.

Selection of research.

From the literature, we were able to find 42 direct comparisons of OER to traditional materials, across 9 publications [ 9 , 12 , 14 – 18 , 27 , 28 ]. We did not include a study or comparison if tests of statistical significance were not reported. Further, we only included comparisons that used a continuous performance metric as their dependent variable (i.e., grades on a 0-4 scale or test scores). Comparisons that used non-performance based dependent variables (e.g., drop or withdrawal) were not included, as they are not suitable for use as measures of learning. Some studies (e.g., [ 15 ]) examined both grades and pass rates separately, which is a dichotomous version of grade (i.e., C- or better.). As an aside, it is not clear to us why both measures are sometimes used, as the measures are likely highly correlated. In cases where both measures were used, we only included comparisons on course grade. We did not examine studies that only examined pass rates, because these studies use non-parametric statistics which are not applicable to the power analysis we conducted. Also, several studies conducted both an analysis which collapsed across different courses or semesters, and then conducted separate analyses for each of these levels [ 16 , 27 ]. In these cases, we only included each separate analysis, but not the overall analyses. In the case of [ 18 ], they collapsed across multiple courses without conducting separate analysis for those courses. In this case, we only included the overall analysis. The complete list of comparisons is shown on Table 1 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508.t001

Simulation power analysis.

For each of the prior comparisons, we conducted 10,000 simulations using the same sample sizes reported by the authors. Since there is no way of determining the true access rate of the samples used in these comparisons, we used a range of a values (40%, 60%, and 80%). All other assumptions of the prior simulations were the same ( μ = 70, σ = 20, d = .25, α = .05), with one exception. We noted that many of the prior studies under consideration had imbalanced numbers of Non-OER and OER students, typically with far more Non-OER students than OER students. Rather than assuming equal sample sizes like in the previous simulations, we matched the sample size allocation ratio of the comparison study in the simulations. For example, the study in [ 15 ] reported one comparison with 4615 students, but 4531 in the Non-OER condition, and 84 students in the OER condition. In our simulations of this study, we drew samples of 4615 students, and allocated 98.2% to the Non-OER condition, and 1.8% to OER condition.

The estimated power for each comparison, for access rates of 40%, 60%, and 80%, are shown on the far right columns of Table 1 . We can see that for most comparisons, even under the most optimistic of scenarios (i.e., 40% access), the expected likelihood that the comparison would yield a positive significant effect of OER is very small. Only the comparisons which had very large sample sizes had substantial power at the 40% access level [ 16 , 18 ], though even some of these comparisons had low power at 80% access rates. Note that for many studies, power is so low at the 80% access level that the probability of correctly rejecting the null hypothesis is just as likely as falsely rejecting a true null hypothesis ( α = .05)! Thus, if there was an 80% access rate, these experiments were just as likely to detect a real effect of OER as they were to detect a false effect of OER. Interestingly, one comparison [ 15 ] had low power even with a sample size over 4000 students. This was due to the extreme imbalance of students in the Non-OER and OER conditions.

Given the results of this power analysis, we can determine the expected number of comparisons that should have correctly rejected the null hypothesis by summing the power values for each level of access. Across the 42 reported comparisons, we would only expect to observe significant effects of OER 18, 11.5, or 5.2 times, for the 40%, 60%, and 80% access rates, respectively. Note that only 9 of the 42 comparisons on Table 1 found positive effects of OER on learning outcomes. Even though this number seems very low, the results of the simulation power analysis demonstrate that this is well aligned with what should be expected, even if there is a real effect of OER. Of course, our power estimates assume perfect conditions. These real world studies have many confounding factors to contend with, so it is likely that the real power of these studies was even lower than what we estimated. In this case, it is possible that the number of significant effects found so far could even be higher than what would be expected.

Over the last decade, there has been a fair amount of research examining whether the adoption of OER textbooks improves student learning outcomes relative to commercial textbooks. The majority of this research has found no significant difference between OER and commercial texts when measuring learning performance. We have argued that one possible reason why most tests of OER efficacy fail stems from the predictions of the access hypothesis. The access hypothesis, formally introduced by us, states that OER might improve learning outcomes relative to traditional course materials by improving access to the textbook. Therefore, an OER intervention should only affect a subset of students who would not have access to the textbook. Through the use of simulated power experiments, we have demonstrated that the textbook access rate of a research sample prior to the intervention has profound effects on statistical power. As the access rate of a sample increases, the power of an experiment decreases dramatically. If the access rate is high, even studies with very large sample sizes should produce null results most of the time.

Overall, our analysis helps to provide better context to the studies that have examined OER efficacy. Even under ideal conditions, detecting positive effects of OER should be extremely difficult. The fact that most studies have found null effects is not surprising; in fact, these null effects are expected. Furthermore, our results stress the importance of being skeptical of studies that report positive effects of OER interventions. This is especially true if the study used relatively small sample sizes. In our simulation experiments, even comparisons with 1000 students are more likely to discover null effects than positive ones, even with access rates at the low end of the scale.

Implications for OER research

These results have several implications for future research in OER. First, we recommend that researchers attempt to measure textbook access rates in their student population prior to implementation of OER. If access rates are very high, it is important to consider that the likelihood of detecting an effect on learning outcomes should be very low. The effect of access rates should be considered when interpreting null results.

Second, it is critical that future research works towards determining the true effect size of textbook access on learning. Determining the true effect size will afford far more reliable power calculations, and more importantly, enable more meaningful interpretation of research studies. For instance, a high powered study that produces a null result is more meaningful than a low powered study that produces a null result, because the null result is unexpected in the case of a high powered study. Unfortunately, accurate measures of power require a reliable measure of effect size, and the vast majority of studies on OER efficacy do not report enough statistics in their analyses for computation of effect size estimates. It is critical that researchers report all relevant test statistics, p-values, sample sizes, means, and measures of dispersion. We encourage reviewers and editors of future research insist that authors report these measures.

Finally, it is common for OER researchers to conduct comparisons without making an explicit hypothesis or prediction. Hypotheses and predictions are critical, because they help guide research designs and interpretation of results. In the case of the access hypothesis, having an explicit mechanism makes it clear that the intervention should only affect some students. We cannot help but wonder if so many low power null effects would have been published had the access hypothesis been formally proposed earlier.

Potential theoretical mechanisms for OER efficacy

In this paper, we have discussed access as being the primary mechanism for why OER might improve learning. It is certainly possible that adoption of OER could affect learning outcomes in other ways. One idea is that the open nature of OER affords the ability to teach in ways that are not possible given the constraints of closed source materials [ 7 ]. Another idea is that OER may provide better or worse quality than the commercial counterpart (e.g., [ 17 ]). However, as mentioned previously, these ideas are rarely expressed as a formal hypothesis, and the mechanisms are rarely tested as part of the research. One exception is the work of [ 17 ], which compared learning outcomes from an OER and commercial textbook, but also examined the perceived quality and readability of the books. While differences in perceived quality and readability were observed, these differences did not translate into strong benefits to learning [ 17 ]. It should be noted that other mechanisms would not be subject to the same power constraints as access, as these mechanisms would presumably affect all students in the study. Thus, detecting quality difference effects, for example, should require far fewer students than access effects.

With regards to the access hypothesis, we made the assumption throughout this paper that students who have access to the textbook would use the textbook in effective ways. Of course, access is not a guarantee for learning. A student with access to a textbook could easily choose to ignore it or engage in ineffective learning strategies. These students are no better off with a textbook than they were without one. This fact creates a general boundary condition on the ability for access alone to affect learning. Practically speaking, the effect of access on learning depends critically on usage after access to the materials is supplied. If students engage with the book in ineffective ways, then access will be an irrelevant factor. To this end, we simply caution readers that while access is an important step towards improving learning, it not sufficient.

Limitations

It is important to point out that our simulated experiments provide only a proxy measure of statistical power. In particular, these simulations estimate power under an unrealistically optimistic experimental scenario. The situation only gets more difficult in real world studies, which have instructor effects, student effects, and other confounds to control for. These variables only add noise to the data, and reduce this probability of success even further. Thus, a researcher hoping to estimate their statistical power with a real-world data should understand that their actual power will be lower than those shown in Fig 2 .

Another limitation of our analysis of past research studies is that we assumed an effect size d of 0.25, rather than computing the observed effect sizes post hoc. Unfortunately, as previously mentioned, the vast majority of research we reviewed did not report sufficient statistics to conduct such analysis. If the true effect size of OER adoption is larger, then these studies may have had considerably more statistical power than what we estimated. To this end, we conducted a supplemental analysis which estimates the minimum effect size required in order for an OER study of varying sample sizes and access rates to achieve an acceptable level of power. This analysis is explained in detail in S1 Appendix , and the results shown on S1 Fig . Should additional research become available that suggests the effect size is different than the one we used, S1 Fig can be used to determine whether power of these past studies was adequate. Also, we remind readers that the source code of our analysis is available such that anyone rerun our analysis with varying levels of d .

Relevance to educational research

While it is tempting to think that the research failings discussed in this paper are unique to OER, the reality is that these failings are the result of a common mistake in educational research (and even social science research more broadly). Specifically, that mistake is overgeneralizing the influence of an experimental variable without critically considering the context in which that variable is manipulated. The importance of contextual factors was articulated decades ago by [ 33 , 34 ], who noted the fragile nature of many of the most landmark findings in memory research (e.g., levels of processing [ 35 ]). In particular, it was observed that minor changes to an experimental design could completely change the outcome of a manipulation. The critical insight of [ 33 ] was that variables not manipulated by the experimenter are just as important as the ones that were manipulated. The materials used, the final assessment, the types of students, and the interactions among all these factors were all critically important. Thus, if one wants to understand whether an intervention affects learning, they need to be aware of the context in which that intervention is taking place.

Of course, researchers and practitioners are naturally compelled to focus only on variables of interest in isolation. To illustrate, one of the most influential studies in education is a meta-analysis of over 800 factors that affect student learning [ 36 ]. While compiling such an extensive list of factors is quite the achievement, in our view, it presents an unrealistic view about the nature of learning. It leads one to a misplaced belief that certain techniques are better than others. However, even the strongest factors listed by [ 36 ] could quite easily be rendered ineffective by applying them to certain topics, certain populations of students, or certain outcome measures. For example, it is well known that effectiveness of an educational strategy or intervention can depend on the prior aptitude of individual’s in a study [ 37 ]. The very existence of such interactions prevents us as a field from ever discovering “laws” of human learning [ 38 ] or making broad sweeping claims about any intervention. In sum, the effectiveness of any educational intervention will almost always depend on the context in which it is implemented.

Failing to consider the importance of context can lead to poor study design and misleading conclusions. In this paper, we discussed the importance of student access in moderating the effectiveness of OER. Past researchers assumed OER would have a general effect on learning and failed to context influences, which lead to a dearth of under powered and ill designed studies. A similar analogue comes from the oft maligned enterprise of media comparison studies [ 39 – 42 ]. Media comparison studies typically evaluate student learning from a standard instructional strategy delivered on different types of “media” (e.g., computer vs. paper). Like OER, most of these studies have produced null results, and have been vehemently criticized for decades as being without merit [ 39 ]. Indeed, [ 39 ] took a strong stance that media is only a vehicle for delivering instructional strategies, and that media itself will never influence learning. While this is often true, others [ 41 , 42 ] have argued that many media comparison studies employed standardized research designs that were not well suited to measure the unique mechanisms afforded by media evaluated in the study. [ 43 ] reviews a wide variety of media studies which reveal the nuances of when media can have a meaningful influence on student outcomes. Thus, by carefully considering the context in which an intervention occurs and is evaluated and devising appropriate hypothesis to test, one can design studies that effectively and appropriately measure the unique merits of the intervention.

Conclusions

The goal of educational research is to answer important questions about education through scientific analysis. However, studies that are not grounded in theory or lack statistical power do not provide meaningful insights for answering these questions. On the contrary, such studies only muddy the waters, and move us further from determining the truth. Despite the large number of studies that have been conducted on OER efficacy, these studies unfortunately do not provide much information about the potential impacts of OER on student learning. While the large number of null effects may suggest that OER adoption may not provide much benefit to student learning, the reality is these studies do not provide much insight, because they were incapable of detecting positive effects even if they did exist. As it currently stands, the question of whether OER affects student learning remains unanswered.

Supporting information

S1 appendix. supplemental simulation analysis..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508.s001

S1 Fig. Minimum effect size required to detect an effect of OER at 80% success rate as a function of access rate and sample size.

For a given value of a , the minimum value of d necessary to detect an effect of OER is very sensitive to sample sizes n below 1000. Conversely, for a given value of n , the minimum value of d is extremely sensitive to the access rate.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508.s002

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Micaela McGlone for her project management support on this project.

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• Review article
• Open access
• Published: 13 October 2023

Are open educational resources (OER) and practices (OEP) effective in improving learning achievement? A meta-analysis and research synthesis

• Ahmed Tlili   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-1449-7751 1 ,
• Juan Garzón   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0374-8570 2 ,
• Soheil Salha   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2791-9925 3 ,
• Ronghuai Huang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4651-5248 1 ,
• Lin Xu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5426-1570 1 ,
• Daniel Burgos   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0498-1101 4 ,
• Mouna Denden   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0035-3490 5 , 6 ,
• Orna Farrell   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9519-2380 7 ,
• Robert Farrow   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7625-8396 8 ,
• Aras Bozkurt   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4520-642X 9 ,
• Tel Amiel   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-1775-1148 10 ,
• Rory McGreal   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-4393-0921 11 ,
• Aída López-Serrano   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-9008-7960 4 &
• David Wiley   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6722-4744 12  

International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education volume  20 , Article number:  54 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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While several studies have investigated the various effects of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP), few have focused on its connection to learning achievement. The related scientific literature is divided about the effects of OER and OEP with regards to their contribution to learning achievement. To address this tension, a meta-analysis and research synthesis of 25 studies ( N  = 119,840 participants) was conducted to quantitatively investigate the effects of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement. The analysis included course subject, level of education, intervention duration, sample size, geographical distribution, and research design as moderating variables of the obtained effects. The findings revealed that OER and OEP have a significant yet negligible ( g  = 0.07, p  < 0.001) effect. Additionally, the analysis found that the obtained effect can be moderated by several variables, including course subject, level of education and geographical distribution. The study findings can help various stakeholders (e.g., educators, instructional designers or policy makers) in understanding what might hinder OER and OEP effect on learning achievement, hence accommodating better learning outcomes and more effective interventions.

Introduction

Open educational resources and practices.

The term Open Educational Resources (OER) was first coined at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on Open Courseware, and it was defined in the recent UNESCO Recommendation on OER as “learning, teaching, and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license that permit no-cost access, reuse, repurpose, adaptation, and redistribution by others” (UNESCO,  2019 ). Several studies have then reported the advantages of OER in reducing learning costs (Hilton, 2016 ), increasing accessibility to educational resources even for students with disabilities (Zhang et al., 2020a ), and enhancing learning quality (Yuan & Recker, 2015 ; Weller et al., 2015 ; Zhang et al., 2020b ). Wiley ( 2014 ) further outlined five key characteristics, also known as the 5Rs, of using OER, namely: (1) retain—each person has the right to make and own copies of the published resource; (2) reuse—each person has the right to use the educational resources content in different ways depending in the learning context (e.g., formal or informal learning); (3) revise—each person has the right to revise the educational resource for different purposes (e.g., adapting it to a learning context or enhancing it); (4) remix—each person has the right to create a new educational resource by combining one or more learning contents together; and (5) redistribute—each person has the right to share with others copies of the original revised or remixed educational resource. The 5Rs can support innovation in teaching and learning since OER can be created, used, shared and repurposed differently to traditional copyrighted educational materials.

Building on the idea of innovation in educational resources and the idea of openness in education (Bozkurt et al., 2023 ), the Open e-Learning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) functions as a Transversal Action under the European eLearning Programme and is committed to advancing the creation, sharing, and global utilization of OER (OLCOS, 2007 ). In 2007, OLCOS conducted a roadmap study that emphasized the significance of integrating innovative teaching methods with OER (OLCOS, 2007 ). The project underscores that merely delivering OER within traditional teacher-centered frameworks might not sufficiently prepare individuals for educational success. It advocates for the incorporation of innovative educational practices alongside OER, and notably introduced the concept of Open Educational Practices (OEP). Based on this perspective, OEP can be defined as OER-enabled pedagogies, or “the set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions which are characteristic of OER” (Wiley & Hilton III, 2018 , p. 135; cf. Bali et al., 2020 ). Ehlers ( 2011 , p. 4) defined OEP as “practices which support the (re)use and production of Open Educational Resources through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning paths.” In a comprehensive review, Huang et al. ( 2020 ) identified five dimensions for the possible implementation of OEP, namely: OER, open teaching, open collaboration, open assessment and facilitating technologies. Some research suggests that these practices can help enhance learning quality, access, and effectiveness in universities. With the positive potential of OER and OEP in education, their adoption in education has rapidly increased for the past years. A significant moment in the history of open education came with the UNESCO ( 2019 ) Recommendation on OER which provides strategic policy support for the uptake and monitoring of OER. Accordingly, the UNESCO recommendation calls upon member states to develop national policies for the adoption of OER, which include activities, such as creating guidelines and strategies to incorporate OER within educational institutions or facilitating the generation and sharing of OER materials among educators. This recommendation draws considerable attention and investments to OER and OEP projects without certainty about their positive effects. At present, with the great potential of OER and OEP in education, a majority who remain unaware of the transformative potential of open practice; some educators consider OEP to be one of the most significant teaching forms of the twenty-first century (Shear et al., 2015 ) while others are oblivious of its existence. It is also important to note that OEP is not an orthodoxy so much as a concept that can be realized in a multitude of different ways.

Research gap and study objectives

Dotson and Foley (2017) emphasized that changing the curriculum content (i.e., from proprietary to open) does not produce a change in students’ learning achievement. Harvey and Bond ( 2022 ) also argued that there is a need to investigate if a change in the learning content licensing has an impact on students’ learning achievement. Despite a growing body of evidence regarding the effectiveness of OER and OEP in learning, open research studies have focused on other variables (e.g., affordability, accessibility). Less attention has been paid to whether OER and OEP can enhance students’ learning achievement compared to traditionally copyrighted materials (Robinson, 2015 ). For instance, Hilton ( 2016 ) conducted a systematic review of articles focusing on OER issues and learning achievement and perception, written between 2002 and August of 2015. The researcher found that only seven of sixteen studies focused on learning achievement. The researcher conducted another systematic review of twenty-nine OER-focused articles, written between September 2015 and December 2018, and only nine new learning achievement studies were obtained (Hilton, 2020 ). This reflects the decline in attention being paid to OER/OEP and learning achievement since 2002. Moreover, the literature about the effects of OER and OEP in enhancing students’ learning achievement is divided, where some studies reported positive effects (e.g., Colvard et al., 2018 ), no effects (e.g., Fortney, 2021 ; Grissett & Huffman, 2019 ) or even negative effects (e.g., Gurung, 2017 ), implying that some students who used traditionally copyrighted materials had better effects than those who used OER.

The question of the relative efficacy of OER or OEP remains open. The main rationale, therefore for this study, is to examine whether or not OER and OEP can enhance learning achievement. Two systematic reviews (Hilton, 2016 , 2020 ) attempted to investigate the above-mentioned phenomenon, however they were purely qualitative. The results from these two reviews did not effectively reveal the effects of OER and OEP on learning achievement. One study by Clinton and Khan ( 2019 ) conducted a meta-analysis related to this topic, however it investigated only the effect of open textbooks on post-secondary students’ learning achievement in the USA and Canada. Consequently, the previously obtained results do not reflect a comprehensive and an in-depth investigation of the effect of OER and OEP on learning achievement.

This present investigation aims at a more in-depth coverage of the current literature by including a range of types of OER (e.g., textbooks, videos, etc.) in many countries and at many educational levels. Smith ( 2013 ) highlighted the importance of researching improvements in achievement and attainment of OER, urging for further investigation into interventions that could result in significant enhancements in educational outcomes. In the same vein, Hilton ( 2020 ) has further suggested conducting sophisticated meta-analyses, where effect sizes across studies are calculated, to understand the measurable effect of OER on learning achievement. In response, this study employs a systematic analysis of the OER/OEP literature to comprehensively investigate whether the data supports the hypothesis that the use of OER and OEP can improve students’ learning achievement in a range of subjects. Therefore, to address this research gap, this study consisted of a meta-analysis and research synthesis of the relevant literature to provide quantitative evidence on the effects of OER and OEP on learning achievement. Meta-analysis, utilizing statistical methods, was employed to accurately measure the effect of a given intervention and the associated moderators of this effect (Rosenthal & DiMatteo, 2001 ).

Additionally, several studies reported that the effects of OER and OEP on learning achievement might vary due to different confounders, such as demographic information, the type of the course delivered, educational level (grade), intervention duration, among others (e.g., Hilton, 2016 , 2020 ). Therefore, the present study takes a forward step towards analyzing if these variables might moderate the effect of OER and OEP on learning achievement. Specifically, this study addressed the following research questions:

RQ1. What is the effect of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement?

RQ2. How does the effect of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement vary according to the educational subject?

RQ3. How does the effect of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement vary according to the educational level?

RQ4. How does the effect of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement vary according to the intervention duration?

RQ5. How does the effect of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement vary according to the sample size?

RQ6. How does the effect of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement vary according to geographical distribution of students?

RQ7. How does the effect of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement vary according to the research design?

Methodology

This study identifies the effects of using OER and OEP on learning achievement through meta-analysis. To secure the selection of the most relevant literature to be meta-analyzed, the researchers of the current study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis (PRISMA) guidelines (Page et al., 2021 ). Additionally, the researchers followed recommendations outlined by Kitchenham and Charters ( 2007 ). This procedure suggests three stages, namely: planning, conducting, and reporting the review. Although these guidelines were originally proposed for conducting systematic reviews, they have been successfully employed in meta-analyses (e.g., Garzón et al., 2019 ). All the processes related to the selection and codification of the studies were carried out by two coders.

Planning the review

To ensure having only relevant studies (recall) within this meta-analysis, hence obtaining a high precision rate (Ting, 2010 ), “open educational resources” and “open educational practices” were used as search keywords. Particularly, the term abbreviations, namely OER and OEP, were not considered as search keywords because in scientific writings, the full name of a term is provided prior to using its abbreviation. The search process was undertaken in the following databases: Web of Science, Scopus, Taylor and Francis and ERIC. These databases were selected because they are popular in the field of educational technology (Bedenlier et al., 2020 ; Wang et al., 2023 ). ERIC, particularly, focuses on educational science, especially OER (Otto et al., 2021 ) and Scopus is known as the largest database for scholarly publications. The publication interval was from 2012 up to 2023. The starting year of 2012 was selected as the initial date because it marked the release of the “UNESCO Paris OER Declaration”, which urged governments to promote the use of OER, and called for publicly funded educational materials to be released in a freely reusable form. As a result, several OER initiatives were launched worldwide which catalyzed the development of the OER field. Due to the novelty of the topic, conference papers and doctoral dissertations were considered to be included into the research corpus, as suggested by several studies (e.g., Chen et al., 2020 ; Denden et al., 2022 ).

The search was conducted on April 4, 2023, at which date, researchers were able to identify 643 studies (Web of Science: 117, Scopus: 38, Taylor and Francis: 262, and ERIC: 226). After eliminating duplicates ( n  = 324), a total of 319 publications were selected for further analysis. The first filter was based on each article’s title and keywords. This process allowed us to identify and remove 75 papers that were not relevant to the purpose of this present study. Then, the abstract of the remaining 244 papers was read and analyzed comprehensively. This process allowed us to remove 135 papers that were not relevant. Finally, we analyzed the remaining 109 studies based on the following criteria: (1) empirical studies, (2) studies that specifically used OER or OEP, (3) studies that provided sufficient information (i.e., mean, median, standard deviation) to calculate the effect size.

Therefore, a study was excluded if (1) it was not empirical research, (2) it did not focus on using OER or OEP, (3) it was qualitative or review research, (4) it did not provide sufficient information to calculate the effect size, or (5) it was not written in English. This process limited the corpus for investigation to 25 papers (23 journal papers, 1 conference paper and 1 PhD dissertation) to be further examined and included in the analysis. At the end of this process, the reference section of each paper was then reviewed. However, this process did not provide additional studies. Figure  1 shows the PRISMA flowchart (Page et al., 2021 ) of the study selection process, where inter-rater reliability in each phase was above 0.7, which is considered very good (Cohen, 1960 ).

PRISMA flowchart for the search protocol

Conducting the review

This stage included the coding scheme for the data extraction process. In an effort to minimize the potential for bias, an online electronic data extraction form was designed (Kitchenham & Charters, 2007 ). To answer the aforementioned research questions, the following information in each study was coded: (1) OER type: The type of resource used for teaching, such as textbooks, videos, etc.; (2) course subject: the subject that was taught when using OER and OEP, such as mathematics, psychology, etc.; (3) educational level: the student grade in which OER and OEP were used, such as primary, bachelors, etc.; (4) the length of time over which OER and OEP were used (i.e., course duration); (5) sample size: the number of participants in each study. According to Cheung and Slavin ( 2016 ), the sample size was divided into small, where the number of participants is less than or equal to 250, and large, where the number of participants is larger than 250; (6) region: the region (country) where the experiment was conducted; and (7) research design: the followed research design when conducting the experiment.

Calculation of the effect size

Comprehensive Meta-Analysis V.4 (Borenstein, 2022 ) software was used to conduct the present meta-analysis. Additionally, Hedges’ g was used to calculate the effect sizes (Hedges, 1981 ). The motivation behind using Hedges’ g instead of Cohen’s d effect size was that the differential sample size between studies may bias the estimated effect size. This bias affects studies having a sample size smaller than 20, in which case Hedges’s g presents more reliable estimates than Cohen’s d (Hedges & Olkin, 1985 ). Eleven studies followed the pretest–posttest-control (PPC) research design. In this research design, students are randomly assigned to experimental and control treatments and are evaluated before and after the treatment. As stated by Morris ( 2008 ), this design provides better results regarding the accuracy of d values and control of threats to internal validity. The remaining fourteen studies, on the other hand, followed the posttest only with control (POWC) design, where students are assigned to experimental and control treatments and assessed only once, after the treatment (i.e., learning using OER or OEP).

According to the guidelines provided by Thalheimer and Cook ( 2002 ) for interpreting effect size, an effect size is negligible if − 0.15 <  g  < 0.15; small if 0.15 ≤  g  < 0.40; medium if 0.40 ≤  g  < 0.75; large if 0.75 ≤  g  < 1.10; very large if 1.10 ≤  g  < 1.45; and, huge if 1.45 ≤  g . Additionally, to test if there was any heterogeneity in the variation of effect sizes within the reviewed studies, Q and I 2 were evaluated (Konstantopoulos & Hedges, 2019 ). Specifically, a preplanned analysis was conducted to investigate if the field of education, the level of education, or the learning setting influenced the overall average effect size.

Publication bias

Three methods were used to assess publication bias: classic Rosenthal’s fail-safe N, Orwin’s fail-safe N, and the trim-and-fill method. Rosenthal’s (1979) fail-safe number aims to determine the number of studies with nonsignificant results of unpublished data needed to nullify the mean effect size. A fail-safe number larger than 5 k  + 10 (where k is the original number of studies included in the meta-analysis) is robust. This means that the effect size of unpublished studies is not likely to affect the average effect size of the meta-analysis. However, this method assumes that the mean effect size in the missing studies is zero (Borenstein et al., 2021 ). To overcome this issue, Orwin ( 1983 ) proposed a more stringent method to identify how many missing studies would bring the overall effect to a specific non-zero value. This method permits selecting a value that represents the smallest effect of substantive importance and identifying how many missing studies it would take to bring the overall effect below this value. Alternatively, the trim-and-fill method was proposed by Duval and Tweedie (2000) with the intention of identifying publication bias by means of a funnel plot wherein the studies are represented by dots. If the dots are distributed on both sides of a vertical line representing the average effect size, there is no publication bias. Conversely, if most of the dots are located at the bottom of the funnel or on one side of the vertical line, publication bias is present (Borenstein et al., 2010 ).

Description of the included sample

Table 1 presents the included 25 studies in this present meta-analysis. Most of the studies ( n  = 19) were conducted with bachelor students. Additionally, OER and OEP were used mostly to teach psychology ( n  = 6), mathematics ( n  = 5) or also varied courses ( n  = 6). Among the 25 studies, 10 studies used small sample size (less than or equal to 250) and 15 studies used large sample size (larger than 250). Hedges’s g was also calculated. A positive Hedges’s g indicates that students using OER and OEP had better achievement than those who used traditionally copyrighted resources, and vice versa. Table 1 shows that 10 studies had negative Hedges’s g value.

Publication bias assessment

Borenstein et al. ( 2010 ) stated that a symmetric funnel plot—when the dots (studies) are distributed on both sides of the vertical line (combined effect size)—implies that there is no publication bias. However, if most of the dots are situated at the bottom of the funnel or on one side of the vertical line, there is publication bias. Figure  2 shows that the dots in this study are distributed symmetrically around the vertical line. Additionally, although some dots are outside the triangle of the funnel plot, most of them are in the upper part of Fig.  2 and not at the bottom. Therefore, it can be argued that the reliability of the present meta-analysis is not affected by publication bias.

Funnel plot of standard error by Hedges’ g

Overall effect size for learning achievement

The meta-analysis yielded an overall effect size of g  = 0.07, p  < 0.001, indicating that OER and OEP had a negligible effect on students’ learning achievement (see Table 2 ). Specifically, Document ( g  = − 0.20; 95% CI  = − 0.14 to 0.10; n  = 1), Interactive (text) book ( g  = 0.13; 95% CI  = 0.11 to 0.15; n  = 18) and Interactive course ( g  = − 0.11; 95% CI  = − 0.14 to − 0.08; n  = 5) had a negligible effect on students’ learning achievement. Video ( g  = 0.20; 95% CI  = − 0.0.33 to 0.73; n  = 1) had a small effect on students’ learning achievement.

The I 2 statistic showed that 96.60% of variance resulted from between-study factors, implying that other variables might moderate the effect size of OER (as pointed out in the background of this study).

The forest plot presents the variation of effect size across the 25 included studies (see Fig.  3 ). The black square represents each study’s weighted effect size, where a larger square size implies a larger effect size. The arrow underneath each square (effect size) represents the confidence interval of the associated effect size. The overall mean effect size ( g  = 0.073) is presented at the last row of the forest plot. Interestingly, it is seen that almost half of the studies had a negative effect size with different confidence intervals, implying that the use of traditionally copyrighted materials had a better impact on learning achievement compared to the use of OER and OEP. This further explains the obtained negligible effect of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement (see Table 2 ).

A forest plot of the Hedge's g estimates and the confidence intervals of all studies

Effect sizes of learning achievement for moderator variables

Course subject.

Meta-regression was used to investigate any possible variations in the effect sizes of educational subjects (Liesa-Orus et al., 2023 ). According to Table 3 , the meta-regression result indicates that the course subject model is associated with the effect sizes of the learning achievement under OER as the p-value is 0.05 (Borenstein 2022 ). Moreover, the statistics of the subject indicate that using OER in history (p = 0.001) is likely to relate to the effect size. Specifically, the coefficient indicates that the expected mean effect size for studies using OER in history is 1.14 points higher than the expected mean effect size for studies using OER in psychology, with standard error 0.33 and a confidence interval 0.49–1.78. In other words, OER used in history is likely to have a significantly better effect on learning achievement than OER used in psychology.

Educational level

Meta-regression was used to investigate any possible variations in the effect sizes of educational level (Chaudhary & Singh, 2022 ). According to Table 4 , the meta-regression result indicates that the educational level model is associated with the effect sizes of the learning achievement under OER as the p-value is equal to 0.001 (Borenstein 2022 ). Moreover, the statistics of educational level indicate that using OER in professional development ( p  = 0.001) is likely to relate to the effect size. Specifically, the coefficient indicates that the expected mean effect size for studies using OER in professional development is 2.26 points higher than the expected mean effect size for studies using OER in bachelors, with standard error 0.48 and a confidence interval 1.31–3.20. In other words, OER used in professional development is likely to have a significantly better effect on learning achievement than OER used in bachelor.

Intervention duration

Meta-regression was used to investigate any possible variations in the effect sizes of intervention duration (Shi et al., 2023 ). According to Table 5 , the meta-regression result indicates that the intervention duration model is not associated with the effect sizes of the learning achievement under OER as the p-value is 0.99 (Borenstein 2022 ).

Sample size

Meta-regression was used to investigate any possible variations in the effect sizes of sample size (Cheung & Slavin, 2016 ). According to Table 6 , the meta-regression result indicates that the sample size model is not associated with the effect sizes of the learning achievement under OER as p-value is 0.08 (Borenstein 2022 ).

Geographical distribution

Meta-regression was used to investigate any possible variations in the effect sizes of the region (Liesa-Orus et al., 2023 ). According to Table 7 , the meta-regression result indicates that the region model is associated with the effect sizes of learning achievement under OER as p-value is 0.01 (Borenstein 2022 ). Moreover, the region statistics indicate that using OER in Asia (p = 0.001) is likely to relate to the effect size. Specifically, the coefficient indicates that the expected mean effect size for studies using OER in Asia is 1.01 points higher than the expected mean effect size for studies using OER in North America, with standard error 0.33 and a confidence interval 0.36–1.65. In other words, OER used in Asia is likely to have a significantly better effect on learning achievement than OER used in North America.

Research design

Meta-regression was used to explore any possible associations in the effect sizes of the research design (Geissbühler et al., 2021 ). According to Table 8 , the meta-regression result indicates that the research design model is not associated with the effect sizes of learning achievement under OER as p -value is 0.77 (Borenstein 2022 ).

Finally, to further investigate for possible covariance between confounding variables, a meta-regression that includes all of the individual confounding variables that yielded statistically significant results, namely subject, educational level and region, was conducted. Table 9 reveals that subject ( p  = 0.01) and educational level ( p  = 0.001) yielded a significant covariance between confounding variables.

Discussions

This meta-analysis aimed to comprehensively assess the effectiveness of Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) in relation to learning achievement. The analysis of 25 independent studies revealed that the impact of OER and OEP on learning achievement is generally negligible. These quantitative findings support the conclusions drawn from qualitative (Hilton, 2016 , 2020 ) and quantitative (Clinton & Khan, 2019 ) reviews that compare learning achievement between courses using open and commercial textbooks. Additionally, it is found that course subject, educational level and the region of students might moderate the effects of OER and OEP. The obtained findings of this study can be discussed and explained from the following perspectives.

Improvement in access does not imply improvement in learning achievement: a holistic design is needed

The use of OER and OEP is often considered an effective learning intervention due to its potential to provide equal access to educational resources for all students (Grimaldi et al., 2019 ). However, the results of this meta-analysis do not substantiate this hypothesis. Dotson and Foley (2017) also argue that the change of a curriculum content license from proprietary to open does not always lead to a change in students’ learning achievement. In other words, we cannot expect an improvement in learning achievement by simply changing the license of a given educational resource from proprietary to open. It requires a more comprehensive approach that involves changing not only the license, but also the used instructional approach, the way the educational resources are designed, etc. Based on the review of 25 included studies, it is found that ensuring an improvement in learning achievement is beyond the simple access to educational resources, and several elements should be considered, some of which are considered and discussed below, namely: OER quality, instructional, and learners’ individual factors.

OER quality

The quality of OER and effective implementation of OEP are crucial factors that significantly influence learning achievement. High-quality OER, characterized by accurate and up-to-date content, clear learning objectives, and appropriate instructional design, have been shown to positively impact student learning outcomes (Butcher, 2015 ). Learners who have access to well-designed OER that align with the curriculum and provide meaningful learning experiences are more likely to engage with the materials and effectively acquire knowledge and skills. However, it is important to acknowledge that not all OER resources meet the necessary standards of accuracy, coherence, and pedagogical effectiveness. Research has indicated significant variability in the quality of OER, resulting in inconsistent learning experiences and potentially limiting their impact on learning achievement (Weller, 2017 ). To address this, quality assurance processes, peer review, and evaluation mechanisms are essential to ensure that the content and resources meet established standards. While there was early skepticism and critique in regards to OER quality based on design and economic production models (see Kahle, 2008 ; Weller, 2010 ), there is nothing inherently different in regards to open and closed/proprietary content beyond the intellectual property rights. In other words, the quality criteria that apply to proprietary/closed resources also apply to OER and we should not expect quality differences in OER produced under the same production modes (e.g. by experienced publishers and designers). The results of this study indicate that no significant difference was found, which substantiates this assertion.

Instructional approach

Scoring improvements in learning achievement also depends on how students engage with OER and the effective implementation of OEP accordingly. On the one hand, despite the easy access to learning materials provided by OER, learners may not use them at all (Feldstein et al., 2012 ) or may not have sufficient time to engage with them (Westermann Juárez and Venegas Muggli, 2017 ). On the other hand, while OER offer the advantage of making learning more individualized, students may encounter a broader range of perspectives through OER but the content they learn may not align with objective measures of learning (Gurung, 2017 ). In the same vein, Zulaiha and Triana ( 2023 ) stated that a proper teaching method and learning strategy must accompany the OER to be effectively leveraged to improve students’ skills in order for OER to make a significant impact on the student learning. An older study by Slavin and Lake ( 2008 ) similarly found that the selection of instructional approach has a larger impact on learning achievement than the choice of curriculum content. Besides, numerous educators face challenges such as time constraints, insufficient skills and competences (e.g., digital), lack of understanding about what OER or OEP actually mean, and a lack of incentives to engage in open practices. Consequently, the widespread adoption of OEP remains limited, potentially hindering its impact on learning achievement (Tlili et al., 2021 ; Zhang et al., 2020b ).

Learners’ individual factors

The impact of OER and OEP on learning achievement is influenced by individual learner characteristics, including prior knowledge and motivation. Tlili and Burgos ( 2022 ) emphasized the importance of providing personalized learning as students in open education might have different backgrounds and competencies. It is crucial to acknowledge that students may show diverse responses to open educational initiatives, and some may require extra support or guidance to fully reap the benefits of these resources. For example, studies have shown that students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, who may lack essential skills in effectively utilizing OER, tend to attain lower learning outcomes compared to their peers (Robinson, 2015 ). Thus, recognizing and addressing the diverse needs of learners is important in enhancing the impact of OER and OEP on learning achievement.

Adequate experimental design is crucial for accurately measuring learning achievement

Beyond the OER and OEP selection and implementation, the study indicates that the applied experimental design might hinder the accurate measurements of OER and OEP effects on learning achievement. Based on the 25 reviewed studies, it is found that most of the studies used quasi-experiments given that random assignments are not always possible in open education. As a result, this might hinder measuring the measurable effects of OER and OEP on learning achievement (Griggs & Jackson, 2017 ; Gurung, 2017 ).

Additionally, separating the effects of OER and OEP from other effects is also a challenge in the conducted experiments. Wiley ( 2022 ) described several ways in which research that purports to show the impact of OER adoption on student learning actually shows the impact of other interventions that are associated with OER adoption (e.g., when faculty receive support from an instructional designer to redesign a course after adopting OER). Pawlyshyn et al. ( 2013 ) also reported an improvement in learning achievement when OER was adopted simultaneously with flipped classrooms. However, it is not clear whether this improvement was due to the use of OER or flipped classrooms. OER are often employed alongside other interventions which can make isolating their effect methodologically problematic. This challenge of correlating improvements in learning achievement with the use of OER and OEP was also reported by other researchers (Griggs & Jackson, 2017 ; Gurung, 2017 ).

Most of the reviewed studies used final exam scores or GPA (grade point average) to measure the learning achievement of incorporating OER and OEP. However, this method is questionable as the designed exam may vary depending on the taught course subject and requirements, leading to a variation in the measured learning achievement. It is, therefore, recommended to use standardized instruments when measuring learning achievement using OER and OEP (Hendricks et al., 2017 ; Hilton, 2020 ). This normalization might lead to competence validation or even credit recognition through alternative credentials (e.g., Alternative Digital Credentials -ADC-), which is one of the open challenges around open education (Griffiths et al., 2022 ).

Confounding variables might lead to a variation of learning achievement

The present meta-analysis revealed that several confounding variables could affect the learning achievement of students when using OER and OEP. One of these variables is the course subject. This might be explained by the fact that some subjects have quality OER published online while others do not. For example, Lawrence and Lester ( 2018 ) highlighted a specific concern in the open content space for subjects like political science, which is the lack of available textbook options. Similarly, Choi and Carpenter ( 2017 ) found it challenging to find a suitable OER for their interdisciplinary Human Factors and Ergonomics course. The researchers discovered that OER for the Human Factors and Ergonomics course often provided in-depth content for individual topics, including extra information that is relevant to their subject of focus but not directly related to the course learning objectives. Furthermore, the limited number of OER options creates difficulties for instructors in applying some of their preferred pedagogical approaches.

The obtained findings also revealed that students’ geographic region can moderate the effect of OER and OEP on learning achievement. This could be explained with the fact that several regions, such as East Asia, have made remarkable progress in terms of raising awareness and adopting OER and OEP (Tlili et al., 2019 ), while others like the Arab region and sub-Saharan Africa are still behind (Tlili et al., 2020 , 2022 ). This might result in divided regions in terms of students’ perception and acquired competencies to use OER and OEP, hence having varied learning achievement across regions.

Conclusions, implications and limitations

This study included a meta-analysis and research synthesis to investigate the effects of OER and OEP on students’ learning achievement. This analysis describes how this effect is moderated across different variables (i.e., course subject, level of education, intervention duration, sample size and geographical distribution). As discussed above, to the best of our knowledge, no previous study has conducted a similar analysis. Based on the findings, it can be argued that holistic OER learning design may be needed to optimize learning outcomes; that researchers should employ adequate experimental design when investigating the relationship between OER and learning achievement; and highlighted the potential role of confounding factors that can lead to a variation of learning achievement when using OER.

Implications

This study supports previous research in identifying no significant differences between the interventions using open and closed approaches (content or practice). This meta-analysis supports this conclusion following along existing literature on media/intermedia comparison studies (e.g. Clark, 1994 ; Salomon & Clark, 1977 ).

The conundrum for comparisons studies such as those included in this meta-analysis is thus: if a true experiment made to evaluate the influence of OER in learning achievement were to be designed, the only variable would be the OER itself, in other words, the intellectual property license of the content (considering this to be the defining characteristic of OER). If this were possible, one could only expect that the affordances of open licensing would possibly point to the effects of reduced cost or ease of access to relate to achievement (e.g., Fischer et al., 2015 ). But if this is done, it would offer us minimal new insights beyond what we already could expect, in principle. It stands to reason that not having access to resources designed to be part of a course would reduce achievement (a comparison on whether students actually did or did not access and make use of resources in the treatment and control condition is another study entirely).

However, the truly intriguing and critical questions pertain to practical applications. If we do allow practice to vary, for example: if the OER afforded some different sort of practice (as OEP is defined in OER-enabled pedagogy) then we are really measuring something more holistic—the practice which includes the resource. As Salomon and Clark ( 1977 , p. 102) conclude: “In short, when only the least significant aspects of instruction are allowed to vary, nothing of interest could, and did, result.”

This study then might point us to valuable avenues for further research. Perhaps course instructors and designers are attempting to faithfully replicate courses that make use of OER simply to test possible outcomes in achievement; here, clearly, we should expect no difference to emerge. Furthermore, instructors may not be really leveraging OER-enabled pedagogy or more expansive perspectives of OEP.

Additionally, this meta-analysis might help disencourage further comparison studies based on OER and achievement. It points us to the urgency of expanding the object of analysis beyond intrinsic characteristics of OER and focus on how principles of openness might significantly alter the nature of the practices and courses themselves, might lead to outcomes which are not measured simply by achievement gains, and additionally, might or might not cater to different types of students.

This present study can contribute to the literature from different perspectives. From a theoretical perspective, this study adds to the ongoing debate for the past twenty years about the effectiveness of OER and OEP by revealing what might moderate the effectiveness of OER and OEP. From a practical perspective, this study can contribute to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN, 2021 ), specifically SDG 4 quality education, by highlighting the different variables (i.e., quality, the used pedagogical approach, etc.) that different stakeholders (i.e., educators, instructional designers, etc.) should consider when adopting OER and OEP for better learning achievement. Finally, from a methodological perspective, this study contributes to the literature by pointing out various experimental criteria (i.e.., standardized measurements, design, etc.) that should be considered when designing research experiments to effectively measure the true effect of OER, hence providing more accurate results that could advance the field in this regard.

Limitations and future directions

It should be noted that the statistical power was not examined in this present meta-analysis, which is the case in the majority of published meta-analyses in the literature (Burçin, 2022 ; Dumas-Mallet et al., 2017 ; Thorlund & Mills, 2012 ). A significant barrier to the widespread implementation of statistical power in meta-analysis is the difficulty of understanding how it can be computed due to the various variables that should be considered in each study, as well as the heterogenicity of the conducted studies (Cafri et al., 2010 ; Ioannidis et al., 2014 ; Vankov et al., 2014 ). Additionally, there is a lack of an accessible and easy-to-use software or R script that can help to compute statistical power (Griffin, 2021 ; Thomas & Krebs, 1997 ). In this context, various software, such as G*power, have been developed to calculate statistical power for primary research, allowing for widespread implementation of power analysis in primary research (Faul et al., 2007 ). However, despite the similarity in procedure, such analogous software options do not exist for meta-analysis. Consequently, to calculate statistical power for a given meta-analysis, researchers must manually perform the calculations, use an online calculator, or utilize a user defined script (e.g., Cafri et al., 2009 ). These methods can be limited in functionality and difficult to integrate into a reproducible workflow (Griffin, 2021 ).

Besides, despite the reliability of the obtained results having been validated through the bias assessment, this study has some other limitations that should be acknowledged. For instance, the obtained results might be limited to the used keywords and electronic databases. Additionally, the obtained analysis was only based on courses conducted in English; non-English course studies might reveal different results. Moreover, while the present meta-regression yielded valuable insights about the effect of OER and OEP on learning achievement as well as the moderating variables of this effect, the limited sample size of the included studies might impact the generalizability of the findings. Therefore, future researchers are encouraged to complement this work by covering more databases and analyzing non-English courses, hence providing a more comprehensive view of OER and OEP effects. Additionally, this present meta-analysis did not consider teacher variables (e.g., same teacher or not when teaching using OER and non-OER materials) which could moderate the effects of OER and OEP on learning achievement (Hilton, 2020 ). Therefore, future studies could focus on this line of research. Finally, this present meta-analysis did not consider OER quality, which has been shown to have a significant impact on students’ learning outcomes (Butcher, 2015 ). Future research could systematically assess and incorporate OER quality as a moderating variable, hence further enhancing the understanding of the intricate relationship between OER and learning achievement. However, despite these limitations, this present study provided quantitative evidence about the OER and OEP effects on students’ learning achievement.

Availability of data and materials

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are presented within this study.

References with an asterisk (*) indicate studies included in the analysis

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Faculty perceptions, awareness and use of open educational resources for teaching and learning in higher education: a cross-comparative analysis

• Victoria I. Marín   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4673-6190 1   nAff2 ,
• Olaf Zawacki-Richter 1 ,
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• Melissa Bond 5 ,
• Aras Bozkurt 3 ,
• Dianne Conrad 6 ,
• Insung Jung 7 ,
• Yasar Kondakci 8 ,
• Paul Prinsloo 9 ,
• Jennifer Roberts 9 ,
• George Veletsianos 10 ,
• Junhong Xiao 11 &
• Jingjing Zhang 12  

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This paper explores faculty’s perspectives and use of open educational resources (OER) and their repositories across different countries by conducting a multiple case study to find similarities and differences between academics’ awareness, perceptions and use of OER, as well as examining related aspects of institutional policy and quality that may influence individual views. Data were collected through nine expert reports on each country studied (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey) and were analyzed through qualitative content analysis using thematic coding. Findings show the impact on individual OER adoption with regard to the individual control of diverse factors by faculty members; of institutional policies and quality measures on the externally determined factors (by the institution); and of institutional professional development and provision of incentives in more internally determined factors (by the faculty members themselves). These findings carry implications for higher education institutions around the world in their attempt to boost OER adoption by faculty members.

Introduction

Open educational resources (OER) have yet to be widely adopted in higher education (HE), despite their affordances for education and increasing interest from the educational community (Bozkurt et al., 2019 ; Murphy, 2013 ). This situation is caused in part by macro-level factors such as national regulations, funding possibilities and existing OER infrastructure; meso-level factors such as institutional policies, OER promotion measures and specific infrastructures (Conole, 2012 ; Marín et al., 2020a ; under review; Yuan et al., 2008 ); and micro-level factors such as faculty perceptions, awareness and use of OER in teaching and learning (Cox & Trotter, 2017 ), which in turn are affected by macro- and meso-level factors. Factors at the three levels are considered to be interdependent (Marín et al., 2020b ; Zawacki-Richter, 2009 ).

Prior research focusing on factors influencing OER adoption by individual faculty members has found, for example, appropriate institutional support to be an enabler, while inadequate support hinders OER practice (Baas et al., 2019 ; Bates et al., 2007 ; Belikov & Bodily, 2016 ; Bossu et al., 2014 ; Schuwer & Janssen, 2018 ). Institutional factors also include institutional readiness as OER creators, institutional culture and volition (Cox & Trotter, 2017 ), institutional reputation (Bates et al., 2007 ; Rolfe, 2012 ), cost benefit (Bates et al., 2007 ; Belikov & Bodily, 2016 ), pedagogical benefits (Belikov & Bodily, 2016 ; Schuwer & Janssen, 2018 ) and availability of quality OER (Baas et al., 2019 ; Bossu et al., 2014 ). The adoption of OER is also influenced by individual faculty factors, for example, when practitioners are not equipped with adequate knowledge and/or skills required for OER (Belikov & Bodily, 2016 ; Cox & Trotter, 2017 ; Li & Li, 2012 ). Individual awareness of OER affordances is found to be a barrier to implementation (Baas et al., 2019 ; Bates et al., 2007 ; Li & Li, 2012 ; Reed, 2012 ; Rolfe, 2012 ; Schuwer & Janssen, 2018 ), whereas adequate awareness contributes to OER practice (Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ) although Bossu et al. ( 2014 ) showed that awareness was not positively correlated with adoption or creation. Both individual reputation and time availability are also factors influencing individual OER adoption (Bates et al., 2007 ; Rolfe, 2012 ; Schuwer & Janssen, 2018 ). Finally, research findings included some macro-level factors that also impact on individual OER adoption, for example, intellectual property policies (Bates et al., 2007 ; Bossu et al., 2014 ).

Despite these findings, it is worth noting that only a few studies have based their work on a conceptual framework (e.g., Baas et al., 2019 ; Cox & Trotter, 2017 ; Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ), looked comparatively at these aspects across countries (e.g., Jung & Lee, 2020 ) or/and used multiple data sources (e.g., Baas et al., 2019 ; Bossu et al., 2014 ). This study is significant in that the application of a conceptual framework is intended, not only to provide contextual information that helps to explain and interpret data, but also to contribute to the further development and revision of the framework. Its uniqueness also lies in a much wider-scale comparison involving more institutions across more countries. Findings from this study may be more generalizable. This is especially important, considering the increased need for digital accessible educational resources due to COVID-19 (Huang et al., 2020 ). In addition, this study has an exclusive but more comprehensive focus: It is exclusive in that it concentrates on micro-level OER practice, but more comprehensive in that it covers all key aspects of OER practice by faculty. In this sense, aspects related to OER infrastructure, quality, policy and promotion of change have not been well addressed comparatively in the literature so far and are worthy of a careful investigation to increase a general comprehensive understanding of OER factors influencing individual OER adoption worldwide and, ultimately, to aid in the search for collective, global and particular, solutions to support this adoption.

As part of the research project “Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures - EduArc” ( https://uol.de/coer/research-projects/projects/eduarc ), and as a follow-up to the macro- and meso-level studies (i.e., national systems and institutional infrastructures and organization (see Marín et al., 2020a ; under review), this study aimed to analyze aspects related to the use, creation, remix and sharing of OER in HE at the micro-level of teaching and learning (that is, faculty members’ experiences) across countries. The use of the term OER in this study does not exclude our recognition that fully open educational resources are not always possible depending on institutional HE policies. The framework of content analysis for the macro- and meso-level studies was adopted, with the unique features of the micro-level also taken into account, namely infrastructure (local environment), quality (quality of OER), policy (local policies) and change (incentives and faculty support).

Against this background, the research questions are as follows:

RQ1 What are faculty members’ perceptions and use of infrastructure (e.g., tools and platforms) and types of OER across countries?

RQ2 How aware are faculty members of OER quality assurance (QA) institutional procedures and who oversees them across countries?

RQ3 To what extent are faculty members familiar with institutional OER policies and the possibilities to get involved in institutional OER policymaking across countries?

RQ4 How are faculty members motivated to use OER in their teaching practices across countries?

Conceptual framework of study

Theories and models have been developed over time to explain why individuals adopt particular technologies. Well-known models are, for instance, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) for analyzing the acceptance and usage of (an specific) technology, or the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) that focuses on the impact on behavioral intention of various determinants (Venkatesh et al., 2003 ) and has been used in OER adoption studies in HE (e.g., Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ). Its enhanced version (UTAUT2) includes three individual determinants in technology adoption that are moderated by age, gender and experience (Venkatesh et al., 2012 ). In a cross-cultural study on the adoption of OER in HE (Jung & Lee, 2020 ), the authors added culture to the UTAUT2 model as an important moderating variable and incorporated two cross-cultural frameworks: Hall’s ( 1976 ) high-context and low-context cultural theory and Hofstede’s ( 2001 ) cultural values framework.

Despite their interesting insights into OER adoption, these models neither specifically address its complexity nor the broader scope of research required. For example, Mtebe and Raisamo ( 2014 ) identified other factors different from the ones considered by UTAUT that are influencing OER adoption by faculty. A comprehensive model that has been used in some studies exists in the context of OER adoption by faculty: the OER Adoption Pyramid (Cox & Trotter, 2017 ).

The framework (see Fig.  1 ) considers different layers moving from externally determined (national, province or institutional level) to internally determined (individual level) factors, with each of them needed to support the next layer above. The first layer addresses access to infrastructure; the second one refers to permission to use/create OER; the third layer is related to awareness of OER, what it involves, and how it differs from other educational resources; the fourth layer addresses capacity, i.e., the skills to find, use, create and/or upload OER; the fifth layer is about availability of relevant OER of quality; and the last layer concerns volition to adopt OER, which includes individual, social, and institutional volition. According to the context in the study by Baas et al. ( 2019 ), availability should be considered a prerequisite for instructors to explore their capacity and volition and, therefore, be lower in the pyramid. However, considering different contexts in the countries involved in this study, the original version of the model has been taken into account. The OER Adoption Pyramid was used in this study to facilitate qualitative data analysis and generate new insights that lead to an enhanced model.

OER adoption pyramid. Note From “An OER framework, heuristic and lens: Tools for understanding lecturers’ adoption of OER” by G. Cox and H. Trotter, 2017, Open Praxis, 9 (2), p. 155. ( https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.9.2.571 )

Methodology

Aim, design and sample.

Our study is based on an interpretative paradigm and aims at identifying and understanding factors influencing individual adoption of OER in HE across countries. To this end, we conducted a comparative multi-case study (Yin, 2009 ), consisting of nine cases based on written reports collected from members of the Center for Open Education Research (COER) ( https://uol.de/coer ) from nine countries as a convenience sample: Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey.

The whole design process is depicted in Fig.  2 and described below.

Design process of the study

In the first phase, common research questions for the country reports were provided based on the consideration of four main elements: infrastructure, quality, policy and measures for change (see Table  1 ). These research questions were based on the consideration of the three broad meta-levels of distance education research (Zawacki-Richter, 2009 ). The microlevel (teaching and learning in distance education) was taken into account and adapted to the situation of OER in any form of education modalities in higher education, considering the particular focus on aspects influencing OER infrastructures of the EduArc project.

Data collection

While much research around OER relies on one or two data sources, this study draws from multiple and complementary data sources contained in each case report, in order to enable a more nuanced analysis of the topic under investigation.

The case reports were mainly based on desk research, i.e., secondary research, such as empirical studies covering local issues on OER, and document analysis (e.g., white papers, policy papers, institutional reports), but some of them included data collected through primary research too, namely: a survey and personal interviews (phase 2 in Fig.  2 , for details, see Table  2 ). As different countries were involved and the situations greatly differ across countries, the autonomy was given to the experts to decide what kind of data were needed to tell coherent stories of their country cases. As an illustrative example, in China’s case, after analyzing the secondary data, experts found that they needed to interview key people who were involved in designing and implementing OERs in higher education institutions to explain how and why things were going as described in the secondary data.

With regard to the primary research, personal interviews were designed in a semi-structured form, following the research questions for the micro-level of the corresponding work package of the project. The number of interviews and survey participants predominantly included faculty; however, in a few cases administrators (Turkey) and librarian staff (Australia and Canada) also participated. In the case of China, only administrators were interviewed. Participants also came from different HE institutions; Australian participants were represented by 22 HE institutions, the German survey addressed faculty from HE institutions in the federal state of Lower Saxony, and Spanish participants came from 64 universities and formed a representative sample. The variation in participant numbers—especially in the three quantitative surveys—needs to be kept in mind when results are reported so as to not misinterpret percentages that are provided. All study participants involved had given their informed consent to participate.

By including multiple types of data sources in their country reports (e.g., interviews, surveys, empirical papers, reports, etc.), the experts aimed to add to the qualitative rigor of the study (Thomas & Magilvy, 2011 ). Data collected by different methods helped increase the richness of the case studies, especially in the cases where desk research was not enough to provide a proper answer to the posed research questions.

Data analysis

Quantitative and qualitative data from the case reports were analyzed through thematic coding with MAXQDA2020 in several iterations (Miles et al., 2013 ). MAXQDA2020 is a software for qualitative and mixed methods that can be used for any type of qualitative research and integrates a comprehensive set of tools for collecting and organizing data, analyzing and visualizing data. Each case report was uploaded to MAXQDA2020 as documents for the iterative coding process (third phase in Fig.  2 ).

In the first iteration, the data were categorized into main codes based on the four elements of the reports described in the research questions (Infrastructure, Policy, Quality and Change). In the second iteration, the OER Adoption Pyramid (Cox & Trotter, 2017 ) was integrated as a way of understanding some of the elements, especially concerning awareness, capacity, availability and volition. In the third phase of coding, codes and subcodes were added by abductive coding, based on the identification of new topics that were not covered in the two previous deductive phases, considering how the data could support the previous coding schema and call for its modification (Kennedy & Thornberg, 2018 ). The fourth and final phase of coding involved the revision of some codes and subcodes according to the literature that has explored faculty’s perceptions about OER (e.g., Baas et al., 2019 ; Belikov & Bodily, 2016 ; Cox & Trotter, 2017 ), as well as renaming codes for greater accuracy and deleting redundant codes. In addition, each of the coded segments was given a “comment” in MAXQDA, in order to summarize its content (“the preview”), given that many of them were overly long. This action was carried out in order to facilitate the generation of visualizations of codes–subcodes–segments with MAXMaps (functionality within MAXQDA2020) after the analysis. Each report could have more than one coded segment related to one, more or the same (sub)code. The iterative coding process was conducted by one coder, but the research group reached a consensus regarding the final versions of the codes. The whole coding process took three intensive months, with longer periods concentrated within the third and fourth phases due to their complexity.

This process resulted in an enhanced model that combines the OER Adoption Pyramid and the four elements of the research project at the micro-level based on data from the international reports. Therefore, the enhanced model provides a broader view to the previous literature, which focused exclusively on one institution or country (see Fig.  3 , with various codes and subcodes depicted).

Enhanced OER adoption pyramid combined with infrastructure (I), policy (P), quality (Q) and change (C). Note The differentiation between the four aspects is done using parenthesis and colors

Limitations

This study’s methodological approach presents some limitations that must be acknowledged. As each country expert (or group of experts) was able to organize their case as they wanted, according to the project’s main research questions, we could not report on homogeneous data collection methods as the basis for the reports. Similarly, the primary empirical data do not come from the application of the same instruments; even in the case of using the same data collection method (survey or interview), neither refers to comparative data in terms of the number of participants. Furthermore, although consensus on the final version of the coding schema was reached by the research group, the data analysis involved only one coder and this fact could involve a bias in the interpretation and saturation of the report data. Even though these limitations may make the comparison across countries difficult, the exploration of the same research questions still presents valuable insights into the topic.

Findings and discussion

Research question 1: use and perceptions of oer.

This research question considered faculty members’ use of OER infrastructure, as well as types of OER, alongside their perceptions with regard to the challenges of this infrastructure.

Faculty use of OER infrastructure and OER types

Under the umbrella code Adoption , we included different subcodes that refer to the appropriation of the OER infrastructure by faculty members (see Fig.  4 ).

Subcodes and examples for adoption (RQ1). Note Umbrella code (i.e., Adoption) is in the center and subcodes (e.g., Use of OER tools) are connected to it. The numbers between parentheses in codes and subcodes (also onwards on in n  =) refer to the number of coded segments. Examples of those coded segments have been included for each subcode, where the information in parentheses refers to the country report and the line number where that segment is located in the corresponding document. This note applies to the next figures too

The use of OER repositories ( n  = 20) varied in each country. In Canada, one of the interviewees (respondent B) highlighted eCampus Ontario as a “fairly good source of resources”. Also, some interviewees used social media for evidence of new and relevant materials (respondents B and D). In Japan, in the study by Jung et al. ( 2013 ) that involved 27 educators, faculty used YouTube as educational content (53.3%), but none of the Japanese faculty members had created video lectures and uploaded them to YouTube. In Spain, faculty members reported using institutional repositories in different ways, but the common ones were as a place to store (and share) OER (especially the institutional virtual learning platform). For instance, one participant in the Spanish survey stated that “(I use OER repositories) to store all the class materials and activities.” However, a high percentage of the Spanish and German faculty participants in the survey studies did not know about the existence of OER repositories in their institutions (27.4% and 36.8%, respectively). A general lack of knowledge about tools and repositories was also identified in Australia in its survey study, in contrast with the research by Bossu et al. ( 2014 ). Lack of awareness of OER repositories is an acknowledged barrier to OER access and sharing (Bates et al., 2007 ).

Concerning types of OER ( n  = 14), certain types of resources were common across the countries, especially videos and presentations. For example, in Canada, Hayman’s study ( 2018 ) reported on OER use in Ontario with 383 post-secondary educators who participated. The data showed that 79% of participants used YouTube videos, 83% used web links, and 55% used open access articles. In Spain, the most popular OER formats reported by participants in the survey were slide presentations (87.7%), OER in text format (74.5%) and pictures (65.9%), but videos (48.4%) and assessment tests (43.3%) received a high degree of use too. Australian educators preferred to use OER that require little modification, for example, freely available videos such as TedX talks and YouTube clips (Kandlbinder & Chelliah, 2015 ). In the study by Li ( 2015 ) with Chinese academics from the Northwest Normal University, interviewees used mostly images (92%) and audio recordings (69%). These findings are in line with previous literature that shows that instructors are more commonly using technology in teacher-centered approaches than in student-centered ways; therefore, teaching practices are not profoundly transformed (Bond et al., 2018 ; Blin & Munro, 2008 ; Marcelo & Yot-Domínguez, 2018 ; Marcelo-García et al., 2015 ). This situation has persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic, as most of the types of OER used by faculty in this period ( n  = 6) show. For instance, in China, and in particular at Peking University, academics mostly adopted live-streaming, accounting for 50% of the total number of courses (Gong, 2020 ). Similarly, in a survey of 716 faculty members at Seoul National University in South Korea, over 32% of academics used self-created video lectures, and over 22% offered task-based online lectures (Park, 2020 ).

Challenges regarding OER infrastructure according to faculty perceptions

Interoperability issues (n = 3) were among the challenges of OER infrastructure identified by faculty in Turkey, Canada and Spain, also common in the literature (Yuan et al., 2008 ). For instance, in Spain, 45.6% of survey participants stated that the integration between OER repositories and other institutional systems existed, but a high number of academic staff were unsure of the existence of this integration (34%).

If we look at the OER Adoption Pyramid framework, the main category involved in OER Infrastructure is Availability as an additional challenge to interoperability (see Fig.  5 ).

Subcodes and examples for availability (RQ1)

Some of the elements included within the availability of OER have been also covered in previous literature. One survey participant in the Australian study stated that “unfortunately the repository does not have a visible license field which undermines our ability to support content in terms of infrastructure.” Also, our study found that a lack of discoverability of OER was a challenge in Australia and Canada; this was also identified in other studies in the Netherlands (Baas et al., 2019 ), Tanzania (Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ) and the USA (Belikov & Bodily, 2016 ).

Research question 2: Awareness and perceptions of OER quality assurance (QA)

This research question explored how faculty defined the quality of OER, and how aware they were in terms of quality institutional measures and procedures, as well as of institutional agents for QA (see Fig.  6 ).

Subcodes and examples for quality (RQ2)

Faculty awareness and perceptions of OER quality

Perceptions about the quality of OER ( n  = 10) appeared in seven reports (Australia, Canada, Germany, South Africa, South Korea, Spain and Turkey). In many of the countries, these perceptions referred to a common prejudice against OER as being of low quality. For instance, in Turkey, openness and OER-related concepts were related to free sources with low quality. In South Africa, Madiba ( 2018 ) referred to lecturers’ concern about using OER by authors whose reputations are in doubt or not yet established. Interviewee E in Canada remarked that “OER supporters must challenge the ‘myths’ about their use and quality”. The poor quality of OER available and the concerns regarding the quality of content stored in OER repositories are common challenges found in the previous literature (Bates et al., 2007 ; Bossu et al., 2014 ; Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ).

In most of the countries studied, a low awareness along with a lack of frameworks regarding OER quality and their infrastructure ( n  = 8) was highlighted. For example, a survey study in China with 172 participants from eight universities identified a lack of supervision to ensure that faculty members implemented online teaching and OER of a high quality (Xu, 2018 ). In South Korea, a challenge pointed out by Lee and Kim ( 2015 ) for the active adoption of OCW was the lack of mechanisms to ensure the quality of OCW. This issue is in line with the lack of awareness pointed out previously (Baas et al., 2019 ; Li & Li, 2012 ; Schuwer & Janssen, 2018 ), but it also links to insufficient institutional support (Bossu et al., 2014 ).

Institutional and individual QA agents

In this section, we address faculty awareness concerning institutional quality assurance (QA) agents involved in OER, as well as faculty involvement as QA agents in OER at the teaching and learning level ( institutional and individual QA agents , n  = 15).

In China, Xu’s survey ( 2018 ) showed that a low percentage of faculty members (30.2%) agreed with the statement that “the university has a teaching team for developing OER,” whereas 25% responded with “completely disagree.” In Australia, the library played a key role in OER development at the Queensland University of Technology, through an optional stage of QA (Stevens et al., 2017 ). In Spain and Germany, the awareness of institutional QA agents reported by participants in the survey was low. The influence of IT services for the institutional LMS was perceived by faculty members as relevant in Germany (40.8%), but between 30 and 45% of participants were unsure or did not provide an answer to the question. Many of the remaining participants agreed that academic staff that use OER are the most influential actors as far as defining OER quality, of OER metadata and of OER repositories in the universities concerned (Spain: 41.2%; Germany: 42.1%). For instance, one participant in the Spanish survey stated that “it is a self-publication, there are no mechanisms of evaluation or quality in the repository. The OCW project died, it was not followed up”. This faculty involvement and responsibility for OER quality were also present in other countries too (e.g., Japan, Turkey).

Research question 3: Awareness of OER policies

In this section, we focused on faculty involvement in policymaking and their awareness of institutional policies related to OER (see Fig.  7 ).

Subcodes and examples for policy (RQ3)

Specific institutional policies

A lack of institutional policies for OER ( n  = 8) was acknowledged in most of the countries. For instance, Canadian respondents E and H stated that there were no guiding institutional policies or direction in OER. In Australia, 64% of the survey participants indicated that explicit institutional OER policies or frameworks were non-existent in their institutions; a finding which is backed by a dearth of institutional policies noted in the literature (Open Education Licensing Project, 2016a ). Previous studies also echo these findings in relation to the lack of institutional and departmental policies for the development and use of OER repositories as a barrier for the uptake of OER initiatives (Bates et al., 2007 ; Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ; Yuan et al., 2008 ).

Even in cases where some kind of OER policy was in place, the need for policy improvement ( n  = 9) was made explicit. A clear case of this is South Korea, despite its institutional emphasis on OER creation and utilization. Similarly, in the study survey by Wang and Wu ( 2013 ) at Peking University (China), 153 faculty members argued that more policies and mechanisms for motivating faculties to develop OER by protecting their intellectual properties were key to promoting OER. Cox and Trotter ( 2016 ) pointed out that a strong policy imperative would be crucial for faculty in the context of Unisa (the largest distance teaching university on the African continent, located in South Africa) to actively embrace OER. Also, de Oliveira Neto et al.’s ( 2017 ) findings in the Global South showed that OER-related policies did not seem to be relevant regarding OER use, but they do for OER creation. One of the participants in the survey study in Spain elaborated further on this topic regarding the situation in their institution:

There is a policy, but it will have to be improved and more widely disseminated. I do not believe that there is a lack of interest, on the contrary, but there is a lack of time and more measures in the direction taken so that it becomes part of the culture of the institution. Among these measures are […]: time, space, incentives, recognition...

In line with these findings, faculty awareness of institutional policies ( n  = 7) was low overall across the countries, with the same exception as before (South Korea). In Spain and Germany, most of the academics surveyed were unsure about the existence of institutional policies for specific study programs or for department/faculties (Spain, 67.4%; Germany, 56.6%). In addition, only around 20–25% of the Spanish and German participants surveyed stated that there was an explicit or implicit institutional policy or regulations concerning the use and/or creation of OER in their universities. Over half the participants were uncertain about this. In the study by Xu ( 2018 ) in China, only 33% of the participants were aware of relevant national policies, and only 37.2% knew about relevant university policies. These findings also echo previous works (e.g., Cox & Trotter, 2016 ).

Faculty involvement in policymaking

Faculty involvement in policymaking ( n  = 8) was present in some institutions but often reported as anecdotal cases. The exception was South Korea, where individual faculty members were regularly involved in policymaking via various committees and internal/external reviews. For instance, according to a field study at a Chinese university in Nanjing (Meng, 2018 ), faculty members were invited to attend seminars to give feedback on the policy for calculating their reduction in face-to-face teaching workload if they were using OER (online courses). As an Australian institutional case, the OER policy of the Queensland University of Technology was developed with the input of the University Copyright Officer, diverse units related to learning, teaching and IT, and various individual academics interested in OER (Open Education Licensing Project, 2016b ).

When asked in the Australian survey which actors were involved in OER policymaking at their institutions, only 30% of participants provided some level of response. The most involved actors of OER policy mentioned were the libraries and, to a lesser degree, only “individual academics” or “individual/small group of educators who are OER champions.” The role of librarians was similarly exemplified by respondent E in Canada: by belonging to a provincial working group on OER, “she pushes her institution for change and for policy development.” Most of the surveyed academics in Spain and Germany were either not involved in the preparation of institutional OER policies (Spain, 36.3%; Germany, 19.7%) or uncertain about it (Spain, 54.6%; Germany, 57.9%). Regarding the possibilities of influencing explicit policies, both Spanish and German academics were mostly unsure (Spain, 57.8%; Germany, 64.5%).

While the role of (academic) librarians as change agents to promote open access within the institutions has started to be explored in previous literature (e.g., Mullen & Otto, 2014 ), it is noteworthy that specific librarian and faculty involvement in policymaking for OER and OER repositories seem to be still largely under researched.

Research question 4: Promotion measures for faculty use of OER

Promotion of change at the microlevel was directly related to different parts of the OER Adoption Pyramid model; permission, awareness, capacity and volition in particular . In addition to this, individual volition had a clear and relevant extrinsic motivating factor: the presence or absence of incentives.

Faculty involvement in creating OER and advancing the infrastructures

To describe faculty involvement in OER, we need to acknowledge different elements that directly affect this involvement. The first of them is the factor permission ( n  = 8), which refers to institutional dispositions to which the academics are tied, particularly related to copyright issues and who owns OER developed by faculty members. For example, in Turkey, the current Law of Intellectual and Artistic Property Rights includes two articles to allow the use of OER for not-for-profit face-to-face educational processes, as long as the creators were cited; however, nothing was specified about open and distance learning. In South Africa, and particularly at Unisa, the institution owns all the intellectual property of work created by staff members, but at University of Cape Town academics are allowed to own it and, therefore, label it as OER (Cox & Trotter, 2016 ). In Canada, respondent A explained that part of the challenge in adopting OER is the issue of institutional ownership of OER created by faculty: “created material belongs to the institution, thus inhibiting some instructors from creating their own OER. Their contracts prevent them from seeking a CC license for their products.” Similarly, in many Australian HE institutions, OER “ownership is retained by the university—the lecturer must seek policy approval to release course materials outside of the institution” (Stagg & Partridge, 2019 , p. 479). Intellectual property policies are one of the main problematic issues that arose in previous literature too and have been suggested as “the root cause of slow development in this field” (Bossu et al., 2014 ; Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ; Yuan et al., 2008 , p. 16).

The second factor that affects faculty involvement in OER actions is awareness ( n  = 18), which refers to the degree of knowledge that faculty members have concerning OER and the philosophy behind openness. It was more common that faculty showed low rather than high awareness as shown by Chikuni et al. ( 2019 ) in South Africa, which also echoes previous work overall and in other countries (e.g., Baas et al., 2019 ; Li & Li, 2012 ; Schuwer & Janssen, 2018 ; Yuan et al., 2008 ). On the other hand, 83% of the participants in the Australian survey had previously heard of OER and, similarly, high levels of awareness of OER among a majority of the respondents from 4-year institutions were found out in a large-scale survey with educators from Japanese HE institutions (Shigeta et al., 2017 ), in contrast with studies from other contexts.

Capacity ( n  = 11) is the third relevant factor in faculty involvement with OER. Most of the reports highlighted some shortage of academics’ digital skills and emphasized the importance of institutional professional development support. For instance, in a survey of 119 academic staff members at Unisa (South Africa), Roberts ( 2016 ) found that the respondents’ perception of their own ability to be technically sound was very low and that training in this area was required. In Canada, according to respondent E, “a lack of technical skills (was an element that) impeded some (educators)”, which is reported in a previous study in the same geographical context: the need for educators to be better educated in OER-related skills, such as finding appropriate materials (Hayman, 2018 ). Interestingly, there was a comment from an interviewee from the Beijing National University Centre of Information and Network Technology who stated: “the most important factor that impacts on the (digital, including OER) implementation is IT literacy among leaders and administrative staff who are involved directly in digitalization work at the institutional level”. Similarly, a challenge pointed out by Lee and Kim ( 2015 ) for the active adoption of OCW in South Korea was the lack of digital competence at both faculty and institutional levels, which echoes previous research in China (Li & Li, 2012 ) and in Tanzania (Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ).

The last factor included here is volition and concerns the desire of faculty to create, use, adapt, remix and share OER when referred to individual volition ( n  = 48) (see Fig.  8 ), but there could be social and institutional volition too.

Subcodes and examples for individual volition (RQ4)

Many of the elements identified for individual volition appear in the literature related to the topic (Cox & Trotter, 2017 ). For example, student cost–benefit was an important factor in Canada and South Africa but was also present in the perceptions of US faculty members found in the previous literature (Belikov & Bodily, 2016 ); all of them are countries where OER, and in particular textbooks, are usually expensive. In these countries, but also in Australia, open textbook initiatives have flourished (Stagg & Partridge, 2019 ). Time restraints were a factor expressed in many of the reports, also supported by the literature (e.g., Baas et al., 2019 ; Bates et al., 2007 ; Cox & Trotter, 2017 ; Yuan et al., 2008 ).

Concerning social volition ( n  = 11), we refer to the social environment of the faculty members (department, other faculty members, colleagues) and how interested/resistant they are to be involved in OER processes, but also the influence that this exerts on individual volition through modeling or social desirability. An element that stood out in the reports of Canada and China was the presence of OER forerunners as inspiration for colleagues at their institutions or even at a broader level. In Japan, social influence from peers was highlighted as more important than improving performance in regard to adopting OER, which emphasizes the relevance of culture (Jung & Lee, 2020 ), in contrast with a study in the context of Tanzania (Mtebe & Raisamo, 2014 ). On the other hand, Canadian respondents B and E reported that faculty members in their institutions were reluctant to use or trust repositories and OER.

Institutional volition ( n  = 22) is another factor related to the development and adoption of OER, and it refers to the interest of the institution to push OER forward (see Fig.  9 ), e.g., through institutional encouragement, commitment or requirement. For example, a survey participant in the Australian study stated that “unofficially, slight pressure is being applied to lecturers at a very low level to encourage them to consider open textbooks as a cost-reduction measure for students”. The influence of institutional volition is also a relevant element considered in the literature (e.g., Cox & Trotter, 2016 ).

Subcodes and examples for institutional volition (RQ4)

Support for faculty in OER creation

Faculty were supported in creating, sharing, using and remixing OER and using repositories by two main elements at this level: institutional professional development support (addressed to improve capacity ) and the use of incentives (addressed to increase individual volition ). Both elements have been recognized as key elements for individual OER promotion by previous works within this research area (Belikov & Bodily, 2016 ; Cox & Trotter, 2016 ; Murphy, 2013 ).

In terms of institutional professional development support ( n  = 28), most of the reports mentioned different forms of this support and training. We considered institutional training and support as two different professional development (PD) aspects as well as faculty awareness of PD institutional agents (see Fig.  10 ). For example, a participant in the Spanish survey stated that “in some cases, support has been offered for creating knowledge pills and for creating resources to incorporate in MOOCs. Some initiatives are supported by the teaching innovation program of the university”.

Subcodes and examples for institutional professional development support (RQ4)

Incentives ( n  = 29) were important measures to support change to OER at the individual level (see Fig.  11 ). Diverse kinds of incentives were mentioned in the reports: the assignment of teaching assistants, measures for recognition and faculty evaluation, the reduction in teaching load, as well as monetary incentives. For instance, an interview participant from China that had previously held a managerial role at Beijing Open University stated that “(the university) has policies to award ‘high-quality-courses’ and ‘teaching excellence’ to faculty members who prove themselves able to create high-quality educational resources or who demonstrate excellent instructional designs in their courses every year”. However, lack of incentives ( n  = 7), also present in the literature (e.g., Yuan et al., 2008 ) and especially related to economic compensation, was remarkable in countries such as Canada, South Africa and Spain, as the following quotation from a Spanish survey participant describes:

They are valued but, in short, they are made by teaching vocation and teaching conviction. They are not compensated financially, and it is very time consuming (to create them). It only produces personal and teacher satisfaction, in no case economic satisfaction, at least not at present.

Subcodes and examples for incentives (RQ4)

OER sharing, integration and remixing by faculty

OER practices ( n  = 24) by faculty members in the reports show that OER uptake is overall in its infancy, which could also be explained by factors identified in the previous sections. This would also correspond to what the Open Educational Quality (OPAL) initiative of the Open Educational Practices (OEP) matrix presents as “early stages/awareness” (Conole, 2012 ).

Although many of the reports mentioned OER use and development, much less space was devoted to describing practices beyond these activities (e.g., sharing, remixing, integrating) and some challenges were highlighted. For instance, the continuous use of OER without an opportunity for revisions or updates was identified among the barriers to South Korean faculty involvement in the creation of OER (Lim et al., 2017 ). De Hart et al. ( 2015 ), in their study with Unisa staff (South Africa), found that “activities relating to the use of OER (accessing, redistributing and re-using) are far more frequent than activities relating to contributing to OER (revision, remixing, developing)” (p. 32). Similarly, the survey studies in Spain and Germany showed that many faculty members did not use OER from repositories (68% and 54%), search for OER in them (48% and 55.3%), and neither published in them (48% and 43.4%) nor in non-institutional repositories (68.8% and 86.8%). These findings echo Reed’s ( 2012 ) study in the UK with regard to formal, large-scale sharing of educational materials in specific OER repositories.

In Canada, concrete OER practices were shown by respondents H, F and C. For instance, respondent C had been an avid OER creator for several years and co-created together with her students a textbook with eCampus Ontario which was then published via PressBooks. Furthermore, she “would rather invest the time in adapting materials to her own needs than re-invent the wheel” and “share(s) relevant material (with her colleagues), ‘the good stuff’, in its original format, often by email,” unofficially. This finding related to that of Baas et al. ( 2019 ) in the Netherlands, as well as Reed ( 2012 ) and Rolfe ( 2012 ) in the UK, where faculty frequently shared resources informally, however, the current findings differ when it comes to willingness to adapt OER in Baas et al. ( 2019 ).

Along the same lines, despite high levels of OER awareness and knowledge by participants, the majority of faculty members in Australian HE involved in the study by Bossu et al. ( 2014 ) had rarely or never used, developed, and/or re-purposed OER. In the survey, a participant mentioned that there was a push to “tag everything as being an OER upon completion” but that there “is very small uptake” as regards use or storage of OER in institutional repositories.

This study contributed to the literature by providing new insights into the factors that influence OER adoption by faculty in various countries and by emphasizing the importance of factors that have been previously identified in the literature. This study also offers a revision of the OER Adoption Pyramid as an analytical framework to consider further elements that were investigated in the project at higher levels (macro and meso level perspectives).

Key findings of the study are several. In RQ1, we identified commonalities in the use of OER (i.e., slide presentations and videos) and their repositories (low awareness and use) by faculty members in various countries. External OER platforms such as YouTube were well known and used as sources. Faculty perceptions referred to the diverse challenges concerning OER infrastructure, in particular, the availability of OER.

In RQ2, we explored the awareness of faculty members of institutional procedures related to OER QA and QA agents across countries. A low awareness along with a lack of frameworks was highlighted, as well as the importance of faculty members as agents of QA at the micro-level. Similar findings were reported in RQ3 regarding faculty awareness of institutional OER policies and involvement in policymaking: a lack of institutional policies along with a low awareness of them was common. Even in the exceptional cases where this situation was not the case, a need for policy improvement was made clear.

Finally, in RQ4, we identified the need for encouragement measures to be implemented by HE institutions, in order to motivate faculty to use OER. Diverse kinds of incentives and institutional professional development and support were highlighted, but it was also made explicit that individual, social and institutional volition influence the actual individual decision to use OER. Within OER practices, the fact that the emphasis made by institutions (when existing) was on using and creating OER, but less often on co-creating, remixing and sharing them, was remarkable. Notwithstanding the limitations of the study in terms of data collection, the findings offer possibilities of reflection and action for HE institutions and administrators across countries and invite faculty to learn from the experiences of these international HE academics.

Overall, despite various calls for OER and OEP on the political agenda in many countries, this international multiple case study has shown that the current state of OER awareness and adoption among faculty members is (still) disappointing and leaves room for improvement and development. Concrete implications of the study for HE institutions to foster faculty use of OER could point toward the improvement in the availability of OER in institutional repositories and the development of measures for dissemination and faculty involvement in OER policy and QA. HE institutions may also consider effective monetary and recognition incentives, which might include not only a reduction in workload but also the development of professional development training and support that is directly targeted at OER copyright issues and strategies for properly finding, remixing, sharing and co-creating OER beyond simple OER individual use and/or creation. We believe that these institutional measures may address most of the factors identified for individual volition and encourage faculty to use, remix, share and publish OER at the micro-level.

Future research may consider co-design processes for institutional OER promotion and adoption between faculty and administrators. The long-term impact of the emergency remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic on faculty interest and practices with OER at the microlevel may also lead to rich insight and provide further guidance for policy, creation and implementation going forward.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

Abbreviations

Higher education

Open educational practices

Open educational resources

Professional development

Quality assurance

Research question

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Acknowledgements

This article is part of the microlevel report of the work package 11 of the project “Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures – EduArc” funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Grant #16DHB2129).

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Victoria I. Marín

Present address: University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain

Authors and Affiliations

Carl von Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Oldenburg, Germany

Victoria I. Marín & Olaf Zawacki-Richter

Anadolu University, Eskisehir, Turkey

Cengiz H. Aydin & Aras Bozkurt

Innovation in Learning Institute, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany

Svenja Bedenlier

University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia

Melissa Bond

Athabasca University, Athabasca, Canada

Dianne Conrad

International Christian University, Mitaka, Japan

Insung Jung

Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

Yasar Kondakci

University of South Africa, Pretoria, South Africa

Paul Prinsloo & Jennifer Roberts

Royal Roads University, Victoria, Canada

George Veletsianos

Shantou Radio and Television University, Shantou, China

Junhong Xiao

Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

Jingjing Zhang

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VIM has contributed to the conception, design and writing of the work, the acquisition and analysis of Spanish data, and to the overall interpretation of data. OZ-R has contributed to the conception of the work, the acquisition of German data and the substantial revision of the work. CHA, SB, MB, AB, DC, IJ, YK, PP, JR, GV, JX, JZ have contributed to the acquisition, analysis and interpretation of data related to their country reports, as well as to the revision of the work. The authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Victoria I. Marín .

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Marín, V.I., Zawacki-Richter, O., Aydin, C.H. et al. Faculty perceptions, awareness and use of open educational resources for teaching and learning in higher education: a cross-comparative analysis. RPTEL 17 , 11 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-022-00185-z

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Implementing open educational resources in digital education

Hengtao tang.

Department of Educational Studies, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208 USA

The outbreak of COVID-19 leads to an increasing demand for online educational resources to continue teaching and learning. Open educational resources (OER), with the benefits of cost-saving and open licenses, have great potential in facilitating the rapid transition to digital education, but concerns about whether OER decrease the effectiveness of student learning remains unsolved. Hilton’s review article (2016) provides synthesized evidence stating that OER can help decrease college students’ textbook spending without undermining student learning effectiveness. It is also noteworthy that implementing OER in digital education needs additional considerations beyond the efficacy of OER. Therefore, this special issue article extends Hilton’s (2016) synthesized findings by presenting four additional perspectives in research, design, culture, practice about implementing OER in digital education.

Open educational resources (OER) are free, open-licensed educational resources that users can retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute for personalized needs (Wiley & Hilton, 2018). Hilton ( 2016 ), synthesizing evidence about the efficacy of OER from 16 studies, argued that learning with OER saved college students’ educational cost without undermining their learning achievement. Some of the reviewed studies (e.g., Feldstein et al. 2012 ; Hilton and Laman 2012 ) even supported that OER improved college students’ grade or retention. Most college instructors and students in the reviewed articles were also positive about the quality of OER (Hilton 2016 ). Therefore, Hilton ( 2016 ) claimed OER as an efficient low-cost alternative to commercial textbooks in higher education. Hilton ( 2016 ) also explained that the review was limited by a small number of relevant studies available at the time of writing, especially few studies with sound research design. Future research about OER efficacy needs to develop a well-refined research design to further confirm the causality between OER and learning effectiveness.

Implications for shifting to digital education

This review is significant for educators to provide personalized instruction during the shift to digital learning in higher education, especially when the shift (1) needs to be accomplished in a short timeframe with a shortage of resources and (2) the transition is challenged by a lack of sufficient funding support. The outbreak of COVID-19 resulted in new waves of online courses offerings in higher education, but when responding to abrupt changes in course delivery, college instructors especially novice online instructors may have hardships in addressing each student’ needs in online settings due to time constraints and limited access to resources and support (Lin and Tang 2017 ). In Hilton’s ( 2016 ) review, OER provide college instructors with enriched options of resources to rapidly respond to the emergent situation, including a variety of easily accessible materials (e.g., open textbooks, online repositories) across multiple domains (e.g., science, psychology, mathematics) that college instructors can personalize (e.g., retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute) to help each student learn effectively. On the other hand, OER potentially invigorate social justice in digital education during the societal turmoil. Hilton ( 2016 ) indicates OER can provide each student with free content of similar efficacy to that in commercial textbooks, including low socioeconomic status (SES) students (Hilton et al. 2013 ; Read et al. 2020 ). In the midst of societal turmoil and uncertainty, saving low SES students’ educational costs is the prerequisite to maintain the effectiveness of online learning.

Perspectives beyond efficacy

Hilton’s ( 2016 ) review systematically evaluates the efficacy of OER in higher education. In addition to existing studies showing the effectiveness of OER, more need to be done regarding four additional perspectives.

First, Hilton’s ( 2016 ) review outlines future directions for research and scholarship about OER. One research direction built upon this review is to look beyond the efficacy of OER. OER scholars realized that only focusing on the cost-saving benefits undermines the potential of OER in digital education. Open scholars (e.g., Kimmons 2016 ; Wiley and Hilton 2018 ) bring the spotlight to the merits of openness and thus call for effort from scholars and educators to look into open educational practices (OEP). OEP broadly denote practices of adapting, implementing, and sharing OER in contextualized ways (Tang et al. 2020 ). For example, Wiley et al. ( 2017 ) implemented OEP in high school digital photography course by allowing students to create and then share their artifacts with open licenses beyond classrooms rather than merely disposing homework after being graded. In short, open scholars are recommended to investigate and support how OEP turns the homework into renewable assignments and extends the merit of openness to benefit a broader community (Wiley et al. 2017 ).

Second, Hilton’s ( 2016 ) review claims OER as cost-effective and open-licensed alternatives to traditional textbooks in higher education, which can also uphold the need for cost reduction and differentiated instruction in K-12 settings. Textbooks are the sole channel for K-12 teachers to deliver pre-packed knowledge to students, but are not sufficient to ensure each student learns effectively (Tang et al. 2020 ). Teachers can adopt OER for differentiated instruction, but they need to overcome various barriers such as shortage of OER aligned with course standards, especially for subjects such as special education and laboratory studies (Kimmons 2016 ; Tang 2020 ). Education policymakers and school leaderships need to implement effective interventions, such as a quality assurance system (Tang 2020 ) or a teacher institute specialized on OER (Kimmons 2016 ), to improve K-12 teachers’ intention of using, adapting, and sharing OER and thus support differentiated instruction in this setting.

Third, Hilton’s ( 2016 ) review attribute teachers’ positive perception to OER’s affordance of personalizing instructional materials. OER allow personalized instruction, so the capacity of granularly assessing student individualized needs is critical (Genesereth et al. 2020 ). A collaborative project among Stanford University, Rice University, and OpenStax developed intelligent textbooks using artificial intelligence (AI) and knowledge graphs to predict learner needs and provide proximal resources (Genesereth et al. 2020 ). Beyond efficacy considerations, scholars and industrial practitioners can consider integrating AI to present granular insights of design and development for future implementation and thereby improve the relevance of open contents to learner demands (Koć-Januchta et al. 2020 ).

Fourth, Hilton’s ( 2016 ) review (e.g., Hilton et al. 2013 ) shows OER allow students who otherwise cannot afford textbooks with open and free access to educational resources. This cost-saving benefit creates the possibility for invigorating social justice. However, it remains uncertain whether the population in great needs for OER are the primary beneficiaries. For example, teachers in underdeveloped areas may not efficiently use or adapt OER due to the second-level digital divide in education (Tang and Bao 2020 ). This limits the capacity of OER in serving the targeted beneficiaries. On the other hand, underserved groups barely get their own voices heard in open education (Tang and Bao 2020 ). Educators from underserved groups should not simply translate the content in their local language and reuse it without considering whether to represent their voice and to fit local contexts (Hodgkinson-Williams and Trotter 2018 ). Encouraging those underserved groups to raise their voice in OER is necessary to fulfill OER’s potential of invigorating social justice.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Drs. John Hilton III and Royce Kimmons for their support with this article.

Dr. Hengtao Tang

is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include learning analytics, self-regulated learning, STEM education, and open education. Dr. Tang is also an Open Educational Resources research fellow of the Open Education Group sponsored by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interests.

The authors declare that no informed consent is needed since no participants are included.

The authors declare that the article does not involve human participants and/or animals.

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The International Journal of Open Educational Resources (IJOER) is a bi-annual, open access, double-blind peer-reviewed academic publication sponsored by the American Public University System (APUS) and the Policy Studies Organization. The aim of IJOER is to provide a venue for the publication of quality academic research with an emphasis on representing Open Educational Resources in teaching, learning, scholarship and policy.

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3 Questions for an OER Leader | Featuring Mpine Makoe

by Melissa Layne

Professor Mpine Makoe is the Commonwealth of Learning Chair in Open Education Practices/ Resources and Research Professor in Open Distance eLearning at the University of South Africa (UNISA). She is a National Research Foundation (NRF) rated researcher and an OER Ambassador of the International Council of Distance Education (ICDE). She is also a director of African Council for Distance Education (ACDE). Mpine is a sought after scholar and has published extensively in technology-enhanced learning including mobile learning; staff development; quality and policy formulation in ODel.  She has also done consultancy work for the Commonwealth of Learning facilitating the development of ODeL policies in different universities in Africa.  She holds a PhD and MSc in Educational Technology from the Open University, UK. She also has an MA in Journalism from the University of Michigan and BA in Communication and English from Hope College in Michigan as well as a diploma in Journalism from Africa Literature Centre in Zambia. Mpine is actively involved in distance education associations nationally, regionally, and internationally and a member of the University Futures Network. She also serves as a higher education expert on the UNESCO (IESALC) Futures of Higher Education 2050 project.

A Study of STEM Usage and Perceptions of OER at a Large Research University

by Neelam Bharti, Michelle Leonard

Academic librarians have a unique opportunity to build high-impact collections to support an institution's curriculum and research with the broad spectrum of OER and to be in a position to offer guidance on its availability, accessibility, and usability. To build a sustainable OER collection in any medium for STEM disciplines, librarians must first identify user needs in supporting curriculum and research through various collection management practices. For example, an assessment to demonstrate such needs can be conducted where students and faculty provide both qualitative and quantitative responses, which can guide the creation of an OER collection where user needs are considered using a just-in-time approach. This paper attempts to look at the awareness, acceptance, and use of OER on the University of Florida campus among STEM patrons and how libraries can facilitate to build and promote OERs. We conducted a usage and perception survey among the STEM faculty, researchers, and students for research and teaching. The results of the survey revealed that faculty and students acknowledge the importance of OER in both research/scholarly activities and instruction, but there is a big part of the faculty and student community that is unaware of OER content and its access. The majority of respondents do not know that the libraries offer OER collections through the UF library catalog. We suggested some strategies libraries can consider to support and promote the use of OER in the classroom and research and make it more easily accessible through various facets.

The Impact of Free and Open Educational Resource Adoption on Community College Student Achievement

by Megan Dempsey

This study examines the impact of free and open educational resource (OER) adoption on end-of-semester grades and withdrawal rates of community college students. Performance data for 1,209 students in seven courses were analyzed to determine if there was a significant impact of OER on student performance and persistence for all students and for Pell grant recipients, part-time, first-time and non-white students. Results found no significant difference on end-of-semester grades between students in OER courses and those in courses using a traditional textbook. In addition, no significant difference was found based on Pell grant status, part-time status, or full-time status. However, significant differences in withdrawal rates and end-of-semester grades exist based on ethnicity. When Hispanic students persist in OER courses to the same extent as their white peers, they are more likely to achieve a higher grade than Hispanic peers in non-OER courses. Yet Hispanic students withdrew from OER courses at higher rates than all other ethnicities. Black/African American students persist in OER courses at a higher rate than Hispanic students but receive lower final grade averages in these courses. The current research and findings are a valuable contribution to the body of research on adopting free and open resources at the community college level and suggest future areas of study regarding OER and non-white populations.

Taking OER to the LIS: Designing and Developing an Open Education Course for Library Science Students

by Stephen J. Bell

One often overlooked member of the open education community is the aspiring librarian. Students currently pursuing their Master in Library Science (MLS) degree are potential future leaders for a sustainable open education movement. The lack of formal course options in existing library science education programs, for learning about open education, is a potential barrier to an open movement that is inclusive of library science graduate students. This article describes the design, development, and implementation of what is believed to be the first formal, dedicated course in open education librarianship offered by an American Library Association accredited library and information science (LIS) program. The nature of the course content, learning outcomes, assignments and student reactions to and reflections of the course are discussed, along with the potential implications for both LIS programs and the open education community. Expanding the number of LIS programs that offer formal open education courses has the potential to contribute to the sustainability of the open education movement through the preparation of a future generation of advocates and leaders.

The Impact of Typical Textbook Behaviors on Satisfaction with Zero Textbook Cost Materials

by Daniel R. Albert, Alex Redcay and A. Nicole Pfannenstiel

Open Educational Resources (OER) and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses have the ability to decrease the costs of higher education and provide more equitable access to learning materials. Students at a regional public master’s-level institution enrolled in ZTC courses, some of which used OER, were surveyed about their satisfaction and use of ZTC materials as compared with their commercial textbook and course material use. Students generally rated high levels of satisfaction with the OER/ZTC materials. A high level of satisfaction with OER/ZTC materials is consistent with other findings. Students’ attitudes and behaviors with commercial textbooks predict their OER/ZTC satisfaction. Students who are more likely to have access to textbooks in their typical courses and where costs of textbooks are less of a barrier, are more satisfied with OER/ZTC materials than those who are less likely to have access, or where costs are more of a barrier. This finding counters to what one would expect if providing more equitable access was a key influence on student satisfaction with OER/ZTC courses. These findings suggest that better understanding the relationships students have with traditional materials could improve student satisfaction and use of OER/ZTC materials.

Using a Technology Acceptance Model to Analyze Faculty Adoption and Application of Open Educational Resources

by Beth Tillinghast

This research reports on a mixed methods study querying faculty who have already adopted Open Educational Resources (OER) and who might be exploring OER-enabled pedagogy (OP) in their instructional practices. Insights gained from this research fill a gap in the literature and provide a deeper understanding of the context for adopting OER, thus providing guidance and information for institutional policy and program development in support of OER implementation. In 2018, over 250 faculty responded to an online survey that queried faculty on various motivating factors for both the adoption of OER and the use of OP. Using the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology as a design framework, this research expanded on the framework to examine motivating factors through the lens of six main constructs: 1) how individuals believed that OER have helped them perform in their job (performance expectancy), 2) the degree of ease or difficulty associated with using OER in their instruction (effort expectancy), 3) the degree to which faculty perceived if others thought it was important that they use OER (social influence), 4) the extent to which the faculty perceived that the technical and organizational infrastructure to adopt OER were available (facilitating conditions), 5) individual attitudes about the use of OER and OP (attitudes), and 6) what individuals felt they could do with the technology skills they had acquired (technology self-efficacy). Findings indicate that supporting students is one of the main motivating factors spurring faculty to adopt OER and OP. In addition, both personal and professional growth as well as networking through engaging in open education is also important. Findings also indicate the need for careful planning before introducing OP approaches. These findings have implications for future OER and OP development.

Perceptions of Quality and Utilization of Open Educational Resources in a Psychology Course

by Viki Stoupenos

A survey was conducted to research student and faculty perceptions of the quality and utilization of the Open Educational Resources used in the PSY 110HA class taught at the Saint Leo University continuing education centers.  Most students indicated that having the textbook content fully online helped them in completing assignments on time, and most indicated that it was easy to access the content online.  Most students reported that they would like to take another course that had all of the textbook material online; however, nearly one third of the students indicated that they would prefer to have taken this class with a paper textbook that they could purchase.  The professors did not think that the OER helped these students in completing assignments on time, nor did the professors feel that the OER contributed to these students being better prepared for class.  The professors also reported that some students said that they had technical difficulties in accessing the OER.  Overall the professors were satisfied with the OER that were used as the textbooks for this course.

Adoption and Adaptation of Open Educational Resources: Models of Decision-Making and Action Planning

by Shouhong Wang

Open educational resources (OER) make educational resources widely available to all students and educators for free. However, OER are still untried by the majority of instructors in higher education. In higher education, an adoption of OER usually involves adaptation activities to make the adopted OER useable in the specific teaching context. This paper applies multiple criteria decision-making (MCDM) approaches to OER adoption and adaptation, and proposes a two-procedure framework of OER adoption decision-making and OER adaptation action planning that can be used to guide OER adoption. The OER adoption decision-making procedure supports OER adoption decision making by using a decision matrix for evaluation of the OER product based on the OER profile and the usability. The adaptation action planning procedure supports the OER adaptation process through generating a plan of OER adaptation for a successful adoption. A case study is used to explain the usefulness of the OER adoption and adaptation framework in higher education.

The True and False promise of Open Educational Resources, or, How Open Educational Resources are Condemned to Wither without Open Pedagogy

by Hamish F. Lutris and Nicolas P. Simon

Open Educational Resources (OER) are not an overarching panacea which will solve every concern of low-income students. Low- or no-cost material will definitely help every student economically; however, it is only by developing social relationships by the inclusion of everyone’s knowledge that OER and Open Pedagogy (OP) will fulfill their true radical, democratic potential. Open Educational Resources have undoubtedly changed the educational landscape, but student outcomes depend upon how we will, as a community of learners, construct it, use it, and improve it. In our view, the solution is to practice Open Pedagogy while using Open Educational Resources.

Using OER for Professional and Curricular Development: Lessons from Two Composition Textbooks

by Alex Wulff, Christina Branson and Vaughn Anderson

The composition program at Maryville University was allocated funds to replace the textbooks used in a two-course introductory-level sequence with OER materials. While full-time faculty organized the effort to compose two new textbooks, part-time faculty were the primary authors for most chapters. Full-time and part-time instructors who created materials participated in a series of workshops and one-on-one editing sessions. The creation of these OER materials ultimately helped to save over 100,000 dollars annually, but also yielded a range of benefits for a program infusing online and on-ground courses with a newly redesigned curriculum. There were distinct benefits to being able to customize materials for a new curriculum with authors who knew the specific student population. The professional development opportunity for both full-time and part-time faculty also increased communication and a sense of community across the program. Students surveyed about the materials rated them highly. Surveys were also sent to faculty participants, who reported that they felt they benefited significantly from the experience of authoring OER texts and that the collaboration process was impactful.

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Dr. Rory McGreal is a professor at the Athabasca University and Chairholder of the UNESCO/International Council for Open and Distance Education in Open Educational Resources. He is a professor in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Athabasca University—Canada’s Open University, based in Alberta, Canada. He is also the Director of the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI); Editor of the International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL); and founder of the OER Knowledge Cloud, which received an award of excellence from the Open Education Consortium. Formerly, he served as the Associate Vice President Research. He has received lifetime recognition awards from the Open Education Consortium, the European Distance Education Network, and the Canadian Network for Innovation in Education.

The Development and Implementation of Missing Tools and Procedures at the Interface of a University’s Learning Management System, its OER Repository, and the Austrian OER Referatory

by Christoph Ladurner, Christian Ortner, Karin Lach, Martin Ebner, Maria Haas, Markus Ebner, Raman Ganguly, Sandra Schön

To enable broad access to education and generous use of educational resources, Graz University of Technology (TU Graz) also relies on Open Educational Resources (OER). This article describes the technological developments and processes that enable teachers at TU Graz to use their own learning management system (LMS) for the publication of OER. The article describes how interfaces and processes have marked educational resources of TU Graz with metadata to offer them to a broad public via the university’s own OER repository and via the Austrian OER portal of the University of Vienna. Only appropriately qualified lecturers at TU Graz are authorized to use the new OER plug-in. The article concludes with recommendations for projects in OER infrastructure implementations.

Evaluation of the UNESCO Recommendation Concerning Open Educational Resources

by Stephen Downes

Open Educational Resources (OER) “are learning, teaching and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation and redistribution by others” (UNESCO).

In November 2019, UNESCO adopted a resolution on OER that had five objectives:

Building capacity of stakeholders to create access, use, adapt and redistribute OER;

Developing supportive policy;

Encouraging inclusive and equitable quality OER;

Nurturing the creation of sustainability models for OER; and

Facilitating international cooperation.

Overall this policy represents well the state of the art in OER and would serve to further the aims and objectives of open online education. Having said that, the document suffers from numerous cases of ambiguous terminology, some of it in places where serious misunderstandings could arise. The purpose of this article is to review this resolution, highlighting areas of ambiguity or where further discussion is needed in the OER community.

Towards a Working Definition of Open Pedagogy

by Alan Witt

This paper analyzes recent literature on or using the term “open pedagogy” in order to distill a working definition. The term is currently contested, and is discarded completely by some influencers due to a lack of definition and thus usefulness as a rigorous academic term. This study analyzes how researchers currently use the term in the literature, searching for commonalities, with the goal of proposing a synthesis that encompasses the majority of the field and can provide potential common ground for further research on the subject.

The result was a pool of 98 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, which were then scanned and classified to develop a taxonomy. The taxonomy was used to construct a working definition of open pedagogy as any pedagogy informed by the practitioners’ conscious identification with the open movement, open access, and open educational resources (OER). In effect, open pedagogy describes the interaction between the open movement and pedagogy, whereas open educational practices (OEP) and OER-enabled pedagogy describe the actual practices arising from that pedagogical approach.

A Qualitative Analysis of Open Textbook Reviews

by Olga Belikov and Merinda McLure

Open textbooks are a type of Open Educational Resource (OER). They present educators with an alternative to commercial text-books, afford students and educators permissions granted by open licenses, and reduce student costs. The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine how educators evaluate the quality of open text- books. We analyzed 954 educator reviews of 235 unique open text-books. American postsecondary educators authored the reviews between April 2014 and March 2017 and the Open Education Network (OEN; formerly the Open Textbook Network, https://open.umn.edu/otn/collected) and openly published the reviews in the Open Textbook Library (OTL, https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/), unedited and with Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licenses (CC BY 4.0). Overall, reviewers found the open textbooks to be of sufficient quality for use. The reviews provide insight into educator concerns and interests regarding the quality and characteristics of open textbooks and may support peer educators’ consideration, and authors’ and publishers’ creation and revision, of open textbooks.

Evaluation of Open Educational Resources Among Students in Blended Research Methods and Statistics Coursework

by Lindsay A. Phillips, Laura S. Gelety, and Lisa A. Hain

This article presents relevant research and a preliminary investigation of Open Educational Resources (OER). The authors of this study utilized OER to replace a traditional textbook in a two-course blended research methods and statistics sequence for working adult undergraduate psychology students. The authors aimed to consider student satisfaction with OER, and more importantly, to see if OER produced different grades when compared to prior course sections taught with a traditional textbook. Twenty students consented to participate in an online satisfaction survey. Qualitatively, participants reported that OER were concise, relevant to coursework, applicable, and had strong visual presentations. Quantitatively, grades significantly improved following implementation of OER. Although grades improved when OER replaced a textbook, this finding should be interpreted with caution. Limitations of this evaluation include a small sample size and self-reporting biases. These results provide preliminary evidence that students may benefit from implementation of OER. However, ongoing research into the perceptions, challenges, and effectiveness of OER is necessary.

Exploring Faculty Perceptions of OER and Impediments to their Use: A Multi-Institutional Study

by Abbey Elder, Amanda Larson, Elaine Thornton, and Will Cross

Understanding faculty perceptions about Open Educational Resources (OER) is a vital step for those hoping to support the growth of OER initiatives at higher education institutions. Faculty members’ perceptions of OER often influence their interest in adopting open educational practices and their willingness to seek out sup- port from campus staff. To explore how faculty members across their four institutions feel about open education, the authors developed a survey to discover faculty members’ (1) perspectives on, (2) barriers to, and (3) beliefs about OER use. The survey corroborated past research findings that faculty often have difficulty finding time to locate and evaluate OER, and that there is a need among the academic community to better compensate educators for their work developing open content. More notably, the authors discovered that faculty who are aware of library support services and other institutional OER initiatives are more engaged in open educational practices and willing to explore OER, regardless of their prior experience with open education.

“Open”-ing Up Courses for Diversity and Deeper Learning

by Marcos D. Rivera, Kaity Prieto, Shanna Smith Jaggars, e alexander, and Amanda L. Folk

Universities increasingly require students to enroll in diversity coursework, which is positively associated with a range of academic and social outcomes and psychological wellbeing. However, these courses can be challenging for both students and faculty to navigate. For institutions to effectively engage diversity on campus, attention must be paid to pedagogical and curricular transformation—not only in stand-alone diversity classes, but in major-specific coursework as well. This conceptual paper explores the benefits of using open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP), in combination with the Hewlett Foundation’s Deeper Learning framework and empathic scaffolding, in promoting social justice and equity in courses by diversifying curricular content and enhancing students’ learning and skill development. Pedagogical and curricular examples from instructors’ diversity initiatives in two academic fields, drawing from a larger study on OER creation and adoption, are shared as a potential reference point for faculty interested in implementing similar practices.

Comparative Analysis of an Open Educational Resource Textbook and Commercial Textbook on Student Outcomes in an Online Nursing Course

by Jamie Murphy and Nancy Winters

There is a growing body of research on the benefits of using open educational resources (OER) in higher education, and their impact on student outcomes. However, there is only one study on outcomes data related to the use of OER in undergraduate online nursing education.

This study aimed to determine if there was a difference in undergraduate nursing student outcomes for courses utilizing a teacher-developed OER textbook compared to courses utilizing a commercial textbook (CT). A retrospective grade review study design was used to identify discussion forum, assignment, and final grades for all students enrolled in an online nursing course. The sample included 160 students; 84 from seven sections that utilized the teacher-developed OER, and 78 from six sections that utilized a traditional CT. Descriptive and bivariate analysis found statistically significant differences in mean scores for one of three assignments in the course (p = .04, d = .33), with the OER scores (M = 89.46) being higher than the traditional textbook group (M = 85.70). For the remaining assignments, there was no statistically significant difference in assignment (p < .05), discussion forum (p < .05), or final grades (p < .05).

This study addressed the current gap in knowledge related to outcomes when using OER in online undergraduate nursing education courses. Based on the results of this study, the use of OER offered similar outcomes compared to the CT.

Overcoming Textbook Access Barriers in an Introductory Psychology Course: An OER Study at a Hispanic-Serving Institution

by Adam John Privitera

The high cost of college textbooks is an access barrier for students to overcome during their pursuit of a college degree. Perhaps most at risk are community college students, an older, more diverse, and lower-income population in comparison with their university peers. Recently, community colleges have considered replacing traditional, commercially produced textbooks with free open educational resources (OERs). In this work, two aims are addressed. First, a small-scale investigation of the need for a low-cost textbook alternative was conducted in an introductory psychology course. In response to the finding that over a quarter of students could not afford the course textbook, a psychology OER was adapted from existing resources and piloted in three sections of this course. The second aim was to assess the impact of this OER textbook. Findings from this second survey found that the psychology OER was easy to use, was high quality, and supported students in their understanding of course content. Students also reported that the money saved from not having to buy a textbook made taking the course easier. Together, these findings support that OER textbooks are suitable replacements that can reduce the financial burden on low-income students and support them in the achievement of their academic goals.

Moving Towards an Open Educational Resources (OER) Pedagogy: Presenting Three Ways of Using OER in the Professional Writing Classroom

by Sarbani Sen Vengadasalam

Open Educational Resources (OER) are changing the face of education. This paper offers some locations where OER may be found before discussing the challenges of using OER in writing courses. An outline of OER’s pedagogical use, best practices, and possible parameters for OER evaluation are proffered. After offering a proposed checklist/rubric to aid educators in deciding on the usefulness of OER, the article describes three ways of interfacing with OER in writing classes in general, and business and technical writing classes in particular. Based on teaching experiences at three institutions, the paper is an expansion of my 2019 presentation at the New Jersey Writing Alliance conference.

Meta-syntheses of OER Transition in Online Higher Education

by Michele Wells, Robert Jesiolowski, Jeanelle Verwayne, Jessie Pablo

This article is a meta-analysis of research on the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in educational communities. OER’s are free educational resources that are openly available on the internet for faculty or student use (as cited in Annand, 2015). According to Senack & Donahue (2016) the cost of textbooks can cause an un-due burden on students and hinder their educational experience. OER’s are given consideration and in use in some educational environments as a means of lowering textbooks costs for students. This article further addresses research regarding student and faculty response to the use of OER’s in the higher education milieu. Research demonstrates a divide among students, i.e. some students that appreciate the open availability of OER’s, but others who prefer printed materials for their educational experience (Brandle et. Al, 2019). The research also speaks to faculty perception regarding the adoption of OER’s. Faculty seek institutional support through provision in their schedules for time and investment needed to fully implement OER’s (Annad, 2015). The authors provide research that indicates the importance of faculty being educated on the use of these resources and given consideration in the application of their use. The article finally reports the results of the use of OER’s in educational communities.

• Volume 3, Number 1 – Spring/Summer 2020

Download Volume 3, Number 1

Kristina Clement, Samantha Peter, Hilary Baribeau & Melissa Layne

by Hilary Baribeau

IJOER’s OER & Beyond Moderator, Hilary Baribeau, sat down with Brittany to glean her thoughts on COVID-19’s impact on students and instructors. To prevent further spreading of the virus, stay-at-home orders across the globe have forced higher educational institutions to rapidly convert face-to-face courses to a fully online learning format. Experienced in online learning, Brittany shares who instructors should contact first when designing their online courses.

Accessible Open Educational Resources and Librarian Involvement

by Silvana Temesio

In this article, we consider the situation of open educational resources (OER) in virtual environments, taking into account accessibility aspects. We propose the utilization of accessibility metadata through a process in which students and teachers participate in making OER more accessible. This accessibility 2.0 process is a collaborative one that adds metadata to OER in order to make the journey to and from repositories an iterative process of adaptation and improvement.

Bad (Feminist) Librarians: Theories and Strategies for OER Librarianship

by Jessica Yen-Ping Dai, Lindsay Inge Carpenter

As more academic libraries recognize the potential of  (OER) initiatives to impact students’ ability to save money and transform pedagogical models to support student learning outcomes, these institutions may develop pilot programs to test the viability of open educational practices. However, if these institutions use a neoliberal mindset in which libraries are encouraged to “do more with less” or when large projects fall under “other duties as assigned,” questions about the additional labor these librarians undertake remain unaddressed. This article examines OER labor practices by exploring pedagogical models and using a critical and intersectional feminist lens to provide concrete ways for librarians doing OER work to advocate for themselves.

Understanding the Impact of OER Courses in Relation to Student Socioeconomic Status and Employment

by Kim Read, Hengtao Tang, Amber Dhamija, Bob Bodily

The purpose of this study was to measure efficacy of Open Educational Resources (OER) on student academic achievement as well as student perceptions and use of OER, specifically among students of low socioeconomic status (SES). The authors of this study collected achievement and demographic data from students enrolled in 10 sections of an undergraduate course at a private, four-year not-for-profit institution in the Pacific Northwest. 

Emotional Labor in Open Access Advocacy: A Librarian’s Perspective

by Elizabeth Batte

Emotional labor has become a hot topic among academics and with good reason. Emotional labor can be invisible to supervisors but often leads to preventable burnout, depression, or anxiety. This article aims to identify what emotional labor looks like for OER advocates with a focus on librarians, the consequences of extensive emotional exertion, and solutions for the advocate and their supervisor on how to manage emotional labor productively.

Librarian Advocacy for Open Educational Resource Adoptions and Programs

by Megan Dempsey, Alejandra Nann

Academic librarians are resource finders and are always available and ready to assist faculty and students with research help. Now, with the rising cost of textbooks across the country, movements have developed to help students save money through textbook affordability initiatives and open educational resources (OER). This article will address various scenarios and challenges that librarians may face when discussing different options for faculty and stakeholders on campus. It will also provide examples of ways librarians can collaborate with faculty and others in educating them on the purpose of OER and how to incorporate these free, high-quality resources into their curriculum.

A Narrative Review and Conceptual Analysis of OER Perception Studies: Implications for Developing a Situational Scale for Faculty Self-Efficacy

by Teri Oaks Gallaway

A narrative literature review of faculty perceptions of open educational resources (OER) led to the development of an instrument to measure faculty OER self-efficacy. Through the evaluation of extant literature, three central faculty considerations related to ideological, material, and support barriers and motivators were identified. The research examined the empirical literature on faculty perceptions of OER, including the barriers and motivators that are considered. The self-efficacy research of Bandura (Bandura 1977, 2006; Bandura, Adams, and Beyer 1977) was considered as a lens to examine issues that may prevent faculty from attempting to use OER or cause project abandonment when coping skills to address known challenges are lacking.

Open Education Librarianship: A Position Description Analysis of the Newly Emerging Role in Academic Libraries

by Amanda C. Larson

According to the latest Babson Survey, Freeing the Textbook: Educational Resources in US Higher Education, “faculty awareness of OER has increased every year, with 46 percent of faculty now aware of open educational resources, up from 34 percent three years ago” (Seaman and Seaman 2018). While open educational resources (OER) gain traction with faculty who are looking to lower costs for their students and re-engage with their pedagogy, academic libraries are creating a variety of open or affordable textbook programs to help increase the use of OER or low-cost materials as replacements for high-cost traditional materials. Some libraries are creating specific positions to support these initiatives that aim to help faculty who want to adopt, adapt, or author OER. As more of these roles emerge, it raises questions about what the field perceives as the role of an Open Education or OER librarian, and the support that libraries provide OER initiatives. To explore these concerns, I collected position descriptions for librarians whose role it is to support OER initiatives into a corpus. I applied deductive thematic analysis to code it while investigating four main questions: 1) What inspires academic libraries to hire OER-related support? 2) What skills do they anticipate applicants to possess? 3) Where do these positions fit within the organization chart of the library? 4) Is there a standard scope of work that emerges from the corpus? In addition to these four questions, this research also explored the expectations for librarians in these roles to change faculty’s perception of OER through outreach and if they are expected to run burgeoning grant initiatives to launch adoption, adaptation, or authoring efforts at their institution.

Perceptions and Practice of Openness Among Academic Librarians

by Mary Jo Orzech, Samuel Abramovich

Librarians from a multi-institution, public higher education system were invited to participate in an online survey to assess their current practices in support of open access (OA) activities and their attitudes and behaviors related to the use of open educational resources (OER). This descriptive, small-sample survey was conducted after the first year of a multi-million dollar infusion in state funding to “move the dial” in textbook affordability using OER. The results provide insight into librarians’ perceptions of the support for, adoption of, and usefulness of open activities. Open-ended qualitative responses related to the sustainability of an OER program complement and provide additional narrative for discussion. Findings indicate that after the first year of increased support, some librarians are deeply involved in OER activities, while the majority are still in the early stages of learning about OER and are not yet comfortable with offering OER assistance to others. Based on the survey results, a number of innovative ways that librarians are infusing components of openness into their work are described. Suggestions identified relate to additional recognition and rewards for instructors and librarians, training and education, and administrative, staffing, and financial support. The developmental life-cycle for implementing change and measuring impact is also discussed, leading to a call to move forward toward more open pedagogical practices. Challenges are noted and suggestions offered for improvements in OER programs. The study concludes with how other libraries can use these results to inform plans for further adoption of open initiatives at their institutions.

Beyond Saving Money: Engaging Multiple Stakeholders is a Key to OER Success

by Jacqueline DiSanto, Denise Cummings-Clay, Sherese Mitchell, Madeline Ford

This article addresses how the mere development of open educational resources (OERs) and the financial savings are not enough to support OERs as means to academic success. The transition from for-pay textbooks does not end with the adaptation, adoption, or creation of open-access resources; it must also provide broad-ranging support provided for multiple campus stakeholders. This should include, at minimum, comprehensive professional development for academic and library faculty concerning (1) how to review and revise OERs after their initial implementation; (2) training students to be actively engaged in their learning; (3) partnering library and academic faculty to grow, sustain, and expand an OER initiative; and (4) defining academic freedom and accessibility through an OER lens.

Collaborative Partnerships Between State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education: Working Together to Save Students Money through OER

by Phill Johnson, Josh Hill & Sandra Vigilant

Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) recently collaborated with the Alabama Commission on Higher Education (ACHE) and the Alabama Community College System (ACCS) to engage in two Open Educational Resources (OER) projects designed to educate higher education faculty and staff and to provide affordable access to education for students in Alabama. This article highlights the two grant projects the authors spearheaded, and their impact and relationship with the statewide OER initiative focused on education, promotion, and content development over the course of a year. The first project was a statewide OER workshop the AUM Library hosted. This workshop brought together speakers and researchers from the national and local OER movement, who educated students, faculty, and staff from Alabama institutions about OER. The second project involved the creation and publication of the first open textbook published on the newly formed statewide Alabama OER Commons.

• Volume 2, Number 1 – Fall 2019/Winter 2020
• Volume 1, Number 2 – Spring 2019/Summer 2019
• Volume 1, Number 1 – Fall 2018/Winter 2019

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OER impact reports

Reasons to use oer, related research, publications by cuny faculty.

• OER by Discipline
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Organizations that research OER

• Open Educational Group
• A Comparison of Academic Outcomes in Courses Taught With Open Educational Resources and Publisher Content Bol, Linda ; Esqueda, Monica Christina ; Ryan, Diane ; Kimmel, Sue C Educational researcher, 2021-10-18, p.13189
• Practitioner Perspectives: The DOERS3 Collaborative on OER in Tenure and Promotion Published March 2, 2021 In the following Practitioner Perspective, Andrew McKinney, OER coordinator at the City University of New York (CUNY), and Amanda Coolidge, director of Open Education at BCcampus in British Columbia, Canada, share the development of an adaptable matrix to help faculty include OER (Open Educational Resources) in their tenure and promotion portfolios.

This list is presented in reverse chronological order. Subscription may be required in some cases.

The resources here were compiled by Stacy Katz and are available in list form .

2017 and before

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• URL: https://library.csi.cuny.edu/oer
• Last Updated: Mar 24, 2024 4:02 PM

• Open access
• Published: 03 January 2020

Accessibility within open educational resources and practices for disabled learners: a systematic literature review

• Xiangling Zhang 1 ,
• Ahmed Tlili 1 ,
• Fabio Nascimbeni 2 ,
• Daniel Burgos 2 ,
• Ronghuai Huang 1 ,
• Ting-Wen Chang 1 ,
• Mohamed Jemni 3 &
• Mohamed Koutheair Khribi 4  

Smart Learning Environments volume  7 , Article number:  1 ( 2020 ) Cite this article

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The number of disabled students is rapidly increasing worldwide, but many schools and universities have failed to keep up with their learning needs. Consequently, large numbers of disabled students are dropping out of school or university. Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) contain several relevant features, including the possibility of reusing and remixing, which have led researchers to consider using OER and OEP to facilitate meeting the needs of disabled and functional-diverse students in order to increase their accessibility and e-inclusion capabilities in educational settings. The very limited research to date, however, has provided a limited holistic understanding of accessibility within OER and OEP in order to aid researchers in pursuing future directions in this field. Therefore, this paper systematically reviewed 31 papers to provide insights about functional diversity within OER and OEP. The results obtained highlighted that accessibility is still in its infancy within OER and that researchers should focus more on considering the four accessibility principles — perceivable, operable, understandable and robust — when providing OER. Additionally, while several researchers have focused on several issues related to accessibility within OER, limited focus has been given to assistive technologies using OER. Finally, this paper provides several recommendations to increase accessibility within OER and help design more accessible OER for students with functional diversity.

Education is a key issue of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, being both directly connected to the 17 goals of the agenda and at the core of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4), which aims to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all (United Nations, 2015 ). One target of SDG4 is equity, which is defined by its goal to, ‘by 2030, eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations’ (United Nations, 2015 , p. 17).

Open Educational Resources (OER), defined as ‘teaching, learning and research materials in any medium that may be composed of copyrightable materials released under an open license, materials not protected by copyright, materials for which copyright protection has expired, or a combination of the foregoing’ (UNESCO, forthcoming), have the potential to contribute to reaching this objective by increasing access to learning as well as improving the quality of the learning experience (Ehlers, 2011 ). The OER movement is based on the idea that educational resources (e.g., content or course designs) should be released under licenses that allow anyone to freely access, retain (e.g., download, duplicate, store), reuse, revise (e.g., translate, adapt, modify), combine and-or re-share them (Tlili, Huang, Chang, Nascimbeni & Burgos, 2019 ). The use of OER for teaching in an innovative and collaborative environment is referred to as Open Educational Practices (OEP). Ehlers ( 2011 ), p. 4 defined OEP as ‘practices which support the (re)use and production of Open Educational Resources through institutional policies, promote innovative pedagogical models, and respect and empower learners as co-producers on their lifelong learning paths’. Research is coalescing around the fact that these practices can help enhance learning quality, access and effectiveness in universities (Weller, 2014 ).

Despite the growing number of OER (Hoosen & Butcher, 2019 ) and the policy attention devoted to OER accessibility, as demonstrated by the presence of guidelines to increase the accessibility of OER within the Ljubljana OER Action Plan (UNESCO, 2017 ), the extent to which OER are actually accessible is currently being questioned. Accessibility refers to the use of a product, service, framework or resource in an efficient, effective and satisfying way by people with different abilities (ISO 9241-171, 2008 ). Functional diversity is a key issue in the development of any online resource, including OER, since it is potentially focused on almost every single user. The approach has moved from handicapped users (essentially, those with motor, cognitive or sensorial impairments) through accessibility (improving specific issues to facilitate a better user experience) to functional diversity and e-inclusion (of any feature of any user who requires additional support, like the ones associated with elderly or those on sick leave) (Iniesto, Covadonga, & Moreira Teixeira, 2014 ; Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2013 ; Tekleab, Karaca, Quigley, & Tsang, 2016 ).

The present paper aims to provide a holistic and systematic review of the literature in the field of the accessibility and functional diversity of OER and OEP, as a valuable guide for better designing open educational ecosystems that support inclusive learning, improving the potential effect of OER on twenty-first century teaching and learning for learners with different needs. This is particularly urgent since recent data estimates that 15% of world population — more than a billion people — live with some form of disability (World Health Organization and World Bank, 2011 ). The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 2 presents the background of the research, section 3 details the research method, section 4 presents and discusses the obtained results, and section 5 concludes the paper with a summary of the findings, limitations and potential future directions.

According to the World Health Organization, disability cover[s] impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions. An impairment is a problem in body function or structure; an activity limitation is a difficulty encountered by an individual in executing a task or action; while a participation restriction is a problem experienced by an individual in involvement in life situations. (World Health Organization, 2015 ).

The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the U.S. Department of Education defines ‘accessible’ as meaning that a person with a disability is afforded the opportunity to acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, and enjoy the same services as a person without a disability in an equally effective and equally integrated manner, with substantially equivalent ease of use.

In educational contexts, accessibility for disabled students means that, in order for all to have equitable learning experiences, the learning experience, including its learning content and teaching process, should be adjusted according to students’ needs, including their disabilities. While people with disabilities have the same educational needs as others, they are less likely to attend schools and graduate, and consequently may face difficulties in finding jobs in future (Ingram, 1971 ; Iwarsson & Ståhl, 2003 ; World Health Organization and World Bank, 2011 ). Various international policies, including the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015 ) and the UNESCO Education for All initiative (UNESCO, 1990 ), have highlighted the importance of providing fair learning experiences for all students regardless of their differences. Still, a great proportion of schools and universities fail to properly address equitable access, especially with regard to disabled students (Catlin & Blamires, 2019 ), partly due to the lack of effective teaching methods and content targeted to these student categories (Virnes, 2008 ).

In the area of web accessibility, several standards released by the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3) can be applied to OER. Among these standards, WCAG 2.0 has been widely accepted and adopted (W3C., 2012 ) and is based on four attributes that lay the necessary foundations for anyone to access and use websites, as shown in Table  1 . Based on these four attributes, 12 guidelines and 61 success criteria are provided, categorised into three levels of conformance: AAA (highest), AA or A (lowest) (Crespo, Espada, & Burgos, 2016 ; W3, 2008).

Table 1 shows that OER can increase the accessibility of web-based education in many ways. This potential is mainly connected to the inner OER features of re-using, remixing and redistributing learning content that can help adapt existing materials to disabled students without having to develop resources from scratch. OER can serve the needs of those with diverse abilities for a number of complementary reasons:

Permissions granted by an open license remove legal barriers to adapting and customising OER, making it possible to create learning environments that are more flexible and robust for all students.

OER offer the opportunity for instructors to curate materials authored by a diverse set of individuals, including those who identify as disabled, normalising and reducing stigma while sharing viewpoints that have historically been marginalised.

Unlike commercially published materials, OER that are adapted to meet accessibility requirements can be retained and freely shared with communities, reducing duplicative work at and across institutions.

OER adoption can reduce costs, which benefits all students but can be especially beneficial for students with disabilities who may face additional financial pressures.

It is more common for OER to be shared in formats that can be adapted for accessibility, unlike proprietary publisher content, from whom editable files are notably difficult to obtain (Thomas, 2018 ).

Hejer, Khribi, and Jemni ( 2017 ) mentioned that despite the fact that the OER paradigm can facilitate inclusive learning by reusing the open resources in a way which caters to the needs of disabled students, limited work has been done to achieve this purpose. Similarly, Iniesto, McAndrew, Minocha, and Coughlan ( 2017 ) stated that few Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are fully accessible for disabled students. Undeniably, not enough research is being conducted to support inclusive and equitable learning using OER (Navarrete, Peñafiel, Tenemaza, & Luján-Mora, 2019 ). Specifically, to our knowledge, only one conference paper has conducted a systematic literature review to investigate the actual accessibility of OER for disabled learners (Moreno, Caro, & Cabedo, 2018 ), providing only information about the trends of OER and accessibility without summarising and discussing findings related to accessible learning within OER and OEP. In addition, while several literature reviews have been conducted to better understand the use of OER for the general student population, no literature review has focused on investigating the work done on the accessibility of OER and OEP. To fill this gap, this paper presents a systematic literature review to understand how the application of OER and OEP can increase learning accessibility.

Methodology

A rigorous literature review is an important step that builds the foundation for knowledge accumulation, which in turn facilitates the expansions and improvements of theories, closes existing gaps in research and uncovers areas previous research has missed (Marangunić & Granić, 2015 ). This study presents a systematic review based on published papers related to OER and OEP for learning accessibility, with particular reference to disabled students. It follows the steps reported by Okoli and Schabram ( 2010 ) as described in the next subsequent sections.

Investigated research questions

To gain insight into the use of OER and OEP for accessible learning, a systematic review is needed. Specifically, this study attempts to answer the following research questions:

RQ1. What are the trends in publications on learning accessibility using OER and OEP in terms of time series, country and keyword distribution?

RQ2. What kinds of disabilities and issues were investigated in the identified papers?

RQ3. Which assessment methodologies were used in the identified papers?

Search strategy and inclusion/exclusion criteria

To answer the above research questions, several keywords were adopted as follows: accessib* AND Open AND Educational Resource*, accessib* AND OER, accessib* AND Open Educational Resource, accessib* AND OEP, accessib* AND Open Pedagogy, accessib* AND Open teaching, accessib* AND Open assessment, accessib* AND Open educational Practices, Inclusive learning AND Open educational resource, Inclusive learning AND OER. The search was conducted in several databases, including ScienceDirect, Wiley Online Library, IEEE Xplore Digital Library, Core Collections of Web of Science and Taylor & Francis Online. ResearchGate, a network for researchers to share, discover and discuss research, was also used to retrieve the related papers. The obtained papers were then filtered based on specific inclusion/exclusion criteria. Specifically, we excluded papers that: (1) were not in English; (2) did not discuss openness using OER and OEP for learning accessibility; (3) did not focus on disabled students; or (4) did not have available full-text online. A total of thirty-one papers were finally included during the review process. Figure  1 presents the selection procedure of papers during this review process.

Selection procedure of papers during the review process

Data extraction and analysis

Each study was then reviewed and examined based on seven items, as presented in Table  2 . These items provide information to answer the above research questions and conduct the synthesis. Finally, a qualitative synthesis was conducted to answer the research questions.

Results and discussion

Trends in publications on learning accessibility using oer and oep, distribution by year.

As shown in Fig.  2 , Caruso and Ferlino ( 2009 ) published the first paper on OER and inclusive learning in 2009, which reported that, for disabled people, the number of available open software programmes was less than the number of non-open software programmes. In particular, the authors focused on open software because by nature it can be modified and adapted to different needs, fulfilling more accessibility requirements than proprietary software (Klironomos, Antona, Basdekis, & Stephanidis, 2006 ). Since then, experts have realised the importance and necessity of research on the topic of accessibility and open education, intended here as education based on OER and OEP. Specifically, as shown in Fig. 2 , the interest in open education for disabled students has increased since 2014; the number of related papers published in 2014, 2015 and 2016 accounted for more than 60% of all the production of the last decade. Additionally, the year 2016 saw a peak in interest in this area, probably connected with the fact that the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was launched in 2015, providing an impetus for research in the areas of accessibility and inclusion.

Distribution of papers by year of publication

Distribution by country

The distribution of the first author’s countries is presented in Fig.  3 , showing that authors from only nine countries have led research about OER and OEP for accessible learning. This shows that the use of OER and OEP for inclusive learning is still in its infancy and that more awareness should be raised to encourage further investigation in this field. In particular, authors from Ecuador had 11 papers related to this topic, accounting for more than one third of all papers, followed by Spain, with six papers. Ecuador is indeed considered as a leading country in the field of disability support, since the government proposed in 2007 several policies to address the needs, including educational needs, of disabled persons. Spain has long attached great importance to inclusive education; as early as 1982, Spain passed legislation to integrate disabled youth in schools. In 1985 the decree on special education moved many disabled children from special schools to mainstream schools. In 1994, the United Nations World Conference on Special Needs Education was held in Spain, where the fundamental principle of inclusion at school was declared and widely endorsed. Interestingly, four out of the nine countries present at that conference (Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK) have adopted the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 (WCAG 2.0) noted earlier (W3, 2017).

Distribution of papers by country

Distribution by keyword

Finally, the keyword distribution of the 31 research papers in the systematic review was analysed in order to understand the use of OER and OEP for accessible learning more deeply. Keywords with similar meanings, such as ‘OER’ and ‘Open Educational Resources’ or ‘Learning object’ and ‘LO’, were normalised. The final distribution of the keywords is presented in Fig.  4 . It can be seen that accessibility, OER and disability are the most commonly used keywords in the 31 papers reviewed. In particular, disability and accessibility focus on the category of students on which these research papers focus, while OER focus on the category of education that can contribute to improving the accessibility of earning opportunities. Importantly, we discovered that the term Open Educational Practices (OEP), as well as sub-terms, such as open pedagogy, open teaching and open assessment, have not yet been discussed in the literature when it comes to accessible learning. Therefore, in the subsequent analysis we will focus only on accessibility and OER.

Distribution of keywords in the reviewed research papers

Disabilities and issues investigated

As shown in Table  3 , when investigating the use of OER, researchers focused on several disabilities, including visual disabilities, hearing disabilities, motor disabilities, speech disabilities, cognitive disabilities and aging-connected disabilities. Researchers paid almost equal attention to different types of disability, including seven studies on visual disabilities and hearing disabilities, respectively, and six papers on motor disabilities and cognitive disabilities. It is obvious that aging also imposes certain limitations on the ability of humans, so researchers have also considered it. It should be noted that some papers discussed more than one disability. For instance, Zervas et al. ( 2014 ) developed an online teaching and learning portal for students with visual and/or hearing disabilities.

The use of OER to address the above disabilities was discussed from five different angles: system design, personalisation, metadata, authoring tools and OER accessibility framework/architecture. As shown in Table  4 , most authors focused on system design to increase accessibility and usability for students with disabilities. For instance, Ngubane-Mokiwa ( 2016 ) conducted a literature review and identified several guidelines to facilitate MOOC access for visually impaired students. These guidelines are from three different perspectives: (1) multiple means of representation, which focuses on the strategies to make MOOCs accessible; (2) multiple means of action and expression, which focuses on the strategies that facilitates user actions on MOOCs; and, (3) multiple means of engagement, which focuses on strategies to provide accessible interaction within MOOCs.

Several researchers also analysed personalised learning experiences based on the ‘type of disability’ or ‘user profile’ as a personalisation parameter. For instance, Zervas et al. ( 2014 ) designed an OER-based educational portal to facilitate learning and teaching for students with different disabilities, including those with visually impairments. Similarly, Navarrete and Luján-Mora ( 2018 ) developed an OER website that takes into consideration the disability of students, including visual and hearing disabilities, as a personalisation parameter. This ‘disability-personalisation’ path is extremely relevant, as recognised by the National Academy of Engineering, which mentioned that personalised learning is one of the fourteen most important challenges of the twenty-first xentury (Tlili, et al., 2019 ).

Other researchers focused on discussing metadata, defined and machine-processable data that describe resources, either digital or nondigital (Haslhofer & Klas, 2010 ), in inclusive learning using OER and OEP. An accurate metadata set can enhance the retrieval of educational resources and provide a friendly navigation experience. For instance, in order to better describe and identify resources, Navarrete and Luján-Mora ( 2018 ) applied a subset of descriptors from the Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standards. Similarly, Navarrete and Luján-Mora ( 2014 ) applied other metadata standards, including DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata initiative) and AfA (Access for All). Some researchers have put forward innovative frameworks to improve the accessibility of OER. Rodriguez et al. ( 2017 ) argued that the development of a framework for improving web accessibility should be based on existing standards, such as WCAG 2.0, and proposed a framework for enhancing the accessibility and usability of open courseware sites. Innovative architectures are also presented by Sanchez-Gordon and Luján-Mora ( 2016 ) as ways to improve the accessibility of MOOCs and OER.

Finally, some researchers have focused on developing authoring tools for accessible OER. For instance, Mulwa et al. ( 2016 ) developed an OER authoring tool to facilitate the creation of OER for students with visual disabilities by selecting the navigation methods and text sizes. As shown in Table 4 , only two papers focused on authoring tools to develop accessible OER. This might explain the limited number of fully accessible OER. Therefore, more focus should be put on developing tools that can help educators create and publish OER for disabled students. Additionally, no reviewed paper discussed the accessibility of OER from the assistive technology perspective. Given that different assistive technologies for disabled persons exist within different Operating Systems (OS), OER designers should try to make their resources compatible with as many assistive technologies and OS as possible in order to ensure high accessibility.

Assessment methodologies used

Based on the review of the 31 identified studies, 16 papers conducted assessments to evaluate the accessibility of OER, while the 15 remaining papers did not conduct any assessment. Specifically, to assess the accessibility of OER, three different methods were used, as shown in Table 5 : automatic tools, simulator tools and manual assessment. In particular, automatic tools were based on different software, such as AChecker (Avila Garzon, 2018 ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2014 ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2015a ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2015b ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2015c ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2018 ; Rodriguez et al., 2017 ) and eXaminator (Iniesto et al., 2014 ; Iniesto & Rodrigo, 2014 ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2014 ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2015a ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2015b ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2015c ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2018 ; Rosa & Motz, 2016 ). Disability simulators, on the other hand, are used to simulate the requirements of a disabled person (Iniesto et al., 2014 ; Iniesto & Rodrigo, 2014 ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2015a ), enabling the system to better understand the problems and requirements of people with impairments. For instance, the simulator named aDesigner, used by Iniesto and Rodrigo ( 2014 ) and Iniesto et al. ( 2014 ), aimed to simulate the use by people with visual disabilities in order to help the designer assess the extent to which a given content is accessible to users with that particular disability. Finally, manual assessment is mostly based on users’ questionnaires (Avila Garzon, 2018 ; Avila Garzon et al., 2016 ; Caruso & Ferlino, 2009 ; Mulwa et al., 2016 ; Navarrete et al., 2019 ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2015a ; Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2018 ; Rodriguez et al., 2017 ; Sanchez-Gordon & Luján-Mora, 2016 ). In these cases, the purpose of the questionnaire is to obtain a qualitative analysis to appreciate the users’ experience of the process of using a given OER (Navarrete et al., 2019 ), based on questions like ‘Is it easy to learn how to use the website?’ or ‘Can the user resolve the tasks on the website without unnecessary effort?’ (Navarrete & Luján-Mora, 2018 ). Several researchers, however, claimed that using questionnaires may not be motivating for learners, since they are typically too long. Additionally, learners may not fully reveal their experiences and may try to respond optimistically when they feel that they are being assessed by others (Okada & Oltmanns, 2009 ). To counterbalance these attitudes, given the rapid growth of technology and the era of big data and learning analytics, researchers should focus more on using the data generated by learners to obtain insights about the accessibility of OER-based learning processes. If we consider that the accessibility of OER and OEP should aim at enabling all users, including disabled ones, having equitable learning opportunities, this focus on technical accessibility suggests that the research on OER and OEP for disabled learners is still in its infancy, since most researchers have focused on a rather superficial analysis that does not rely on rich datasets. Therefore, further research should be conducted to investigate how OER and OEP facilitate the deployment of accessible and inclusive learning from a more holistic perspective.

WCAG 2.0 provides guidelines on how to make web content more accessible to people with disabilities and four principles to lay the foundation of Web accessibility (W3, 2008). Table  6 presents the results of the review along with the four accessibility attributes presented in the Background section: perceivable, operable, understandable and robust. It appears that the majority of researchers discussed accessibility as one concept without considering specific accessibility attributes. Table 6 shows that the general OER accessibility level could be improved: among the 16 papers which reported accessibility assessment results, 15 generally agreed that there was much room for improvement in the accessibility of OER, especially for disabled users. For instance, the accessibility evaluation results by Iniesto and Rodrigo ( 2014 ) show a low degree of compliance of the analysed OER with the WCAG 2.0 accessibility guidelines. Navarrete et al. ( 2019 ) also conclude that neither the OER website interface nor the educational resources are fully accessible.

If we analyse the accessibility attributes individually, Rodriguez and Pérez ( 2017 ) stated that more errors are found under the attributes ‘robust’ and ‘perceivable’, which account for 50% and 31.81%, respectively, of the errors made when using the automatic tool TAW. On the other hand, for the attributes ‘operable’ and ‘understandable’, the percentage of errors is 20% and 17.64%, respectively. After accessibility evaluation with TAW of four OER platforms, including MERLOT, OCW UPM, OER COMMONS and OLI, similar results were reported in Navarrete and Luján-Mora ( 2015c ), which showed that the greatest number of warnings are annotated under the attributes ‘robust’ and ‘perceivable’, while all of these warnings may be related to some issues that need to be judged by experts. Meanwhile, the fewest errors were detected by TAW under the attribute ‘understandable’.

Conclusion, recommendations and future directions

This study presented a systematic review of the use of OER and OEP to provide accessible learning. The final notes based on the results discussed above (in the three presented research questions) are as follows:

A limited number of countries (nine) were involved in the investigation of the use of OER and OEP for accessible learning (research question 1). Therefore, researchers worldwide should be encouraged to get involved in this research field. This can be changed by raising awareness about the new opportunities that OER and OEP could provide to disabled students for effective accessible learning, or by launching new projects or policies (e.g., governmental or institutional) that encourage the use of OER and OEP for inclusive learning.

Only two papers discussed the development of authoring tools with features to create accessible content, which might explain the reasons for having limited online OER and OEP for disabled students (research question 2). This should be changed by developing more inclusive authoring tools (that work with different functional diversities) that educators can use to create and publish open content.

Most assessments conducted focused only on the accessibility of the provided OER (research question 3). Therefore, more research should also be conducted to investigate the effectiveness of OER and OEP in providing accessible learning experiences and enhancing disabled students’ learning achievements.

There is still much room for improvement in OER accessibility (research question 3). Therefore, researchers and practitioners should consider different accessibility guidelines (e.g., WCAG 2.0) while developing their OER platforms, tools and devices. This helps provide an effective approach to accessibility, functional diversity and e-inclusion in educational settings.

Only three assessment methods are used: automatic tools, simulator tools and manual tools (research question 3). Therefore, in the era of big data, researchers and practitioners should also begin applying learning analytics for more accurate assessment of the accessible learning experience provided to disabled and functional-impaired students.

Among the four accessibility attributes, ‘robust’ has the highest percentage of errors (research question 3). Therefore, OER developers should place more emphasis on OER’s compatibility with most assistive devices, as well as operating systems (Windows, Mac OSX and Linux).

In addition, the authors consider direct support to educators a key issue, so that they learn the foundations of functional diversity, develop the skill set to operate learning resources under these terms and are fully aware of the significance of and need for specific actions around the topic. Indeed, providing specific competencies and training for educators are a challenge but nonetheless a required measure to improve the impact of functional diversity and accessibility on the educational system.

This study opens new research perspectives for researchers and practitioners on the use of open educational resources and practices for accessibility and functional diversity in educational contexts by uncovering gaps in this field that should be investigated. This study has several limitations, however, that should be acknowledged. For instance, the review results are limited to the search keywords used: thus, some studies may not be included. This study is also based on findings from the literature review and is not supported by any experimental setup. Despite these limitations, this study provides a solid ground from which to explore the use of open educational resources and practices in this context.

Availability of data and materials

Not applicable.

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Zhang, X., Tlili, A., Nascimbeni, F. et al. Accessibility within open educational resources and practices for disabled learners: a systematic literature review. Smart Learn. Environ. 7 , 1 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-019-0113-2

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4.1 Jamendo

4.2 ccMixter

4.3 Internet Archive

4.4 free music archive.

4.5 SoundCloud

The search tools profiled above are for educators who are simply looking for individual media elements to use within their courses. However, an even higher value can be gained by finding Open Educational Resources (OER) that other educators have already vetted and assembled into education content such as full courses, workshops, textbooks, tests and assessments. This search section is focused on helping you find this kind of OER.

5. General Education Search

Looking to search across multiple OER initiatives? Try:

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5.2 The Orange Grove Digital Repository

6. Recorded Lectures & Video Tutorials Search

Many institutions have recorded on-campus lectures and published them as OER licensed with CC. Short video tutorials on a particular subject are also available. Searching for recorded lectures or video tutorials? Try:

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Searching for open textbooks? Try:

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• building capacity in the use of Mediawiki and related free software technologies for mass-collaboration in the authoring of free content
• developing free content for use in schools, polytechnics, universities, vocational education institutions and informal education settings
• facilitating the establishment of community networks and collaboration with existing free content initiatives in education
• fostering new technologies that will widen access, improve quality and reduce the cost associated with providing education, primarily through the use of free content

The OERu initiative taking place in WikiEducator is a virtual collaboration of like-minded institutions committed to creating flexible pathways for OER learners to gain formal academic credit.

9.5 Wikiversity

10. Complete Courses

Searching for complete courses? Have a look through these OER initiatives from around the world:

10.1 Carnegie Mellon University Open Learning Initiative

10.2 Open Course Library

10.3 MIT OpenCourseWare

10.4 OpenCourseWare Consortium Search

• Stanford Engineering Everywhere
• Open University LearningSpace
• University of Massachusetts (UMass)-Boston
• University of Tokyo
• Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
• School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins
• Delft University of Technology
• Yale University

10.5 UK Open University Learning Space

10.6 Saylor

This is a partial listing of OER sources which we hope you find useful. We welcome additions or revisions to this listing. Send your feedback and suggestions to [email protected] . Special thanks to Jennifer Freeman and Deborah Zulick of the Massachusetts Community College/Workforce Development Transformation Agenda for sharing their list of OER sources.

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Open educational resources: undertheorized research and untapped potential

• Open access
• Published: 30 November 2020
• Volume 69 , pages 411–414, ( 2021 )

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• David A. Wiley   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-6722-4744 1  

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This paper is in response to the manuscript entitled “Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions” (Hilton in Educ Technol Res Dev 64(4): 573–590, 2016) from a theoretical perspective. The response describes the way many of the papers reviewed by Hilton were undertheorized, limiting their potential for impact. A brief summary of more recent research shows one current direction toward stronger theorization of OER research. Over the short-term, including during the rapid shift to digital learning catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, OER adoption can be expected to save college students money and close the achievement gap between Pell-eligible students and their wealthier peers. Over the longer term, this benefit will likely disappear, and faculty will need to more fully explore the affordances of the 5Rs in order to create dramatic improvements in success for all students.

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Implementing open educational resources in digital education

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Open educational resources, student efficacy, and user perceptions: a synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Introduction

Hilton ( 2016 ) provides a review of nine studies assessing the impact of faculty decisions to adopt open educational resources (OER) on a range of student outcomes. These studies were all conducted in the United States, and this response focuses on OER in the US context.

Informally, OER are teaching, learning, and research materials that can be copied, edited, and shared freely and legally. More formally, Creative Commons ( n.d. ) defines open educational resources as:

Teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities.

Retain—make, own, and control a copy of the resource

Reuse—use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly

Revise—edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource

Remix—combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new

Redistribute—share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others (para. 2)

Hilton’s review found that outcomes are similar for students whose faculty adopt OER and students whose faculty adopt traditionally copyrighted materials. While a small number of studies found positive or negative effects on student outcomes, the majority found no significant differences.

Limitations

Many of the articles reviewed in Hilton ( 2016 ), including some articles on which I was an author, are woefully undertheorized. They are essentially media comparison studies or, to be more precise, license comparison studies. Without conceptualizing an explanatory mechanism—a reason to believe a difference might exist—they simply compare the outcomes of students whose required course materials are openly licensed with those whose materials are traditionally copyrighted. A stronger theoretical framework, including a hypothesized explanatory mechanism, is required for comparative research to provide useful insights. The reader should not be surprised when reviews of research that lack a sufficient theoretical framework (like many of the articles reviewed by Hilton) find no significant differences.

As a consequence of their copyright licensing, many OER are available to students at no or low cost. This provides a contrast with traditionally copyrighted textbooks, which are frequently incredibly expensive (The Student PIRGS 2018 ). Therefore, questions about potential differences in student outcomes when faculty adopt OER can sometimes be reframed as questions about the impact of the price of required course materials on student outcomes. If required course materials contribute meaningfully to student outcomes, and if some students are unable to afford access to those materials, there is reason to believe that there may be a gap in student outcomes between those who can afford them and those who cannot.

Wiley ( 2017 ) demonstrated that OER integrated into interactive courseware can close this gap. Using eligibility for Pell grants as a proxy for students’ ability to afford their required course materials, Wiley used multiple regression to control for students’ previous academic performance, age, race, gender, enrollment status, and other differences to isolate the effect of Pell eligibility on the final grades of 5622 students at eight institutions in an introductory business course. The analysis also showed that Pell eligible students who used OER integrated into interactive courseware had final grades that were indistinguishable from their wealthier peers, but Pell eligible students using traditionally copyrighted materials or OER outside the courseware context had final grades significantly lower than their wealthier peers.

Colvard, Watson, and Park ( 2018 ) studied 21,822 students in eight courses at a single institution, examining the impact of OER adoption on sub-groups of students. In three isolated comparisons of Pell recipients versus non-recipients, non-white students versus white students, and part-time versus full-time students, the authors found that Pell recipients, non-white students, and part-time students each benefited more from their faculty’s decisions to adopt OER than other students.

Grimaldi, Basu Mallick, Waters, and Baraniuk ( 2019 ) explored this idea further, naming it the access hypothesis. “The access hypothesis states that OER benefits learning by providing access to critical course materials, and therefore predicts that OER should only benefit students who would not otherwise have access to the materials” (p. 1). Using simulation analysis, they demonstrate that if researchers fail to account for students who would have had access to required course materials even had they been expensive, they will likely be unable to detect any effect of OER adoption on student outcomes. The authors suggest that failure to account for the access hypothesis may contribute to the large number of “no significant difference” findings in the research on OER impacts.

Application

Adopting OER as part of an emergency shift to digital learning during the COVID-19 pandemic will save students money. When OER are used in accordance with evidence-based teaching practices, they can also help close the achievement gap between lower income and higher income students. But two important points are worth considering when thinking of OER as part of a long-term strategy.

First, while the cost of traditionally copyrighted educational materials has historically been much higher than the price of OER, the cost of textbooks has plateaued for the first time in decades (Perry 2020 ). As publishers respond to the price pressure created by OER in the course materials market, the difference in the prices of OER and traditionally copyrighted resources is likely to continue to decrease. If the access hypothesis holds, the impact of OER on student outcomes attributable to affordability will decrease in parallel. In other words, adopting OER may not be a long-term strategy for saving students significant amounts of money or closing the achievement gap between lower income and higher income students. If the success of OER programs is measured in terms of cost savings and closing this gap, these programs will likely become less successful over time.

Second, and much more importantly, closing the achievement gap between poorer students and their wealthier peers is not nearly enough. We need to dramatically improve outcomes for all students. For example, only 30% of students graduate from 2 year degree programs within 3 years (National Center for Education Statistics 2019 ). Dramatically improving this and other student outcomes will require more than adopting cheaper textbooks. Faculty, students, instructional designers, and others will need to think more deeply about using OER together with evidence-based teaching and learning practices, as well as exploring the implications of the 5R affordances in order to find novel, OER-enabled pedagogies (Wiley and Hilton 2018 ), if they aim to radically improve student outcomes. This may be where the true power and potential of OER lies.

Future work

Open educational resources are growing in popularity among faculty, students, and administrators (Seamans and Seamans 2018 ). As their popularity grows, the need to improve our understanding of their potential to impact learning and other measures of student success increases proportionally. If it is to contribute meaningfully to that task, future research on the impact of OER must be grounded in a theoretical framework that provides a clear rationale for why a reasonable person would expect OER use to impact student learning. As researchers move beyond license comparison studies and begin to propose and test concrete explanatory mechanisms for a hypothesized OER effect, our understanding will progress much more rapidly.

Colvard, N. B., Watson, C. E., & Park, H. (2018). The impact of open educational resources on various student success metrics. International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 30 (2), 262–276.

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Grimaldi, P. J., Basu Mallick, D., Waters, A. E., & Baraniuk, R. G. (2019). Do open educational resources improve student learning? Implications of the access hypothesis. PLoS One, 14 (3). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0212508 .

Hilton, J. (2016). Open educational resources and college textbook choices: A review of research on efficacy and perceptions. Educational Technology Research and Development, 64 (4), 573–590. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-016-9434-9 .

National Center for Education Statistics. (2019). Status and trends in the education of racial and ethnic groups . Institute of Education Sciences. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/raceindicators/indicator_red.asp

Perry, M. J. (2020, January 14). Chart of the day… or century? American Enterprise Institute. https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/chart-of-the-day-or-century-3/

Seamans, J. E., & Seamans, J. (2018). Freeing the textbook: Educational resources in US higher education, 2018 . Babson Survey Research Group. https://www.onlinelearningsurvey.com/reports/freeingthetextbook2018.pdf

The Student PIRGS. (2018). Open 101: An action plan for affordable textbooks . https://studentpirgs.org/2018/01/25/open-101-action-plan-affordable-textbooks/

Wiley, D. (2017, April 25–28). Super seven presentation. Conference presentation. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation OER Grantees Meeting, Ontario, Canada.

Wiley, D., & Hilton, J. (2018). Defining OER-enabled pedagogy. International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, 19 (4). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i4.3601 .

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Wiley, D.A. Open educational resources: undertheorized research and untapped potential. Education Tech Research Dev 69 , 411–414 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11423-020-09907-w

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