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In undergraduate life sciences education, open educational resources (OERs) increase accessibility and retention for students, reduce costs, and save instructors time and effort. Despite increasing awareness and utilization of these resources, OERs are not centrally located, and many undergraduate instructors describe challenges in locating relevant materials for use in their classes. To address this challenge, we have designed a resource collection (referred to as Open Resources for Biology Education, ORBE) with 89 unique resources that are primarily relevant to undergraduate life sciences education. To identify the resources in ORBE, we asked undergraduate life sciences instructors to list what OERs they use in their teaching and curated their responses. Here, we summarize the contents of the ORBE and describe how educators can use this resource as a tool to identify suitable materials to use in their classroom context. By highlighting the breadth of unique resources openly available for undergraduate biology education, we intend for the ORBE to increase instructors' awareness and use of OERs.

Molecular case studies (MCSs) are open educational resources that use a storytelling approach to engage students in biomolecular structure-function explorations, at the interface of biology and chemistry. Although MCSs are developed for a particular target audience with specific learning goals, they are suitable for implementation in multiple disciplinary course contexts. Detailed teaching notes included in the case study help instructors plan and prepare for their implementation in diverse contexts. A newly developed MCS was simultaneously implemented in a biochemistry and a molecular parasitology course at two different institutions. Instructors participating in this cross-institutional and multidisciplinary implementation collaboratively identified the need for quick and effective ways to bridge the gap between the MCS authors' vision and the implementing instructor's interpretation of the case-related molecular structure-function discussions. Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive and engaging experience that has been used effectively in teaching molecular sciences. Its accessibility and ease-of-use with smart devices (e.g., phones and tablets) make it an attractive option for expediting and improving both instructor preparation and classroom implementation of MCSs. In this work, we report the incorporation of ready-to-use AR objects as checkpoints in the MCS. Interacting with these AR objects facilitated instructor preparation, reduced students' cognitive load, and provided clear expectations for their learning. Based on our classroom observations, we propose that the incorporation of AR in MCSs can facilitate its successful implementation, improve the classroom experience for educators and students, and make MCSs more broadly accessible in diverse curricular settings.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has recently been gaining ground, particularly since November 2022, with the introduction of generative tools based on natural language processing and neural network algorithms. These kinds of tools have great potential for creators and users of Open Educational Resources (OER) and the Open Movement itself but they also represent risks. The International Council for Open and Distance Education OER Advocacy Committee (OERAC) developed two workshops to present the role of AI in OER at two international conferences in the fall of 2023. The workshops presented the features, benefits, key challenges, and practical issues related to using AI technologies from professional, ethical, sustainable, and equitable perspectives, while also focusing on the five areas of the UNESCO OER Recommendation. Participants were dynamically engaged in discussions, and documented their ideas in formats that could be used as OER in themselves. The OERAC noted and categorized the results, and developed short summaries and drafts for further work. Finally, drawing on the findings from the workshops, we asked ChatPDF for a second opinion on further suggestions for AI in connection with OER, which in turn related to the five areas of the recommendation. We conclude that, while there is great potential for the use of AI in the context of the Open Movement, there is also a need for professional ethics, equity, and sustainable capacity building, access, inclusion, policy, models, and international collaboration.

Recent advancements in generative artificial intelligence (GAI) have sparked debates and research on its transformative potential in education. This study explored how a specific group of educators partner with GAI tools, particularly ChatGPT, to complement and enhance their teaching. Within an interpretative paradigm, the study used an exploratory case study design to investigate how 13 educators enrolled as students in a structured master's programme at an open distance learning university in South Africa use GAI tools in their teaching. Their posts on a discussion forum were used to collect data. Findings reveal that they actively employ GAI to streamline their teaching practices, specifically to personalized tutors, simplifying English texts and translations, assessments, lesson planning, and critical thinking tasks. The study also highlights the need to understand the limitations and boundaries of GAI, including concerns about accuracy, biases and reliability. Importantly, the absence of institutional guidelines on GAI raises questions about the necessity for clear guidelines and policies to ensure responsible and ethical integration in educational contexts. The paper concludes by emphasizing the transformative potential of GAI and the fact that it will increasingly act as a partner in teaching and influence modern teaching practices. Ultimately, GAI's foothold in education is undeniable, challenging educators and policymakers to navigate its implications while maximizing its potential to support effective teaching.

In our Open Educational Resources (OER) advocacy work, we have encountered various challenges considering formulating a vision and policy on Open Education and implementing these visions and policies. Among these issues are a lack of proper definitions and terminology and lack of support for formulating and implementing a vision and policies for Open Education. To tackle these issues, two frameworks are proposed. One framework addresses the categorisation and definition of learning materials (including OER) within an educational ecosystem, emphasising the importance of distinguishing various types of resources. The other framework is meant to support defining a vision on Open Education in a specific context, bridging instrumental characteristics with value-driven goals. Several use cases are described to illustrate practical use of these frameworks. Both frameworks should provide clarity and practical guidance for stakeholders, from governments to individual educators, navigating the complexities of OER adoption and Open Education.

The objective of this study is to determine the ways in-service teachers in Turkiye make use of open educational resources and their opinions on using them. For this purpose, the explanatory sequential design has been employed. 588 teachers have participated in the quantitative part of the study; and ten have participated in the qualitative part on a voluntary basis. Data collection instruments have been (a) a personal information form developed by the researchers comprised of 16 questions and (b) a semi-structured interview form with 3 questions. The personal information form has been administered online to participants via social media. Whereas the interviews have been conducted using Zoom teleconferencing software. According to the findings, more than half of the teachers are knowledgeable on the matter of open educational resources and information resources consist of social media. It has been determined that female teachers make greater use of open educational resources than males. It has been established that the most significant affordance of open educational resources is the way it saves time and space for teachers, whereas lack of time and knowledge are the primary obstacles against using open educational resources. Additionally, the opinions of teachers show a demand from their employing organizations towards activities for raising awareness towards the matter of open educational resources and it has been shown that they wish to be encouraged on this matter. It has also been expressed that they expect quantitative and qualitative improvement of the resources provided by the Ministry of National Education, as well as support and cooperation on the use of open educational resources.

Open Distance e-Learning (ODeL) is on the rise to cater to non-traditional students. However, the surge in master's and doctoral students opting for ODeL raises concerns about the quality and timely completion of degrees. Existing literature on student attrition in higher education indicates that both student-related factors and institutional variables significantly impact completion rates. Factors such as students' sense of connection or isolation, as well as institutional aspects like supervisor responsiveness to feedback and feedforward, contribute to student persistence. To address this early attrition and extended stays in postgraduate studies, a community of practice (CoP), comprising lecturers and master's and doctoral students was formed. The CoP employed the Social Learning Theory (SLT) approach to initiate collaborative partnerships designed to promote a research culture and explore alternative approaches to curb master's and doctoral late completion and attrition. This paper reports on a study undertaken to explore the experiences, perceptions and insights of master's and doctoral candidates regarding the implementation of innovative multimodal Open Distance e-Learning supervision practices. Grounded in SLT, the exploratory case study employed an open-ended questionnaire to gather data from the students participating in the support programme. The findings revealed the positive impact of innovative practices on candidates' academic development and overall research experience. The findings further demonstrated that virtual communication tools have significantly enhanced collaboration between candidates and supervisors, breaking down geographical barriers and facilitating real-time feedback and guidance. The innovative multimodal OdeL supervision practices gave master's and doctoral candidates flexibility and increased their learning engagement.

It is increasingly evident that using technological resources has broadly impacted people's lives, including their education. One of the technologies implemented for several years is Open Educational Resources (OER), with elements of open practice to mitigate the impact of the digital divide. This article describes the validation process of an instrument to measure the adoption of OER as perceived by higher education students in Mexico (means, standard deviations and normality, construct validity and reliability). The study included 392 participants, of whom 117 (29.8%) were male, 273 (69.6%) were female and 2 (.5%) did not identify with either sex. Ages ranged from 18 to 62 years (M= 22.0 years, SD= 5.8). The instrument underwent descriptive statistics techniques, univariate normality analyses, and Confirmatory Factor Analysis using the maximum likelihood estimation method. The reliability of the measurement model was confirmed using Cronbach's Alpha and McDonald's Omega index. The resulting validated instrument investigates students' perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude, subjunctive standards, and behavioral control. For future studies, the application of the scale is suggested because of its manageable number of items and ease of administration, along with the examination of other validity tests that will help increase the robustness of the proposed measurement model, this measurement scale will be useful for teachers and researchers interested in understanding the impact of OER in education.

This study investigates the effectiveness of Open Education Resources (OER) and research-based learning. A quantitative analysis was conducted on students enrolled in Macroeconomic courses at a City University of New York (CUNY) community college in Spring 2018 and Spring 2019. Prior studies have shown the positive effects of conducting research in natural sciences. Yet, there is a lot to be inquired about regarding the impact of researchbased learning on social sciences and the use of OER materials as a cheaper and more equitable alternative to commercial textbooks. Additionally, this study evaluates the academic effectiveness of research-based learning through assessment scores through a new indicator, the growth mindset profile. Findings should be used to assess critically research-based learning applications incorporated with OER materials and open pedagogy, as well as to consider the duration, wide application throughout the program rather than isolated courses, and design of course assignments and research projects to engage students actively and effectively.

This study investigated the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) on the professional development of Bhutanese Physics teachers. Collaborating with partner institutions in Tanzania, Nigeria and India, Samtse College of Education developed and implemented three physics modules: Force and Motion; Work, Power and Energy; and Electromagnetism. These OER incorporate activity-based learning, technology integration, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and design thinking principles. A mixed-methods approach, including pre-test and post-test scores, lesson plans, reflections, and interviews were used to assess the impact of OER on teacher's Subject Matter Knowledge (SMK), Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) and General Pedagogy Knowledge (GPK). Additionally, the study examined a Community of Practice (CoP) on Telegram to understand knowledge sharing within the community. The findings revealed that most teachers demonstrated improved proficiency level after using OER, thus positively impacting their professional development by enhancing content knowledge, technological skills, and pedagogical practices. However, some teachers require further enhancement in SMK and PCK especially in Work, Energy and Power and Electromagnetism modules. The use of CoP proved valuable for knowledge sharing and collaboration. The study recommends educational institutions support the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of Physics teachers by providing access to OER for their use and additional resources to enhance their SMK and PCK.

With the onset of COVID-19, colleges and universities moved to emergency remote teaching, and instructors immediately adjusted their curricula. Many instructors adapted or developed new online lessons that they subsequently published as Open Educational Resources (OERs). While much has been examined related to how entire course designs evolved during this period, the same attention has not been paid to how individual lessons were structured to meet online learners' needs. As such, we evaluated OER lessons for the integration of universal design for learning (UDL) guidelines and active learning strategies. We evaluated OER lessons published in "CourseSource," which is an open-access, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on biology lessons implemented in undergraduate classrooms and provides the necessary details and supporting materials to replicate the lesson. We found that biology instructors used a variety of UDL guidelines and active learning strategies to encourage student learning and engagement in online teaching environments. This study also provides a collection of OER online lessons that instructors and educational developers can use to inform the practice of engaging biology students.

Open educational resource (OER) initiatives have opened new avenues for educational opportunities, yet OER adoption levels globally remain low. Two significant obstacles to more widespread adoption of OER are the challenge of internet connectivity that nearly half the world's population still faces, and the lack of locally-relevant (e.g. in terms of language and curricula) OER resources. This article's contribution is twofold. First, it presents a qualitative landscape analysis of existing primary- and secondary-level Arabic-language digital OERs and of the initiatives that provide these resources. Second, it details applied research via a case study, wherein appropriate resources identified in the analysis were subsequently curated for inclusion in an offline digital library currently being used in schools in Northeast Syria that offers all Open resources. Results from the landscape analysis indicate a limited quantity of Arabic-language OER content available for primary and secondary education. Furthermore, multiple challenges hinder the adoption of OER in resource-constrained settings. Accordingly, recommendations are made that could help to improve these resources' ability to be used, particularly drawing from the article's applied case study for examples. Given the case study's application of providing locally-relevant OER resources in an offline setting, this article provides a real-world example of furthering open e-learning, despite infrastructural, linguistic, and socio-political challenges. As such, it advances research supporting innovative e-learning practice, and should be of interest for scholars and practitioners interested in furthering the adoption of open e-learning in low-resource settings globally.

As the demand for opportunities to learn English grows throughout the world, parents and educators are looking for innovative ways to engage students in English-learning opportunities. Perhaps your school or municipality will seek to initiate an English Camp to be on trend with this growing need. Or perhaps, like many go-getter teachers, you wish to initiate such a program on your own. This article explains the basics of designing and organizing a themed English Camp. The process is illustrated by examples from camp programs that were designed as Open Educational Resources (OERs) by English teachers in Belarus, beginning in 2021. The programs are the product of a course organized and facilitated by the authors of this article.

There are too few teachers and schools to meet the need for quality universal basic education. Therefore, alternative approaches to education provision need to be explored, such as open and distance learning methods and development and provision of curriculum-based Open Educational Resources (OER). However, distribution of printed materials is increasingly costly, and distribution of digital resources remains a challenge in areas with little or no connectivity. This case study explores the potential of using offline strategies to share digital OER. It suggests it is possible to provide access to digital learning resources even in the most remote areas by using appropriate technology, like the Commonwealth of Learning's Aptus device.

Open Educational Resources (OER) and renewable assignments that create OER are closely related and promote access to knowledge, collaboration, and community engagement. Through both, PhD students can contribute to the advancement of open education while enhancing their own learning and professional development. Despite many advantages, OER and renewable assignments are widely underutilized in U.S. institutions of higher education. To enhance nationwide adoption, PhD programs may be an important context for using and creating OER because many PhD students will become faculty members in the future. This survey research collected data from April to December 2022 to explore the prevalence and perceptions of OER and renewable assignments among the 72 PhD programs in the top 100 ranked social work programs in the United States. Thirty of the 72 programs were represented in the sample. Most of the respondents (68%) reported using OER materials in at least one course, with audiovisual and textbooks the most reported type of OER used. In contrast, a few (6%) of the respondents reported their programs used renewable assignments. Lack of knowledge or awareness was the most commonly cited reason for not adopting OER or renewable assignments. Representatives from programs that had adopted OER had higher perceptions of positive student impact from OER use or creation than those from programs that had not adopted OER (Mann Whitney U = 61.0, p = 0.058). Our findings indicate a reasonably widespread adoption of OER as course materials in social work PhD programs in the United States. There is an opportunity for increased adoption of renewable assignments to both create suitable, high quality OER materials for use in social work PhD programs and to train future social work faculty in the logistics of creating and using OER.

Purpose: We describe a series of more than a dozen studies on self-directed online learning spanning over a decade. Design/Approach/Methods: We incorporated surveys, interviews, focus groups, and content analyses into these research studies, which initially targeted the goals, motivations, and challenges of learners using open educational resources and OpenCourseWare and then focused on learning from massive open online courses (MOOCs). This research accelerated after creating a database of over 3,000 MOOC instructors, through which we explored cultural sensitivity and personalization practices in MOOCs as well as instructional design considerations and challenges, MOOC instructor professional development and career development, instructor motivation and engagement, and student and instructor perceptions of self-directed learning. Findings: This study reveals that self-directed online learners (SDOLs) seek learning environments offering freedom, choice, control, and a sense of autonomy and that both learners and instructors have intrinsic motivation for engaging in open online learning environments. Originality/Value: Based on this research with both MOOC instructors and MOOC learners, we offer instructional design guidelines to address SDOLs' needs and assist in efforts to foster a new generation of SDOLs.

This study aimed to investigate distance education practices in higher education during the pandemic, focusing on lived experiences, and proposing a policy decision framework for future distance education in similar conditions. Additionally, the study aimed to establish a design framework for an Emergency Action Plan for similar crisis periods. In the study, a case study was used to provide a detailed examination of the current situation's characteristics. The study group consisted of 63 administrators from 34 universities who actively participated in decision-making during the pandemic. Data were collected through 11 online focus group interviews, and the Miles-Huberman Model was used for analysis. The study proposed a policy decision framework for distance education in the post-pandemic period, consisting of 11 headings such as blended learning, open course materials, and Distance Education Center structuring. Additionally, the study presented an emergency action plan framework consisting of six components, including keeping the technological infrastructure working and supporting face-to-face courses with distance education. This study provides valuable insights for universities in preparing for potential crises and improving their distance education practices.

As labour markets undergo rapid and profound transformations, lifelong learning is essential to ensure a responsive, competitive, and skilled workforce. Mature learners are a diverse group, but in comparison to their younger student counterparts, are more likely to have employment and/or caring responsibilities. This field note discusses the development and features of a novel online open educational resource, called "At a crossroads: Navigating work and/or family alongside study" ("At a crossroads" for brevity). The resource aimed to assist university students to both learn about the support options available to them as well as to consider how they themselves might make decisions if they experienced a conflict between their student/work/family roles. "At a crossroads" is innovative in terms of how it was developed (i.e., via survey-based research, story completion method, and consultations sessions with tertiary students) and in terms of what it is (i.e., an online interactive resource that incorporates short dramatizations, social polls, and opportunities to reflect). Our experience in developing this resource caused us to consider how making resources designed to be engaging and informative, while encouraging, positive changes, must be part of the solution. This is especially so when there is significant concern around the overall well-being of tertiary students and their course completion rates. While universities have attempted to offer a range of tools to support their students, on-demand online resources such as "At a crossroads" are easily accessed, free to use, and deliver content in an engaging manner.

Learners who learn from OER often cannot have their learning assessed or receive a credential. Open credentials offer a potential solution to this problem, combining badges or micro-credentials with competence frameworks and digital seals. This study identified the current situation of open credentials in post-secondary education in Europe, the main themes of the discourse, and the points of agreement and divergence surrounding them. The data comprised a corpus of transcriptions from 12 expert interviews and a focus group. Qualitative text analysis identified the principal themes. Findings included the following: (a) few assessments are available as open content; (b) linking OER and credentials requires detailed and expensive work on learning outcomes and assessment; (c) the aggregation of open credentials to create higher-level qualifications is a widely accepted ambition; (d) the European Union's infrastructure to support open credentials is appropriate and effective and can foster trust; (e) the outstanding challenges are organisational and practical, not technological; (f) assessment and content provisions should belong to separate organisational functions; and finally, (g) funding and support for open credentials in professional accreditation are essential for further progress.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 4.7 aims to ensure learners acquire the knowledge and skills for promoting sustainable development by 2030. Yet, Open Educational Resources (OERs) that connect the public with SDGs are currently limitedly assigned and insufficient to promote SDG and sustainability education to support the achievement of SDG 4.7 and other SDGs by 2030, indicating a need for automatic classification of SDG-related OERs. However, most existing labeling systems can not support multiple labeling, tend to generate a large number of false positives, and have poor transferability within the OER domain. This research proposes a method to automatically assign SDGs based on AutoGluon, a machine-learning framework with powerful predictive capabilities, to allow multiple SDGs to be assigned to each OER. In the proposed framework, challenges of category imbalance and limited data availability are addressed, enhancing the precision and applicability of SDG integration in educational resources. To validate the transferability of model knowledge within the OER corpus, we used 900 lecture video descriptions from SDG Academy, forming the foundation for comparing our framework with existing labeling systems. According to the experiment results, our model demonstrates outstanding merits across various metrics, including precision, recall, F1, ACC, AUC, and AP.

Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are increasingly popular for teachers' professional development (PD). Understanding why teachers take MOOCs and how this relates to course completion could help identify underserved needs in teachers' professional learning. In the current study, we explored this question, as well as potential gaps between intention to complete the course and actual completion. Using a sample of 3,212 participants in four PD MOOCs, we applied topic modeling to open-ended and Likert-style data to identify teachers' motivations. The results show that most participants had intrinsic or professional motivations, but a subgroup of participants had prosocial motivations, namely, they wanted to support their students. In a set of logistic regression predicting course completion, we found that participants with intrinsic motivations were less likely to complete a course and participants with prosocial motivations were more likely to do so even after controlling for their initial intention. Our study contributes to the field by, first, identifying an underexplored group of learners, the prosocial learners. More research is needed to better understand this group. We also found that among teachers taking MOOCs, intrinsic motivations were associated with lower levels of engagement, contrary to findings in other populations, making a contribution to motivation theory as well as online learning practice. We concluded that the motivation-engagement relationship is more complex than previously thought, and recommend researchers continue examining this association to understand this discrepancy. Finally, we suggest practitioners take learners' a-priori motivations into account when designing MOOCs, as these could be important for course engagement.

The Alice Springs (Mparntwe) Education Declaration Goal two argues for young Australians 'to understand their responsibilities as global citizens'. In these precarious times, children and youth require (and are demanding) education on how to address the myriad of convergent global challenges that is the focus of global citizenship education (GCE); however, perceived ambiguity is recognised as a barrier to greater GCE uptake. To support teacher uptake of global citizenship education, we searched for and mapped open-access GCE materials to create a systematic, research-based resource catalogue for teachers and students. We employed a scoping study to examine each resource's alignments with Australian Curricula and global GCE frameworks and identified the areas where there is insufficient resourcing. Results showed that most resources were targeted to primary and secondary school students. More materials are needed for early childhood education as well as materials that engage learners of all ages to en/act on their understanding of what global citizenship entails.

The adoption of large language models (LLMs) in education holds much promise. However, like many technological innovations before them, adoption and access can often be inequitable from the outset, creating more divides than they bridge. In this paper, we explore the magnitude of the country and language divide in the leading open-source and proprietary LLMs with respect to knowledge of K-12 taxonomies in a variety of countries and their performance on tagging problem content with the appropriate skill from a taxonomy, an important task for aligning open educational resources and tutoring content with state curricula. We also experiment with approaches to narrowing the performance divide by enhancing LLM skill tagging performance across four countries (the USA, Ireland, South Korea and India-Maharashtra) for more equitable outcomes. We observe considerable performance disparities not only with non-English languages but with English and non-US taxonomies. Our findings demonstrate that fine-tuning GPT-3.5 with a few labelled examples can improve its proficiency in tagging problems with relevant skills or standards, even for countries and languages that are underrepresented during training. Furthermore, the fine-tuning results show the potential viability of GPT as a multilingual skill classifier. Using both an open-source model, Llama2-13B, and a closed-source model, GPT-3.5, we also observe large disparities in tagging performance between the two and find that fine-tuning and skill information in the prompt improve both, but the closed-source model improves to a much greater extent. Our study contributes to the first empirical results on mitigating disparities across countries and languages with LLMs in an educational context.

Research on students' self-assessments has reported their usefulness in supporting their learning processes. However, little research has specifically focused on its role in students' use of open educational resources (OERs), which are important learning resources in the digital age. Consequently, this qualitative case study reports on university second language (L2) students' experiences with out-of-class (i.e., pre-class and post-class) learning with OERs, which contained supplementary information on their L2 learning, and with their required follow-up self-assessments. Through qualitative analyses of multiple data sources regarding an L2 writing course offered by a Chinese university, this study illustrated that when L2 students were instructed to conduct self-assessments during their pre- and post-class readings, they were motivated to reflect on and comprehend OERs and gradually became actively involved in practicing self-assessments for new OERs. Such enthusiasm for learning with OERs was found to accompany students' positive experiences with knowledge building, which they discovered through post-class assessments. Namely, the students realized that they were prepared for in-class learning by engaging in pre-class self-assessments with OERs, buttressed by in-class and individualized assistance from their teacher, and deepened by the knowledge expected from these resources. The study's conclusion confirms the pedagogical usefulness of incorporating self-assessment into L2 students' out-of-class use of OERs, along with teacher assistance in the learning process.

The American Sociological Association identified 12 major recommendations for the undergraduate major, which include 11 learning goals articulated in the sociological literacy framework. In total, these recommendations identified upward of 70 different curricular elements that optimal sociology programs should consider satisfying. This article shows how curriculum mapping combined with an organized set of resources (the Curriculum Mapping Toolkit for Sociology [CMTS]) facilitates productive discussions that identify program goals, program strengths, program weaknesses, and pathways for program improvement. Data rely on the CMTS itself, which tracked department engagement with different elements of program review, and appraisals of department representatives who committed to presenting the opportunity for curriculum review to their colleagues. Although the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted many departments' capacities to work fully with the CMTS, data demonstrate that the CMTS was met with strong interest by department leaders and their department colleagues. Its application positively impacted program quality and collegial relationships. Department leaders evaluated the CMTS as being "useful" or "very useful" and considered the collective work involved as being both manageable and productive.

Background/Context: COVID-19 changed how students learn, the challenges they face both in and out of the classroom, and the ways they access and engage with higher education. COVID-19 also highlighted inequalities in higher education. In response, faculty have also had to change their pedagogical approaches. Purpose/Focus of Study: This article presents ideas to address some of the challenges that COVID-19 has brought to the community college classroom. The focus of these strategies and pedagogical changes is to create a more equitable and successful environment for all students. Research Design: The author's praxis used Paulo Freire's 1970 work, "The Pedagogy of the Oppressed," as a guide to critically examine pedagogical practices and choices for sociological curriculum development at a medium-sized, urban, Hispanic-serving community college. Changes were evaluated through final grade analysis and student feedback. Findings: Ten changes were implemented: making the course mobile phone/ tablet accessible, incorporating audio transcripts for all, using additional video formats, engaging families/children, addressing student anxieties, incorporating more assignment choices, using Open Educational Resources for reduced costs, allowing more flexibility in assignments, extending submission times, and varying course length. These changes have reduced barriers, decreased student anxiety, and increased student success. Conclusions: The pedagogical changes made seemed to help students be more successful in their courses.

There is tension about teachers' professional use of social media platforms, such as Pinterest, to access instructional resources for teaching science. Teachers' frequent use of Pinterest signals their perceived value despite concerns about the quality of the resources found there. These resources can constitute a part of teachers' network of resources, contributing in some ways and constraining in others. This study seeks to contribute to the discussion about online resources through an in-depth content analysis of 438 websites on Pinterest related to two elementary science topics: adaptation and force. Findings indicate the potential of Pinterest to expand the number and variety of examples available to teachers for both topics. However, findings also demonstrate ways resources for both topics could constrain teachers' knowledge systems: they may narrow teachers' vision of quality science instruction to engaging in activities and the resources for both topics may constrain teachers' knowledge of the science subject matter.

The literature in open education has thoroughly examined the implications of labor and staffing for initiatives around open educational resources (OER). However, less attention has been paid to the reliance on librarian labor for open pedagogy support. This article describes a collaboration between librarians and faculty to support an open pedagogy assignment in which students co-created an open textbook describing the history, politics, and culture of several East Asian cities. Special attention is paid to the scope and level of the support from the Libraries, which included faculty consultations, several instruction sessions, managing the publishing platform, and developing processes to ensure students' rights as authors. The collaboration provides context for a discussion about our current work of developing an open pedagogy service model. Lessons learned can inform similar collaborations at other institutions.

This case study describes how two librarians transformed an international information literacy course by creating a scaffolded open pedagogy experience for students to build transferable skills while exploring how information is produced, disseminated, and interpreted across the world. The authors discuss how we collaborated on the project to incorporate open pedagogy, tools, and strategies to enhance learning. The result was a scaffolded course using open pedagogy to help students engage with global information issues. Using Pressbooks, students published multimedia content exploring topics including global news media, censorship, misinformation, and digital divides. Then students chose to either openly license their work, share it publicly while retaining their copyright, or hide it from public view. Additionally, students used Hypothesis to socially annotate reading assignments outside of class. We reflect on our experience revising this course, what worked and what did not, and how we will adapt the course in the future.

This case study describes how the authors incorporated the principles and practices of open pedagogy into a three-credit Honors College course focused on information literacy and undergraduate research. It included using literature review sources to help edit Wikipedia articles, registering a research project proposal with the Open Science Framework (OSF), and the creation of an openly licensed toolkit crowdsourced with students' tips and suggested resources for other students new to research. Students demonstrated improved understanding of several information literacy concepts, such as the role of copyright. The use and benefits of open pedagogy were, however, hindered by unrelated classroom issues, like low enrollment and, at times, a lack of student engagement. Nevertheless, the authors' general approach and the activities and assignments they developed could be adapted and used in other library instruction contexts.

In this article, ambassadors of the International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE) Open Educational Resources (OER) Advocacy Committee (OERAC) provide a snapshot of regional and global Open Educational Resources (OER)initiatives. This committee has been active since 2017 with membership renewed biannually. The ambassadors work to further OER awareness and understanding, to increase global recognition of OER, and provide policy support for the acceptance and application of OER. This overview highlights national and regional initiatives associated with the UNESCO OER recommendation and the five action areas that include: building capacity and leveraging OER; developing supporting policies; ensuring equity and effectiveness; encouraging sustainable OER model development; and, promoting and facilitating international collaboration. In addition, monitoring and evaluation of the action areas are suggested to be prioritized. This overview is not exhaustive, and much work remains to implement the OER Recommendation at scale, maximize its implementation, connect these recommendations to the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), along with the futures of education with a new social contract for education, individuals, and the planet.

Research on the use of open educational resources (OER) has often noted the potential benefits for users to revise, reuse, and remix OER to localize it for specific learners. However, a gap in the literature exists in terms of research that explores how this localization occurs in practice. This is a significant gap, given the current flow of OER from higher-income countries in the Global North to lower-income countries in the Global South. This study explored how OER from one area of the world was localized when used in a different cultural context. Interviews from six facilitators of an OER human rights course in Ghana showed that without initial awareness of OER, localization happened largely informally. Practices included (a) technological workarounds and persistence; (b) spontaneous language translation; (c) cultural recontextualization through spontaneous adjustment, content substitutions, and discussion; and (d) social responsiveness. We found implications for designers to anticipate challenges related to dependence on technology, intentionally leave space for informal localization, and allow for linguistic flexibility.

Open educational resources (OER) are disproportionately created and/or accessed by institutions of higher education as compared to K-12 even though teachers confront the challenge of outdated teaching materials or, worse, an increasing trend by school districts to discontinue textbook adoption altogether. In this paper, we describe a sustainable and innovative example of OER-enabled pedagogy (OEP) that partners teachers and students across institutional boundaries to address these problems. The Pathways Project (PP) is a higher education and K-12 community of 350 world-language teachers, students, and staff that engage in the 5Rs (retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute) of OEP with a repository of more than 800 OER ancillary activities that support standards-based pedagogy for 10 world languages and cultures. The PP is innovative because it fosters renewable assignments for the entire disciplinary ecosystem unlike most OEP studies that discuss renewable assignments limited to a single course. Teacher education is one of the best places to engage OEP because teachers are trained to personalize and contextualize OER materials for their local classroom needs. In so doing, the PP community receives timely discipline-specific professional development that is in high demand, especially in rural communities where teachers are isolated. Higher education-K-12 OEP partnerships are rare, and yet teacher education programs exist in most universities and can be a logical place to start. This paper provides concrete examples and practical steps that are transferable to other disciplines looking to engage in similar types of OER-OEP collaboration and community engagement.

We developed and launched an online, course-integrated module called Growth & Goals aimed to help students better develop evidence-based learning skills. The module focuses on five main concepts: self-regulated learning, goal-setting, metacognition, mindfulness, and mindsets (growth and fixed continuum). Growth & Goals is an open education resource available for download at no cost to any educator through FlynnResearchGroup.com/GrowthGoals. The module is available in both French and English and can be customized to any university course. The module addresses the aforementioned concepts through a combination of text and videos, with interspersed interactive activities that students use to develop their learning skills. Growth & Goals is intended to help students effectively manage the challenges they may encounter as they progress through their postsecondary academic career and beyond and become more proficient learners. Since 2017, the module has been implemented in more than 15 university courses and has been used by over 8000 students. The preliminary evaluation of Growth & Goals has been largely positive, indicating that the module has been well received by both students and educators and that it successfully guides students in learning the module's concepts.

Open Education Resources (OER) may support students in the Global South, who experience high cost of educational materials. This research aims to understand how students from the Global South adopt OER using the lens of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with the concept of playfulness. In addition, we also explored the effect of cultural factors, such as long-term orientation (LTO) and indulgence versus restraint (IVR) on OER adoption intention. 1527 students from 27 higher education institutions in eight countries in the Global South participated in the study. Multilevel linear modeling was used to test the individual-level and cross-level hypotheses. The results suggested that perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), and playfulness had a significant impact on students' intention to adopt OER. Furthermore, playfulness also strengthened the relationship between PU and the intention to adopt OER. Although the two cultural factors did not have a direct impact on students' intention to adopt OER, IVR moderated the relationship between PU and students' intention to adopt OER. Our research contributes to the theory of technology adoption and culture as well as the practice of OER in the Global South. institutions in eight countries in the Global South participated in the study. Multilevel linear modeling was used to test the individual-level and cross-level hypotheses. The results suggested that perceived usefulness (PU), perceived ease of use (PEOU), and playfulness had a significant impact on students' intention to adopt OER. Furthermore, playfulness also strengthened the relationship between PU and the intention to adopt OER. Although the two cultural factors did not have a direct impact on students' intention to adopt OER, IVR moderated the relationship between PU and students' intention to adopt OER. Our research contributes to the theory of technology adoption and culture as well as the practice of OER in the Global South.

Courses at the postsecondary level continue to rely heavily on visual material that is accessible only to fully or partially sighted students. Tactile graphics work for many pedagogical purposes, but in some cases are insufficient; other information and concepts may be better conveyed through haptic exploration of 3D printed objects. However, there is a dearth of 3D-printable open educational resources for college-level content. To address this need while simultaneously teaching students about accessibility and universal design, we designed and taught an experimental course in which students (a) learned about disability in general and blindness in particular (including history and advocacy); (b) explored technology used by people with visual impairment; (c) heard from many blind voices, including guest experts and community members; (d) studied universal design; and (e) designed 3D-printable educational tactile models in collaboration with blind community members. By the end, students demonstrated significantly less bias and more positive attitudes about blindness and people with visual impairment, and were more confident with accessibility, universal design, and assistive technology. We believe this course can serve as a model for similar courses elsewhere as a strategy to teach students from any major about disability, accessibility, and universal design.

From 2017-2020, 15 universities collaborated to create and share OER for a bachelor nursing program. A study was undertaken to analyse the impact of the project activities leading to the commitment to work towards sustaining the initiative. The project was described using the ESH model (Weggeman, 2000). Two sub-studies provided the results on the positive and negative impact of specific project activities and the impact of the project on the desired behaviour of educators, sharing and reusing OER. Rogers' theory of diffusion of innovation is used to interpret the results (Rogers, 2003). The main findings of the study are that defining and using a quality model for OER was crucial for the success of the project. For sustaining the activity after project ending, decision makers were involved immediately from the start. The management style with many responsibilities for the project members had a positive indirect impact on project outcomes.

During the pandemic three widespread shifts in teaching cultures affected digital writing pedagogies: resilient teaching, open teaching, and inclusive teaching. Resilient teaching design emerged as a strategy to counter the unpredictability of public health policies on class delivery modes, and emphasised designing for maximising student interactions as a response. Open teaching started as a response to a lack of access to textbooks and evolved to transform functions normally reserved for teaching into learning activities. In addition, inclusive teaching practices, developed as a response to racial and social injustices, resulted in deliberate emphasis on class structure to incorporate all students. Although seemingly disparate and disconnected from the issues of technology that normally influence the teaching of digital writing, each shift focused on student needs and predict a future for digital writing pedagogy.

There has been a growing interest in the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) to support educators to adapt, use, re-use, remix and recontextualise content for teaching and learning. The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent and intent of adoption of OER practices and tools in secondary schools in Mauritius within a sustainable and innovative teaching and learning model. The main objective was to investigate whether the inclusion of OER in teaching could help maintain quality instruction and sustain a viable economic model for learners. Moreover, this study assessed the readiness and attitudes of secondary educators in their intention to adopt OER. A survey was carried out among 271 secondary school educators to determine the influential factors in the intention to adopt OER in teaching. Factor and regression analysis were carried out to estimate the significance of each independent variable. The findings of this study reported that Productivity, Interactivity, Infrastructure and Constraining Factors were among the factors that had a significant effect on teachers' adoption of OER in their teaching process. Combined with other findings as reported in the literature, this study also helps to enlighten policymakers about teachers' intention in adopting OER in secondary schools in Mauritius and how they add value to the teaching and learning processes. The Cabinet of Ministers in Mauritius approved the National policy on OER in December 2022.

Providing educational resources without burdening students financially is considered higher education's moral and sensible mission (Farrow, 2016). The financial burden of one or multiple textbooks can produce a great deal of stress on students, especially if the textbooks do not fulfill students' needs in satisfying learning objectives. We attempt to bridge this digital divide by connecting student affordability with pedagogical enhancement to increase teaching impact on students' learning. This article will discuss the experiential understanding of student affordability, how teaching and learning can be improved by using Open Educational Resources (OER), and the team dynamic that developed while creating an OER for an undergraduate education course.

This study examined the level of lecturers' awareness and the extent of usage of open educational resources (OERs) for teaching and learning in Nigerian universities. A descriptive research design was adopted for the study. Multi-stage sampling technique was used to select two (2) universities (both federal and state-owned) that are running open and distance learning programmes in each of the six (6) geographical zones of Nigeria; and to select a total of one thousand four hundred and eighty-five (1,485) respondents. To guide the study, three research questions were raised and three hypotheses were formulated and tested at 0.05 level of significance. The main structured research questionnaire used in the study was titled: "Lecturer's Use of OERs Questionnaire" (LUOER; r=0.78). Data obtained were analysed using descriptive statistics of mean, standard deviation and inferential statistics of ANOVA. The findings revealed that lecturers were aware ([pi] = 3.06; SD = 0.72) and ready to use ([pi] = 2.80; SD = 0.80) OERs for education with ranges of identified challenges. Findings also revealed significant institutional affiliation differences in the extent of lecturers' awareness (F[subscript (11,1484)] = 61.71; p = 0.00 < 0.05), readiness (F[subscript (11,1484)] = 32.90; p = 0.00 < 0.05) and perceived challenges (F[subscript ](11,1484) = 12.12; p = 0.00 < 0.05) towards the utilisation of OER for education. Implications to meeting the global challenges were discussed. It was recommended among others that the ministries of education should sponsor periodic workshops and seminars to sensitize lecturers more on the availability and utilization of OER facilities for teaching-learning process.

Open educational resource (OER) as free teaching and learning materials can contribute to the collaborative design and development of teaching. To support higher education teachers in their work with teaching in general and OER in particular and to encourage their use of OER, it is necessary to pay attention to their needs and requirements. This paper presents the results of a research project, identifying the usage behaviour of German-speaking higher education teachers. In an interview study, they were asked about their experience with OER to get detailed insights into their practices concerning their 'use' and 'revise' of materials. From this, four user types were derived according to different OER activities, such as creating, reusing, editing, and publishing OER, and their scope. Finally, these user types are transferred to considerations when designing OER infrastructures and establishing support options. These are aligned with the specifics of each user type, making the research findings a complementary contribution for application in higher education.