What’s in it for me? A mixed-methods study on teachers’ value creation in an inter-institutional community on open educational resources in higher education

Abstract

The affordances of Open Educational Resources (OER) have resulted in various initiatives around the world, but most of them cease to exist once the initial project funding stops. Communities might be a means to create sustainable practices, yet, such communities can only function if their members perceive these communities as valuable. We applied the value creation framework of Wenger, Trayner, and De Laat to examine the value teachers ascribe to their engagement with an inter-institutional community on OER. In this community, 15 universities of applied sciences collaborated on sharing knowledge and resources across their institutional barriers. We collected data through user statistics, an online questionnaire, and semi-structured interviews. Major value creation occurred from teachers’ personal needs, with dominant immediate and potential values. Findings on applied and realized values denote that it became easier for teachers to connect with peers, and to initiate collaboration projects across institutes. The framework we used is helpful to inform actions to further promote value creation in communities on OER. Recommendations relating to communities’ aspirations, its relations with the wider organization, and adoption of OER are formulated to inform sustainable practices of inter-institutional communities.

The Use of Open Educational Resources and Renewable Assignments in Social Work Ph.D. Programs in the United States

“…This can encourage educators to share their expertise and innovative teaching practices freely (Kursun et al, 2014). OER also encourage collaboration between educators (McKnight et al, 2016), through which they can enhance their knowledge and gather valuable insights from peers across different disciplines, leading to the development of high-quality, contextually relevant learning materials (Baas et al, 2023). Since OER are accessible to everyone, they are subject to peer review and evaluation, which helps ensure their accuracy and quality (Hilton, 2016).…”