The power of open: benefits, barriers, and strategies for integration of open educational resources

ABSTRACT

Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming a significant, mission-driven trend within educational literature. To help address rising costs, instructors and designers are looking to OER to effectively replace traditional instructional content, which requires more than just identify and replace. Drawing from 51 OER studies conducted in countries across the five continents, this systematic literature review explored the empirical themes evident in the current research on a global scale. This review found (1) discoverability, sustainability, and remixing are significant barriers that stand in the way of OER disrupting traditional textbook models; (2) there is no significant difference in learning outcomes when instructors incorporate OER; and (3) implementation of OER as instructional strategies is challenging but can be effective in supporting positive learning outcomes when properly designed. The paper concludes with a discussion of gaps in the literature, considerations for implementation and further directions for future research.

KEYWORDS:

• OER
• open educational resources
• higher education
• open educational practice
• instructional strategies

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Tian Luo

Tian Luo is an Assistant Professor of Instructional Design and Technology at Old Dominion University. Formerly, she worked as an instructional design professional in both higher education and corporate settings. She currently serves as an editor for the Journal of Information Technology Education: Research. Her research interests centre on teaching and learning with and through social technologies and media. Her broader research interests include instructional design, online learning, gamification, open educational resources, and learning analytics.

Kirsten Hostetler

Kirsten Hostetler received her MLIS from the University of Washington in 2013 and is currently pursuing her PhD in Instructional Design and Technology from Old Dominion University. She is a member of the research team at Project Information Literacy (PIL), an ongoing national research study about college students in the digital age, and has worked in both public and academic libraries. Kirsten currently works as the Instruction and Outreach Faculty Librarian at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, OR.

Candice Freeman

Candice Freeman is completing an Instructional Design and Technology doctoral program at Old Dominion University; her research interests focus on problem-based learning in the workplace, cognitive apprenticeship in medical education, and workforce development using social media. Candice has over twenty years of professional experience in healthcare, quality assurance, and higher education, holding both didactic and clinical education faculty roles at the 2-year and 4-year college levels. At present, she is an online instructor in the Clinical Laboratory Science Distance Education program at Winston Salem State University and the Director of Laboratory Services with McLeod Health in South Carolina.

Jill Stefaniak

Jill Stefaniak is an Assistant Professor in the Learning, Design, and Technology Program at the University of Georgia. Her research interests include professional development and the decision-making processes of instructional designers, contextual factors that impact design, and the use of cognitive apprenticeships as an instructional framework.