EdTechnica: a vision of an educational publishing community of practice that is accessible, flexible, and just

Abstract

Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) have the potential to transform and positively impact individuals, institutions, and society. As educators, we have a unique responsibility to explore opportunities and possibilities afforded by openness enabled by current technologies to reimagine and reshape current educational reality and provide a more hopeful and equitable future for all. EdTechnica is an openly licensed living encyclopedia that provides background information on central topics and theories in the field of educational technology. As an OER, EdTechnica extends the 5Rs of openness—retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute by also attending to the 3Rs of social justice—recognition, representation, and redistribution—bringing about a responsive product that reimagines what encyclopedias should be. Additionally, the governing board enacts principles of openness in its practice, striving for OEP in all its activities. This article explores how EdTechnica promotes knowledge creation and academic discourse by attending to key principles of openness in terms of ensuring accessibility, flexibility, justice, and sustainable generosity. Specific examples of OER/P in the EdTechnica context offer an insight into our practices and ambitions to improve the current educational landscape, illustrating what is possible at the intersection of justice, hope, and educational technology when we strive for openness and are guided by the values of sustainable generosity and sustainable improvement.

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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Allmanetal. Int J Educ Technol High Educ (2024) 21:37
https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-024-00466-1
International Journal of Educational
Technology in Higher Education
EdTechnica: avision ofaneducational
publishing community ofpractice
thatisaccessible, exible, andjust
Bohdana Allman1* , Royce Kimmons1 , Camille Dickson‑Deane2 , Aras Bozkurt3 , Melissa Warr4 ,
Jill Stefaniak5 , Monalisa Dash6 and Fanny Eliza Bondah1
Abstract
Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) have
the potential to transform and positively impact individuals, institutions, and society.
As educators, we have a unique responsibility to explore opportunities and possibili‑
ties afforded by openness enabled by current technologies to reimagine and reshape
current educational reality and provide a more hopeful and equitable future for all.
EdTechnica is an openly licensed living encyclopedia that provides background infor‑
mation on central topics and theories in the field of educational technology. As an OER,
EdTechnica extends the 5Rs of openness—retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute
by also attending to the 3Rs of social justice—recognition, representation, and redis‑
tribution—bringing about a responsive product that reimagines what encyclopedias
should be. Additionally, the governing board enacts principles of openness in its prac‑
tice, striving for OEP in all its activities. This article explores how EdTechnica promotes
knowledge creation and academic discourse by attending to key principles of open‑
ness in terms of ensuring accessibility, flexibility, justice, and sustainable generosity.
Specific examples of OER/P in the EdTechnica context offer an insight into our practices
and ambitions to improve the current educational landscape, illustrating what is pos‑
sible at the intersection of justice, hope, and educational technology when we strive
for openness and are guided by the values of sustainable generosity and sustainable
improvement.
Keywords: Educational technology, Openness in education, Open educational
resource, Open educational practice, Accessibility, Flexibility, Justice, Sustainable
generosity
*Correspondence:
ballmanLDT@gmail.com
1 Brigham Young University,
Provo, USA
2 University of Technology
Sydney, Sydney, Australia
3 Anadolu University, Eskişehir,
Turkey
4 New Mexico State University,
Las Cruces, USA
5 University of Georgia, Athens,
USA
6 Brajrajnagar College, Sambalpur
University, Sambalpur, India

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Allmanetal. Int J Educ Technol High Educ (2024) 21:37
Hope lies in dreams, in imagination, and in the courage of those who dare to make
dreams into reality
– Jonas Salk
Introduction
In the evolving academic landscape, discussions frequently orbit the potential of Open
Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) alongside the chal-
lenges these initiatives encounter. Such discussions and discourse often do not trans-
late into tangible outcomes and remain rhetoric, leaving a gap in real-world applications
and exemplary role models. As we reimagine technology in higher education and reflect
upon the possibilities that openness brings to higher education at the intersection of jus-
tice, hope, and educational technology, we ask, ‘Could we offer a practical example serv-
ing as a beacon of hope in the academic landscape and provide guidance and inspiration
for the development of future practices?’ is theoretical paper proposes to bridge the
theory–practice divide by showcasing EdTechnica, an openly licensed encyclopedia of
educational technology and a living embodiment of the principles and promises of OER
and OEP. By exploring the case of EdTechnica through the prism of accessibility, flex-
ibility, justice, and sustainable generosity, this case aims to illustrate how OER and OEP
can intersect with justice, hope, and educational technology in knowledge, theory, and
practice. rough this prism, we seek to provide a concrete example to serve as a foun-
dation for developing future educational practices, moving beyond speculative dialogue
to actionable insight.
Educational problems andbarriers
Globally, rising education costs, limited access to quality educational resources, and
restrictive academic publishing structures present significant challenges and emerge as
serious problems to overcome (Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter, 2018). ese factors,
compounded by socioeconomic, geographic, and institutional barriers, hinder access to
current academic discussions and materials (Pete, 2019) and further negatively impact
the quality of teaching, learning, and research. Moreover, the need for flexible publishing
to accommodate rapid knowledge evolution and improve accessibility, particularly for
marginalized groups, indicates the urgency and need for equitable solutions in the edu-
cational landscape (Bozkurt etal., 2023).
Undoubtedly, the nature of educational problems and their potential solutions signif-
icantly differ, reflecting the varying degrees of access to resources, infrastructure, and
educational needs faced by various regions. However, Open Educational Resources/
Practices (OER/P) have the potential to transform and positively impact individuals,
institutions, and societies globally (Kimmons & Irvine, 2023). As educators, we have a
unique responsibility to explore opportunities and possibilities afforded by openness
enabled by current technologies to reimagine and reshape current educational reality
and provide a more hopeful and equitable future for all.
Openness asatangible practice
OER/P are founded on the concept of openness in education with the underlying phi-
losophy that the world’s knowledge is a public good that could be and should be shared,

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Allmanetal. Int J Educ Technol High Educ (2024) 21:37
used, and reused with the assistance of technology (Smith & Casserly, 2006). Broadly,
the philosophy of openness is an empathic response to the field that values principles
of transparency, access, participation, and democracy. It acknowledges our past and
attempts to use the present to provide responsible solutions for the future. In particu-
lar, openness refers to the “accessibility of knowledge, technology, and other resources;
the transparency of action; the permeability of organisational structures; and the inclu-
siveness of participation” (Schlagwein etal.2017, p. 297). Open terminology is multi-
dimensional and refers to the higher order concepts (e.g. philosophy of openness), the
nature of resources (e.g. open educational resources), the nature of processes (e.g. open
educational practices), and even to the effects on specific domains (e.g. open education)
(Schlagwein etal.2017). Openness in education is part of a complex, interrelated set of
systems guided by the philosophy of openness, involving teaching and learning, focus-
ing on learners being at the center of the learning process, and striving for accessibility,
transparency, and democratization (Bozkurt & Stracke, 2023).
However, any change from established practices, such as adopting OER/P, can be an
arduous and lengthy process that requires a systematic and systemic approach to trans-
formation, visionary exploration, prototyping insitu, and enthusiastic advocacy (Bossu &
Ellis, 2023; Bozkurt & Stracke, 2023; Marín etal., 2022). Examining authentic examples of
effective tools and practices aids our understanding of their application and implementa-
tion across various contexts and assists in their successful adoption. is article features
EdTechnica and its governing board’s practices to showcase how openness can be enacted
through principled and innovative efforts at the intersection of justice, hope, and edu-
cational technology. Written by the governing board members and supporting editors,
this theoretical piece explains our vision of how EdTechnica promotes knowledge crea-
tion and academic discourse for all by attending to key principles of openness in terms of
ensuring accessibility, flexibility, justice, and sustainable generosity. is framework pre-
sents specific examples of OER/P from EdTechnica as an insight into our practices, tan-
gible outcomes, and ambitions to improve the current educational landscape, illustrating
what is possible when we strive for openness and are guided by the values of sustainable
generosity and sustainable improvement (Kimmons & Irvine, 2023).
Open educational resources andopen educational practices
Traditionally, academic outputs, such as journal articles, books, book chapters, encyclo-
pedias, or textbooks, have been controlled by publishers who copyright and monetize
academic discourse. As a result, most academic literature is placed behind paywalls, lim-
iting access to those with institutional or financial resources. ese practices can also
affect who is able to participate in the development of knowledge, as participation in
academic discourse requires being connected to as well as being acknowledged by those
who control this discourse. OER/P attempts to break down these power structures by
intentionally increasing access to participation in academic discourse development and
the resulting publications.
UNESCO (2019) defines OER as “learning, teaching and research materials in any for-
mat and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright that has been
released under an open license, that permits no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adapta-
tion and redistribution by others.” e five Rs or permissions established by Wiley (2014)

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are often used to designate OER, enable open pedagogical practices (Wiley & Hilton,
2018), and are manifest in Creative Commons licenses as follows:
1) Retain – the right to make, own, and control copies of the content;
2) Reuse – the right to use the content in a wide range of ways;
3) Revise – the right to adapt, adjust, modify, or alter the content itself;
4) Remix – the right to combine the original or revised content with other open content
to create something new; and
5) Redistribute – the right to share copies of the original content, your revisions, or
your remixes with others.
ese tenets guide not only academic practices but worldly decisions whereby past
understandings were financially and socially controlled. Although many agree on
the benefits of publishing under an open license, it is critical to recognize potentially
negative impacts when these permissions are misused or misapplied. Instances, where
knowledges that have foundations in other religions, cultures, or races are only recog-
nized when appropriated, set the principle for creation and dissemination practices.
rough OEP, there is an opportunity to reset practices and correct ways of thinking—a
new research path for the field to test.
Critical scholars of openness in education have emphasized the importance of mov-
ing beyond content availability to building open educational practices, OEP (Cannell
etal. 2015; Cronin, 2020; Lane, 2016). e focus has shifted from resources to prac-
tices and processes, emphasizing the importance of collaborative engagement between
learners and teachers in knowledge creation and sharing (Cronin etal.2023). Although
OEP conceptualizations vary widely and continue to evolve, the underlying values align
with the open education values more broadly, specifically, “enabling educational access,
ensuring inclusivity, and furthering equity” (Cronin etal.2023, Abstract). By definition,
OEP can be considered “an umbrella term that includes the creation, use, and reuse of
open educational resources (OER); pedagogical practices encouraging peer learning,
collaborative knowledge creation, sharing, and empowerment of learners; and systemic
and structural initiatives to support and embed openness,” all with the intent of drawing
from the foundational truth of knowledge—key to the validity and reliability of the field
(Cronin etal.2023, p. 1).
Sharing practices
Two noted benefits of OER are reducing the cost for students and improving access
to media resources, particularly educational materials and content (Watson & Rush-
Marlowe, 2023). Traditional educational materials, such as textbooks, can be expensive,
especially for students who are already struggling to pay for tuition, housing, and other
expenses. OER can be accessed and used at a reduced cost, allowing students to save
money and use learning materials from the first day of class, positively impacting reten-
tion and completion rates (e.g. Fischer etal.2021; Hilton etal.2019, 2020). OER can
also improve access to education and educational materials on an international level
for those who traditionally have had limited access due to varying constraints or lack
of physical resources. rough OER, educational materials can be accessed anywhere

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Allmanetal. Int J Educ Technol High Educ (2024) 21:37
and anytime with a connected digital device, potentially reducing traditional geographic
and socioeconomic barriers to education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities
(Ossiannilsson, 2019).
e greatest potential of OER/P, however, lies in exploring practices and pedagogies
made uniquely possible and practical in the context of openness. Adopting OER/P allows
educators to use and adapt existing resources and create materials tailored to their stu-
dents’needs and aligned with their own pedagogical approaches. Furthermore, embrac-
ing OER/P as a pedagogical tool has the potential to increase cognitive engagement and
meaningful interactions, introduce new ways of co-creation and sharing of knowledge,
and foster collaborative work and learner empowerment (Bossu & Elis, 2023; Shareefa
etal., 2023; Dickson-Deane & Edwards, 2021). is, in turn, can lead to the creation
of new and/or better educational materials and practices and opportunities to contex-
tually customize instructional materials and methods further for the benefit of learn-
ers (Dickson-Deane, 2023). Ultimately, such changes may bring about more inclusive,
dynamic, and flexible educational structures engaged in an ongoing process of continu-
ous improvement (Tlili etal., 2023; Bossu & Ellis, 2023; Wiley etal., 2021).
Digitizing hope
Despite the potential, there are also many challenges related to OER/P and barriers to
their widespread adoption. Educators may be unfamiliar with the open license model
and the processes of using and adapting OER (Kimmons, 2016). A limited understand-
ing of open pedagogies, OER-enabled pedagogies (Wiley & Hilton, 2018), and more
expansive OEP perspectives among educators (Kimmons, 2016) also hinders adoption.
Ongoing training and support are needed to build individual and institutional capacity
in OER/P (Bossu & Ellis, 2023). Specifically, educators worldwide would benefit from
knowing how to adapt OER to fit their and their learners’ needs, appropriately use cop-
yrighted and CC-licensed materials, enact pedagogies uniquely enabled by OER, and
adopt wider OEP. To encourage lasting change in attitudes, beliefs, knowledge, and prac-
tices, educators would benefit from seeing the value OER/P bring to them and their stu-
dents—toward a more hopeful future. ey also need to experience OER/P first-hand,
see expected practices modeled, and closely collaborate with colleagues about the par-
ticulars of adopting these practices in their educational contexts (Borko et al.2010).
Other issues relate to governmental and institutional support for OER/P adoption, such
as securing funding, taking into account cultural norms, and adjusting institutional
policies. On this level, OER/P supports vary widely across countries and institutions,
making it challenging to recommend uniform guidelines (Marín etal., 2022). Systemic
efforts on micro, meso, and macro levels are needed using both top-down and bottom-
up approaches as changes in the education sector are lengthy, arduous, and part of a
complex and diverse ecosystem (Bossu & Ellis, 2023; Marín etal., 2022; Senge, 1990).
Digital technologies, and OER/P in particular, have the potential to be one of the main
drivers for modernizing our current educational systems and catalysts for innovation and
change (Bossu & Ellis, 2023; Ossiannilsson, 2019). Yet, openness through OER/P does not
automatically ensure access, flexibility, and equity. Openness is neither a cure for all prob-
lems nor desirable and effective by default (Kimmons & Irvine, 2023; Schlagwein etal.,
2017). Instead, we must recognize the values guiding openness, carefully consider how

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we want to shape the future through OER/P, and be aware of the forces at play at different
levels. en, we can intentionally and reflectively engage ourselves in innovative practices
offered by open technologies, explore and evaluate their impact and potential consequences
to ensure openness without inadvertently perpetuating systemic injustices (Cronin etal.,
2023; Kimmons & Irvine, 2023; Ossiannilsson, 2019; Veletsianos, 2021).
EdTechnica: thecase
EdTechnica is an openly licensed encyclopedia of short, focused articles introducing basic
concepts in educational technology and instructional design and can be accessed at www.
edtec hnica. org. EdTechnica and its governing board practices are examples of how the
principles of accessibility, flexibility, justice, and sustainable generosity can be promoted
through OER/P. Before we consider how these principles are enacted through EdTechnica,
we will briefly describe the origins and intended purpose of the encyclopedia.
Recognizing the need for high-quality, up-to-date, and accessible content for teaching
courses in educational technology and informing community understanding, the second
author initially envisioned EdTechnica as a living volume of short articles that could provide
an introduction to core concepts in the field. He wrote a proposal document and shared
it with a network of contacts throughout the world via public social media hashtags and
direct messages. He then thoughtfully incorporated feedback from this community in for-
malizing encyclopedia documentation and openly invited scholars to participate as part
of the review board, especially encouraging participation from women and professionals
outside North America. From this review board of approximately 40 people, nominations
were solicited for a governing board of six scholars, and elections were held. e resulting
governing board included a majority of women and a 50/50 split between North America
and the rest of the world. e second author was elected to serve as the editor-in-chief for
a specified three-year term, and a five-year plan was established. With the governing and
review board in place and policies and procedures formalized, EdTechnica began soliciting
and accepting proposals for articles.
Currently, EdTechnica features 1,000-word peer-reviewed articles intended to introduce
students, researchers, fellow instructors, practitioners, and anyone outside the discipline
to key concepts that are important in the field of educational technology and instructional
design. e articles in EdTechnica range from learning and design concepts to emerging
technologies, research methodologies, and policies shaping the future of educational tech-
nology. Articles do not represent only concepts specific to the field but also more general
ideas, theories, and methods that are important in the field of educational technology, with
an explanation of why they are important and how they are used. e encyclopedia is a
living volume, which means that each article is “intended to provide an up-to-date under-
standing of the topic while also providing a space for community contributors to share
helpful resources related to the topic” and to propose updates and revisions as needed
(EdTechnica, 2022).

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Reimagining thefuture: amodel foraccessible, exible, just andsustainable
practice
Although EdTechnica in itself is a valuable OER for the field of educational technol-
ogy, the governing board takes openness a step further by striving to embody the val-
ues of openness in its community practices and development by aiming for OEP. As
an OER/P, EdTechnica extends the 5Rs of openness—retain, reuse, revise, remix, and
redistribute (Wiley, 2014) by also attending to Fraser’s 3Rs of social justice—recog-
nition, representation, and redistribution (Fraser, 2003), bringing about a responsive
product that reimagines what encyclopedias and related publishing practices could
be. is is because “realising the promise of OER is as much through the develop-
ment of innovative social practice as through development of new content” (Cannell
etal.2015, p. 64) and through considering the social, political, and economic aspects
of education (Fraser, 2003).
We recognize that Fraser’s justice framework is viewed as feminist with deeply anti-
capitalist sentiments. However, in this paper, we utilize it as a pragmatic tool for under-
standing and addressing real-world injustices caused by institutional arrangements
related to educational technology access and use (Brink etal.2020) and use it to extend
the 5Rs of openness. We build on the ideal of the parity of participation, deeply rooted
in “equal autonomy and moral worth of human beings,” which in itself is deontologi-
cal and non-sectarian, demanding that all members of a society/community should be
able to participate as peers in interactions and activities related to that society/commu-
nity (Fraser & Honneth, 2003, p. 229). In this way, both Wiley’s 5Rs (2014) and Fraser’s
3Rs provide a theoretical foundation to scrutinize EdTechnica as an artifact of openness
(OER) and an example of practice (OEP) in terms of accessibility, flexibility, justice, and
sustainable generosity. However, care must be exercised as we apply these principles in
developing and implementing OER/P in various contexts because misunderstandings
and misrepresentations could contribute to further injustices and inequalities (Velet-
sianos, 2021). For example, [smaller] economies that are still developing digitally often
inherit misrepresented views. Perceptions framed based on inadequate acknowledg-
ment of contextual factors may lead to misaligned solutions and contribute to existing
and shared knowledge later referenced in publications. e catalyzing effect of academic
rhetoric means that the knowledge currency of the field (i.e. articles, books, encyclo-
pedias, etc.) continuously perpetuates such faulty perceptions and theories, which
unfortunately further filter into our pedagogical, administrative, and research practices.
Engaging in an approach that clarifies and embraces origins and recognizes contextual
differences presents a path for a different yet clearer way forward.
Our discussion of OER artifacts and open educational practices related to EdTechnica,
its development, governance, and publishing activities are organized into four catego-
ries: accessibility, flexibility, justice, and sustainable generosity. In the following sections,
we will delve into each of the four principles and illustrate how they are embodied in
EdTechnica and its governing board practices to provide a glimpse into what the future
of education could look like. roughout our discussion, we aim to describe the arti-
facts and practices and, in some instances, reveal our intents, rationale, and contextual
background to help the reader appreciate our intentionality and deliberate choices,
illustrate what these concepts might look like in application, and further reflect on the

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Allmanetal. Int J Educ Technol High Educ (2024) 21:37
relationships among these ideas. e evidence for our claims comes from five primary
sources: (1) EdTechnica as an OER and an artifact of our practice, (2) governing board
meetings and minutes, (3) feedback from current and prospective authors, (4) observa-
tions from other publication processes, and (5) reflective commentaries of the govern-
ing board members during a 2023 panel discussion of the Association for Educational
Communications and Technology (AECT) annual convention (Allman etal., 2023). We
recognize that our statements, conclusions, and recommendations are specific to our
circumstances while hoping others may extend these ideas and applications to their own
contexts in ways that best match their circumstances and projects.
Accessibility
First, EdTechnica embraces a future where all content is accessible to all—learners
included. is accessibility takes various forms and is enacted through various prac-
tices, some common to other OERs and others unique to the encyclopedia. When we
claim that EdTechnica is accessible, we mean this in at least four ways: economically,
legally, technically, and communicatively. Notably, all of these considerations reflect an
approach to academic publishing that embraces universal design for learning (UDL), in
which EdTechnica seeks to make knowledge as accessible and useful to as many people
as possible by designing for the most diverse use cases imaginable.
Economic accessibility
Publishing is an important currency in academia, and access to current knowledge is
often tightly controlled by gatekeepers who gain commercial benefits by limiting access.
Current publishing structures take advantage of this fact and monetize and colonize the
academic publishing system in ways not conducive to the public good (Duke University
Libraries, 2017). is situation becomes even more bizarre when the author of an article
wants to access their own work as an independent researcher and must pay to access or
reuse it. For many throughout the world, commercial access to a single article might be
equivalent to a month’s salary or more. Such commercial abuses of knowledge sources
encourage unethical behaviors, such as so-called “piracy” of content. In many countries,
downloading pirated scholarly work is seen as both tolerable and even morally justifiable
(e.g. Sci-Hub, Library Genesis) as many scholars work against commercial publishers to
make knowledge illegally available to their learners and are held up as heroes in a type
of shadow war against the economic gatekeepers of knowledge (Dulong de Rosnay, 2021;
Elbakyan & Bozkurt, 2021).
EdTechnica contrasts these broken systems that encourage illegal and unethical behav-
iors because all articles, supplements, and content formats are provided freely on the
internet, including the ability to download the full encyclopedia or individual articles in
multiple formats. ere are no paywalls or logins of any kind needed to access content.
ere are also no processing or publication fees, thereby extending free access to any-
one who wants to participate in any way, including students, informal readers, faculty
authors, instructors, researchers, reviewers, and so forth. e basic format of all arti-
cles is simple HTML, which allows for low-bandwidth access to resources from loca-
tions throughout the world where broadband might be limited, or downloads may be
metered or expensive, and being hosted on a cloud server allows for improved uptime

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Allmanetal. Int J Educ Technol High Educ (2024) 21:37
and network access for worldwide access. is means that anyone, anywhere, can access
or create content without dealing with login mechanisms, paywalls, bandwidth limita-
tions, server uptime, or moral dilemmas that pit the acquisition of wealth against the
public good. In the past year, content in the encyclopedia has been accessed more than
50,000 times, with more than 12,000 PDF downloads and more than 2,000 MS Word
downloads. More than half of these users are from outside the U.S. and roughly one-in-
four access the content on their mobile devices (see Fig.1), thus increasing economic
accessibility via the freedom of cost.
Legal accessibility
All entries in the encyclopedia are also licensed under the Creative Commons Attribu-
tion 4.0 (CC BY) license, which is the most permissive of the CC licenses. is license
enables reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium
or format, so long as attribution is given to the creator (Creative Commons, n.d.).
ough many OER projects use more restrictive CC licenses, such as the share-alike or
non-commercial derivations, we rely on the CC BY license to allow for the most free-
dom possible and to prevent confusion when individuals might want to use articles in
unforeseen settings, such as for-profit universities, private schools, corporate training
departments, or countries with diverse copyright requirements. As stated in the author
guide: “e encyclopedia only uses the base CC BY license and does not add additional
stipulations on use (e.g. non-commercial, share-alike, no-derivatives). is is intended
to allow for the greatest possible use of encyclopedia articles in the field” (EdTechnica,
2022). is stance is a manifestation of an underlying belief that knowledge is a universal
human good and should not be needlessly restricted by individuals and organizations
in advancing our global society. Embracing openness in this way makes scholarship and
knowledge more democratic and transparent. It encourages infinite sharing by simplify-
ing legal requirements to their most basic form (i.e. attribution) via open licensing.
Technical accessibility
ough all OER are legally accessible, many are not technically accessible, negating basic
usability. Consider, for instance, any work in a community library that passes into the
public domain but is not scanned or shared online. ough that work is legally acces-
sible to anyone, it will not actually be accessed. Similarly, many OER are merely shared
as PDFs, image scans, or other formats that make technically enacting the 5Rs difficult
Fig. 1 Encyclopedia traffic demographics

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Allmanetal. Int J Educ Technol High Educ (2024) 21:37
or impossible, such as changing the text on a scanned image. In contrast, EdTechnica
focuses not just on making content open in a legal sense but also in a practical sense that
is usable, available, and infinitely remixable. We do this in three key ways.
First, all content is primarily provided in a simple web (HTML/CSS) format that is
designed to be mobile-first, which means that it is optimized for viewing on mobile
devices but then scales up to larger screens if available (see Fig. 2). Most users of the
EdTech Books platform, upon which EdTechnica is hosted, live outside the U.S. and most
of those users access content on mobile devices, meaning that providing the content in
a traditional web format would be disenfranchising for such users. On the author’s end,
we accept submissions in Google Doc formats to prevent contributors from needing to
learn a new system just to participate and then translate their submissions into mobile-
friendly HTML. In regions where access to Google Suite tools is restricted (Frankiewicz,
2023), we encourage authors to submit entries using text editing tools that are available
to them. Despite the importance of such considerations, very few open publishing pro-
jects actually do this.
Second, all content is provided in various formats at two levels of granularity: the
overall encyclopedia level and the individual article level. Readers can access content
online, download as PDFs or Word documents, copy the HTML source code, listen to
lifelike text-to-speech renditions of the textual content, embed articles in LMS or web-
site iframes, print simplified outputs without background images or other web elements,
or access encoded versions of the content via the open API. is permits users to edit,
copy, and remix the content in various ways without having to seek permission, request
special formats, or purchase expensive software (such as Acrobat Pro). It also means that
content can be directly imported and remixed into new projects, such as progressive
web apps and API-enabled mobile apps, or stored and shared in offline or limited access
scenarios, such as in classrooms with limited or spotty internet access. If building their
own books or course readers in EdTech Books, users can also simply press the copy but-
ton and make their own editable copies of articles with the appropriate citations being
carried over automatically for them.
ird, all content is indexed, keyworded, and tagged with metadata to allow for search
engine optimization (SEO) and easy finding of resources. is ensures that if someone is
looking for information about “cognitive load theory” on Google, they will be directed
to the article rather than its encompassing book or another site reference. On this note,
abstracts are also written in a manner to ensure SEO by allowing Google and other
Fig. 2 Example formats of an EdTechnica article

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search engines to easily recognize the simple definition of the term for display in their
own abstracts and synopses.
Communicative accessibility
Building from this same idea, the language used in academic publishing can also limit its
accessibility both to learners at various stages of knowledge development and to a world-
wide audience that exhibits a variety of native languages, cultures, and ways of being.
As such, good examples of OER and OEP should consider the language and other com-
municative needs of their intended audiences and make content appropriate for their
goals. EdTechnica, therefore, seeks to provide all articles in a manner that is content-
rich but plain in language and in an easy-to-understand manner so that complex ideas
and topics can be easily understood by everyone. We do this by limiting article length to
1,000 words, requiring abstracts to be clear and straightforward, providing Flesch-Kin-
caid readability scores (Flesch Reading Ease, n.d.) and predictive data on reading time to
authors, and coaching authors in adjusting language to a worldwide audience, such as by
defining terms, removing jargon, and providing examples and illustrations when help-
ful. In addition, we are currently exploring using generative AI to build automated sum-
maries, keyword tagging, and other supports for articles that can assist in making them
more easily digested.
Flexibility
Building off of technical accessibility and its importance in universal design for learning
(Delisio & Bukaty, 2019), EdTechnica also adopts an editorial and publishing model that
ensures flexibility or agility in its products and approaches. Such flexibility is particu-
larly important because of the rapid pace of change and diverse contextual needs in both
technology and education, and the theories and principles of the field represented in the
encyclopedia should allow for and adapt to such change (Brewer etal. 2006; Cope &
Kalazanthis,2000). Some ways in which flexibility is manifest in EdTechnica include flex-
ibility in (a) content, (b) media, (c) modularity, and (d) ecology.
Content exibility
In traditional publishing models, content is treated as static and unchanging, with cor-
rections only coming in the form of later addenda or retractions and improvements
coming in the form of sporadic and delayed edition releases. With EdTechnica, how-
ever, we expect authors to work with editors and the community to continually correct
errors and update content as new discussions and findings occur, striving for contin-
uous improvement. By making the platform easy to edit and revise, micro-edits (such
as grammatical fixes and incremental improvements) can be made by original authors
to ensure accuracy and relevancy. Beyond this, however, we also accept macro-edits
from other authors as considerations for revision, which, if accepted after peer review,
expands the author list of the article to include ongoing contributors. For example, if
there is a significant development in a topic, then the original author or another author
can provide an update to the article, which will then go through another round of peer
review. rough this process, our goal is to have past versions of each article available

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for historic auditing but to allow the article to evolve as needed to ensure continuous
improvement and increasing value. In addition, all articles include quality assurance sur-
veys so that readers can weigh in on the current status of the article and also provide
suggestions for improvement. By aggregating article performance in relation to others,
editors can then prioritize which articles are in the greatest need of attention, revision,
and improvement.
Media exibility
In addition to the common textual format of encyclopedia articles, we strive for multi-
modal design, implementation, and use. We encourage authors to include hyperlinks,
insert videos, and embed other multimedia artifacts or learning aids into their articles.
We extend this invitation to the community and invite anyone to submit links to addi-
tional community resources that may be listed on encyclopedia pages that may be use-
ful. With this flexibility, we also collect analytics data on usage, such as how often an
audio version of each article is listened to and how long readers watch videos to help us
recognize which articles and formats are performing well and are helpful to the commu-
nity, and alternatively, which ones could use improvement. is approach encourages a
much more dynamic environment than a traditional encyclopedia or journal publication
by making each article more of a hub of resources that is expected to evolve, update,
and improve over time rather than a simple, static text resource—multimodal in design,
implementation and use.
Modular exibility
When traditional publishing approaches and even OER provide resources in an omnibus
fashion, such as by a single aggregate file for an entire book or course, they drastically
limit others’ engagement in the 5Rs. For instance, in some LMSs a full-book PDF can-
not be readily embedded to give students access to the reading for a given week, and
most ebooks do not allow direct linking to specific content within the book. e result
is that referencing materials is indirect and introduces additional extraneous cognitive
load for learners in the form of unnecessary clicks (e.g. finding the desired chapter in
a list) and unnecessary content (e.g. ignoring the introductory materials to jump to the
desired area). In contrast, EdTechnica provides all content in a highly modularized man-
ner, aiming towards remixability and reusability, wherein each article can be directly
referenced, embedded, copied, and remixed via a link or QR code. Furthermore, each
heading of each article may be referenced and embedded via a direct link to allow for
more focused learning experiences (see Fig.3). As such, anyone who uses EdTechnica
needs only attend to the parts of the content that are directly relevant to them and their
needs while ignoring parts that are not.
Ecological exibility
And finally, the nature of the modalities and technologies used for hosting EdTech-
nica allow it to be responsibly and reliably scaled as a means to improve environmental
sustainability. ough content can be printed on demand, the vast majority of readers
utilize the web interface, and the mobile-first design allows content to be accessed on
low-power devices. is prevents the ecological impacts of unnecessary printing and

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provides information access at the lowest possible cost. In addition, more advanced fea-
tures that require greater power consumption, such as generative AI summaries, auto-
mated translations, and audio conversions, are cached on the server to prevent their
need to be subsequently rebuilt for each user. is same model is followed for the arti-
cles themselves when retrieving textual data from the database and reduces power con-
sumption on server hardware by 90% or more. All of these technological decisions allow
the encyclopedia to be run on a shared cloud server for a current cost of about $1–2
per month, inclusive of data transfer and media processing fees. is allows us to make
the information available to the world without needing to rely upon subscription fees,
advertising, or other business models that would limit growth while also maintaining a
minimal power consumption footprint.
Justice
As education becomes more accessible and flexible, we would expect our artifacts and
processes to become more diverse and representative of the world. Yet, ongoing schol-
arly work in this area suggests that the central tenets of openness may not be fully
equipped to directly address inherent goals of equality, equity, justice, democratization,
or liberation (Veletsianos, 2021; Veletsianos & Kimmons, 2012). In fact, as Veletsianos
(2021) points out: “If we are not mindful, the creation and use of OER could not only
reflect inequities but reinforce them as well” (para. 7). Somewhat paralleling the 5Rs
of openness, Nancy Fraser articulated 3Rs of justice, arguing that “justice [is] a three-
dimensional problem, in which redistribution, recognition, and representation must be
integrated in a balanced way” (Fraser, 2005, p. 305). In an economic and social sense,
these 3Rs suggest that a just society (a) redistributes resources to care for all, (b) recog-
nizes the contributions of all, and (c) represents the values, cultures, and identities of
all. Applying these principles to OER/P, the 5Rs of openness seem to align well with the
first R of justice by redistributing resources to all at a systematic/macro level in an acces-
sible and flexible manner, as discussed in the above sections. However, recognition and
Fig. 3 Example of a direct link to a content heading for embedding purposes

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representation require additional attention, such as by appropriately valuing and giving
credit to those who contribute and ensuring that knowledge artifacts represent all rather
than simply those in power or those who have the capital necessary to fully participate
in OER creation (e.g. white, male professors in North America who have the time and
money to create open textbooks). In so doing, diversity in OER/P becomes an important
indicator of justice as its presence reveals the incorporation of restorative practices, and
its absence reveals business-as-usual approaches to education (Hodgkison-Williams &
Trotter, 2018). To address this, the governing board of EdTechnica has also intentionally
sought to promote justice as recognition and representation in several key ways.
Recognitive justice
One of the greatest barriers to OER creation and adoption continues to be perceptions
of OER as being lower quality than traditional publishing artifacts and the fact that OEP
are not generally valued by educational institutions for tenure and promotion (Kim-
mons, 2015; Kimmons & Irvine, 2023; Martin & Kimmons, 2020). Couple this reality
with the fact that faculty who are intersectionalised (e.g. women or those who represent
minoritized religious, cultural, or ethnic groups) may have higher demands for men-
toring and citizenship than their paternalistic counterparts (Misra etal. 2021), and it
becomes clear that to justify participation in the creation of OER, contributors should
receive adequate recognition for their efforts. Additionally, the work that they produce
should be combined with support services necessary to give it at least the same produc-
tion quality as traditional commercial counterparts.
e politics of recognition aims to establish status equality rather than mere validation
of a group’s identity and demands adjustments to enable all individuals to participate as
full partners in social interactions and activities (Fraser etal.2004). To this end, EdTech-
nica provides several technical and expert supports for authors to ensure that their work
will receive the recognition it is due and help them engage more fully in academic activ-
ities. For many, recognition is the knowledge currency that creates an immediate and
unchallenged trust of the effort and contribution to the field. In our practice, we strive
for recognitive justice through improving visibility and discoverability, promoting aca-
demic reputation, and assisting in academic publishing activities with the goal of inviting
authors’ engagement and further legitimizing their efforts.
Technical supports that improve visibility and discoverability include assigning digital
object identifiers (DOIs) to each article, providing proper metadata for accurate index-
ing, and ensuring search engine optimization. Assigning DOIs uniquely identifies an
article or document, providing it with a precise location on the web and making it per-
manently discoverable. Using DOIs for EdTechnica entries helps readers easily locate
individual articles from a citation and prevents problems if the web address/URL associ-
ated with the publication changes. As a globally established publication standard, DOI
associated with a publication also adds perceived legitimate value and credibility as a
digital scholarly resource. EdTechnica entries are also provided with proper metadata for
accurate indexing of articles in Google Scholar and other services. Indexing engines con-
tinuously crawl the web, looking for scholarly publications using the article’s metadata
and metatags, collecting information such as title, author, and publication date. EdTech-
nica editors help increase the visibility and discoverability of its entries by following a set

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of guidelines and recommendations that minimize indexing errors. Similarly, measures
are taken to ensure search engine optimization and high search engine result placement
to make entries more visible and discoverable.
Assistance is also given to authors to establish and promote their academic status and
dissemination of their work. EdTechnica authors are encouraged to provide and keep
up-to-date a biography that is available across all works on the EdTech Books platform.
Hyperlinks to authors’ other works on the platform are automatically included in the
expanded biography view, and the author can update links to CVs, social media, insti-
tutions, Google Scholar, ResearchGate, LinkedIn, and other tools for networking as
desired. To further promote dissemination, easy citation, and remixing, each EdTechnica
entry includes a suggested citation, embed codes, QR codes, and API endpoints.
Finally, authors are offered expert support throughout the publishing process to
promote their engagement in academic publishing activities and further legitimize
their efforts. Besides providing an Author Guide and a writing template, EdTechnica
authors are offered graphic design and copyediting support to improve formatting
and visual aids. Authors are encouraged to submit high-quality entries with an expec-
tation that their work will be peer-reviewed, which is another mechanism to promote
recognitive justice. Peer reviews confer a level of legitimacy by ensuring credibility
and verifying the quality of an academic piece. All EdTechnica entries are carefully
reviewed by scholars with high levels of expertise in the field to ensure the quality and
originality of the content. Editors invite experienced peer reviewers for each entry,
provide clear evaluation guidelines, and walk peer reviewers and authors through a
series of steps to ensure the final entry meets the expected standard. When an entry
is published, authors are also given access to advanced, detailed analytics information
via an article usage dashboard (see Fig.4).
Fig. 4 Example of part of an article’s analytics dashboard

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is last support is especially important for providing recognition as it gives authors
the ability to show the perceived quality and impact of their work for tenure and promo-
tion purposes in a manner that is much more robust than simple citation counts or jour-
nal Impact Factor. ese analytics also include many advanced data points far beyond
what commercial publishers and other open publishing platforms provide, such as cost
savings calculations, predicted reads, embedded video-watching behaviors, and more.
Taken together, these supports help to ensure that the work done by scholars to create
the encyclopedia is recognized as being of high quality and providing a high impact on
the world.
Representational justice
Representation is another important factor of social justice, closely related to redis-
tribution, and recognition. It allows us to examine governance structures, deci-
sion-making procedures, and who participates in and guides the discourse (Fraser
etal.2004)—addressing the policies that allow us to be governed and exist in this field.
In the current OER publishing landscape, there exists an imbalance between creators
and readers, wherein those who create OER tend to be from more affluent countries and
have more social capital than those who use them. us, advantages to some, such as
native fluency in English or advanced training in academic writing, may become a bar-
rier to participation for others, leaving them on the periphery of the activity. is has a
marginalizing effect on the vast majority of potential authors throughout the world who
are doing valuable work in this specific field, leaving out their voices and perspectives.
To address this issue, the EdTechnica governing board purposefully engages in various
activities and has adopted a number of policies to ensure that the encyclopedia repre-
sents diverse perspectives in the field. ese include representation through diverse
leadership, ensuring diverse authorship, supporting linguistic diversity, and providing
nurturing editorial support.
EdTechnica’s governing board and its editor-in-chief are “researchers and practition-
ers who have agreed to provide editing, leadership, and strategic support to the ency-
clopedia” (EdTechnica, 2022, Organizational Structure). Each governing board member
was nominated and elected through a transparent and democratic process by the review
board to serve for fixed terms. ey represent men and women with various expertise
and backgrounds from institutions across the world, ensuring representation through
diverse leadership. Similarly, we strive to ensure wide representation through diverse
authorship. Although anyone, including students, K-12 professionals, and practitioners,
is invited to submit entries, EdTechnica’s governing board is intentionally inviting his-
torically marginalized individuals to submit articles, to ensure that women, practition-
ers, and non-US authors are represented. Additionally, valuing collaborative knowledge
creation and seeing it at the heart of open educational practices (Bali et al.2020), we
encourage all articles to be jointly authored by individuals representing at least two insti-
tutions. is vision has been enacted in three ways. First, initial contributions to EdTech-
nica were solicited specifically from individuals who historically have had less of a voice
in academic disciplines. Second, after these initial contributions were solicited, the gov-
erning board worked to develop processes that would enable anyone to easily submit a
manuscript and this process was carefully outlined in the beginning of the book. Finally,

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at several international conferences, board members have presented on EdTechnica and
extended invitations for contributions, emphasizing that editorial support is available
to all interested in contributing. ese three methods have enabled the board to invite,
facilitate, and support submissions from diverse members of a specialized academic
field.
We also strive to support linguistic diversity to adopt a wider view beyond Western-
centric and English language dominance in OEP and encourage active participation
globally (Bossu & Ellis, 2023). Currently, we provide translation services for articles into
various languages using Amazon Translate and then permit authors to manage transla-
tors in fine-tuning those translations. Translations in many languages can then also be
processed into lifelike text-to-speech audio to better support learning and multimodal
access in those languages. Aspirationally, we are also seeking to further innovate in
this area in a few key ways. We have a goal to eventually move to a no-source-language
model for the encyclopedia in which, rather than only accepting English-language sub-
missions that are later translated into other languages, we accept submissions in any lan-
guage and then oversee review in those languages, providing the final product in both
the native language and in a translated English version. We aspire to this because we
believe it will help to more fully empower native speakers of other languages to con-
tribute their knowledge to the encyclopedia and challenge the Anglo-centric standard of
most OER and education scholarship.
Finally, we encourage representation by involving all who want to participate, includ-
ing students and professionals, in the peer review and editorial process (e.g. as associate
editors) and by adopting a nurturing editorial approach to peer review. In most edito-
rial scenarios, such as academic journals, editors interpret their roles solely as gatekeep-
ers of the publication—only allowing content to make its way into the final publication
after it has undergone rigorous peer review and editorial oversight. With EdTechnica,
editors serve this important gatekeeping role by managing peer reviews of articles and
overseeing copyediting, but we also encourage authors to resubmit following negative
reviews and give them guidance on how to make their contributions meet the standards
we expect. In some cases, this might even include editors stepping in to assist authors
in actual rewrites and taking on the role of secondary authorship to help move the work
across the finishing line. is nurturing approach to editorship eschews low accept-
ance rates as an indicator of rigor but rather views editors as servants to the profession
who guide prospective authors in creating quality work. Such an approach is especially
important in mentoring new or disenfranchised authors, such as those outside the U.S.
those without a terminal degree, those in non-professorial settings, those for whom Eng-
lish is not their primary language, and students, and is driven by the belief that more
voices are better than fewer and that all who want to participate in the academic conver-
sation should be given the encouragement and guidance to do so.
Sustainable generosity
And finally, none of these efforts would achieve their aims unless they were couched
within socioeconomic systems that allowed for their growth and future existence in a
sustainable manner. Elsewhere, the second author has proposed the notion of “sustain-
able generosity” as a motivating principle (Kimmons & Irvine, 2023) for developing

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“generous systems.” Similar to Bryan Stevenson’s (2021) principle of proximity as being
a precursor to justice, a generous system is one that operates out of caring concern for
the other and makes generous impulses proximate to the needs of the other by connect-
ing generosity to need. Operating within the larger project of EdTech Books, EdTechnica
operates on the beliefs and values of building generous systems by empowering those
with time, talents, expertise, and resources to share those with others in need—via the
creation and sharing of high-quality learning materials—and by removing barriers to
generosity that prevent those who otherwise would share from doing so.
e funding mechanism behind EdTech Books and EdTechnica relies upon faculty
donating their time and using university resources to fund technology infrastructure,
support, and student wages. rough strategic development efforts, ongoing funding
needed to keep these systems afloat is very minimal. For instance, the entire EdTech
Books platform runs on cutting-edge Amazon Web Services cloud servers and provides
content to over 120,000 people every month while costing less than $100 per month;
this means the technical upkeep of EdTechnica is likely less than $1 per month. Student
wages are also leveraged as available to assist volunteer faculty with graduate students
serving as associate editors, and though non-essential to the functioning of the encyclo-
pedia, this funding alleviates demands on volunteers and gives graduate students valu-
able editorial experience while being paid.
e bulk of the actual cost of any scholarly project rests on faculty wages, but since
faculty at many universities throughout the world are already donating their time for
editorial work to commercial publishers, it seems reasonable to enable routes to such
volunteer work that actually promote justice and equity via more open practices (i.e.
connecting generosity to need rather than generosity to greed). at being said, a gener-
ous system should honor and protect the generosity of faculty who are donating their
time and should provide them as much benefit as possible for doing so, thereby allow-
ing them to be generous with the system rather than in spite of it (as would be the case
with commercial models). For this reason, our efforts with EdTech Books and EdTech-
nica also seek to benefit faculty volunteers in a variety of ways, such as by indexing their
work in Google Scholar, encouraging citations, increasing the impact of scholarly efforts
via search engine optimization and findability, and drawing attention to faculty work via
profiles, external accounts, etc. Considered in concert with one another, we envision a
future of educational technology through these efforts that value generosity, empower
participation, and democratize access by altogether removing historical barriers related
to cost and access that heretofore have dictated whose voices are heard and who has
access to learning.
Stepping intothefuture—hopeful always
EdTechnica is a resource and practice carefully designed to be accessible, flexible, and
just drawing upon the sustainable generosity principle. However, this example is not
meant to be a one-size-fits-all solution; contextual elements have also contributed to the
success of the model. Any project aimed to enact the principles described here needs to
be customized to the context of the specific project, and the details of how the principles
are enacted will vary depending on that context. In looking forward to the future, we

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believe that the structural foundation and model provided by EdTechnica can be built
upon and followed to address several persistent problems in education and to provide a
future that is more just and more hopeful. Some key examples include:
• Removing socioeconomic, geographic, and language barriers to creating, disseminat-
ing, consuming, and applying knowledge;
• Providing publishing and information access approaches that are more sustainable
and environmentally responsible;
• Promoting inclusive and egalitarian access to high-quality open educational
resources;
• Encouraging global stakeholder cooperation to reduce OER development investment
duplication and create a worldwide pool of culturally diverse, regionally relevant,
gender-sensitive, and accessible educational materials in different languages and for-
mats;
• Improving alignment between who is doing the work of educational technology
throughout the world and who is cataloging and creating scholarly knowledge;
• Reducing distance between educational programs and work being done in the field;
• Legitimizing OER as high-quality educational materials and OEP and OER creation
as legitimate scholarly activities wherein contributors are recognized, valued, and
sustained;
• Improving the richness, quality, up-to-dateness, and usability of learning materials;
• Improving the ease and quality of course design;
• Improving scholarly processes to be more nurturing and supportive of scholars’ well-
being;
• Utilizing generative AI in refining educational resources and providing multilingual
access;
• Providing models of AI use that are responsible, ethical, and empowering toward
humans—a co-partnering of and with tools; and
• Empowering generosity, democratization, equity, and justice.
EdTechnica is both an OER and an artifact of an OEP. By striving to align the scholarly
community of technology with principles of openness, we can expand our potential for
impacting education on a global scale. Rather than lamenting dystopian visions of the
horrors of technology’s influences on education or blindly embracing techno-optimistic
pipe dreams of educational futures, we believe the vision offered by this model is virtu-
ous, tenable, hopeful, and ambitious. e optimism and hope we feel with such a model
rests not in the cold technologies and algorithms that surround the educational technol-
ogy field but in the warm goodness of all who engage in the field of educational tech-
nology—their hearts and associations with one another—as they seek to use their time,
skills, talents, and tools to make the world a better place.
Abbreviations
DOIs Digital object identifiers
OEP Open educational practices
OER Open educational resources
OER/P Open educational resources/practices

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Acknowledgements
Not applicable.
Authors’ contributions
BA corresponding author; conceptualized and drafted the article; edited and prepared the manuscript. RK conceptual‑
ized and drafted the article and assisted with editing. CDD, AB, MW, JS, MD, & FEB contributed sections of the manuscript
and assisted with editing.
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Availability of data and materials
Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
Declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Received: 20 November 2023 Accepted: 19 April 2024
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