The Infrastructure of Openness: Results from a Multi-Institutional Survey on OER Platforms

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand how higher education institutions are selecting and using technology platforms for the creation and delivery of Open Educational Resources (OER). A survey about OER technology was sent to various higher education institutions, resulting in 33 responses. The results suggest that institutions are most commonly using existing tools like the Learning Management System (LMS) to deliver OER, however third-party courseware also has a strong presence. The results also suggest that there is little evidence that institutions engage in structured evaluations when selecting OER technologies, but rather the selection process is most often driven by faculty preference. Institutions were also asked about their level of satisfaction with their platform's ability to support the 5Rs of openness. Respondents were most satisfied with the ability to retain, but least satisfied with the ability to remix content.

Navigating support models for OER publishing: case studies from the University of Houston and the University of Washington

“…Publishing platforms are often an integral part of OER publishing programs in academic libraries, and the availability of such infrastructure contributes to the sustainability of a program (Essmiller et al, 2019). In a survey of 33 US higher education institutions, Nyland (2019) found that word processing tools were the most common technology used by faculty to author their own open textbooks, followed by the learning management system (LMS), Pressbooks and Web authoring tools, such as WordPress. Many examples of OER publishing programs found in the literature use Pressbooks as the publishing platform provided by the institution (Fisher, 2020;McGrath, 2018;Ross et al, 2018) or provided in collaboration with partners such as the Rebus Community (Batchelor, 2018;Smith, 2018).…”

Sustaining Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives in higher education: practices, successes, and challenges

“…The Quality of OER While OER brings tremendous benefits to educators and students, there have been many controversial discussions about the quality of OER, especially when OER were first introduced to educational institutions. Institutional stakeholders have concerns that OER adoption may result in lower quality or outcomes (Nyland, 2018). Research regarding student learning outcomes by students using OER and commercial textbooks have varied results.…”

“…As the use of OER continues to grow, publishers are experiencing a decline in the sale of textbooks, and college textbooks use has been declining in recent years (Rosen, 2019). for technologies and services that help deliver the content (Nyland, 2018). Locking down OER in a closed platform caused controversial discussions related to the stewardship and use of OER.…”