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OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY
SPECIAL
ISSUE
2024
04
WEIZENBAUM JOURNAL OF THE DIGITAL SOCIETY
Volume 4 \ Issue 4 \ w4.4.3 \ 03-07-2024
ISSN 2748-5625 \ DOI 10.34669/WI.WJDS/4.4.3
Information on this journal and its funding can be found on its website:
https://wjds.weizenbaum-institut.de
This work is available open access and is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0):
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
RESEARCH PAPER
An Introduction to Open Educational
Resources and Their Implementation
in Higher Education Worldwide
Javiera Atenas * 1 \ Martin Ebner
2 \ Ulf-Daniel Ehlers
3 \
Fabio Nascimbeni
4 \ Sandra Schön
* 5
1 University of Suffolk
2 Graz University of Technology
3 DHWB Karlsruhe
4 European Training Foundation
5 Graz University of Technology
*Corresponding authors, j.atenas@uos.ac.uk, sandra.schoen@tugraz.at
ABSTRACT
The digitization of (higher) education has exposed copyright infringement
issues, as the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials has become more vis-
ible. This article explores the importance of open educational resources (OER)
in higher education, focusing on their development, how they are understood,
and the opportunities they offer. OER are dened as learning materials released
under open licenses, allowing no-cost access, reuse, adaptation, and redistribu-
tion. The article discusses the OER movement, its milestones, and its integra-
tion into educational practice. It also presents arguments for OER: they enable
free access to education, improve teaching practice, diminish legal issues, and
foster open science. In addition, it highlights criticisms, including resistance
from traditional publishers and concerns about marketing inuence. The article
concludes by examining current OER implementation in higher education and
its promise of innovation. While OER are increasingly adopted, proprietary
resources still dominate. The article emphasizes the need for educators to use
KEYWORDS
open educational
resources
oer
policy
educational resources
digital education
europe
development
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 2
2024
open licenses meaningfully and innovatively and presents research on OER
acceptance and usage. The monitoring of OER development in higher education
is essential, but approaches may vary across countries.
1 Introduction: Increasing Digitization and the
Internet Makes Copyright Infringement in (Higher)
Education Visible
In the last two centuries, teachers have played a pivotal role in identifying and
harnessing the most effective educational materials, tools, and techniques to
engage and inspire their students. The daily work of teaching is a process of
curating and integrating various resources to create rich learning experiences.
The advent of digitization has brought to light the issue of copyright infringe-
ment in educational settings. For example, when a pdf document is shared
via email or the learning management system or a presentation is published
online, copyright issues become visible, and the rights owners, e.g., book pub-
lishers or photographers, increasingly assert their claims. Digitization makes
more visible instances of copyrighted materials being used without proper
authorization or attribution, potentially leading to legal repercussions and eth-
ical dilemmas. At the same time, digitization has led to online resources being
much more widely available and usable: it is easier to offer them, retrieve
them, adapt them, and reuse them. This article discusses advantages of “open
educational resources” (OER), i.e., materials that explicitly allow these forms
of use, with a focus on the development of OER in higher education. The ar-
ticle is intended as an introduction to OER, and outlines the OER movement,
describes current debates on and developments in OER in higher education,
especially in Europe but also globally, and concludes with recommendations.
This article contributes to the topic of education in the digital world as OER
have become more relevant through and with digitization. By analyzing the
role of OER in improving accessibility, enhancing teaching practices, and
reducing legal issues, the article offers insights into reimagining digital learn-
ing and teaching in the post-pandemic world, as well as addressing digital-era
higher educational literacy.
2 The Understanding of and Opportunities
Offered by OER
Open educational resources are dened by UNESCO in the Recommendation
on open educational resources (OER) as follows:
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 3
2024
Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning, teaching and research
materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or
are under copyright that have been released under an open license, that
permit no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation, and redistribution
by others. (UNESCO, 2019, I.1)
Therefore, “open,” which should not be confused with “free,” is related to the
possibility of being able to access, re-use, modify, and re-publish materials,
legally and at no cost. Such uses of educational materials in parts of the edu-
cation sector is unproblematic in some countries, e.g., the “fair use” principle
in the US (Copyright Act, 1976). However, there are enormous differences
in the allowed uses of (educational) content between, for example, European
countries (Nobre, 2017). Therefore, a clear contractual regulation is import-
ant, such as the legal texts of so-called “open licenses.” In recent years, three
contract variants of Creative Commons (“CC”) licenses, the most used open
licenses, for educational content have prevailed. They are abbreviated as CC
BY (attribution required), CC BY-SA (attribution and same license required),
and CC 0 (“public domain,” without copyright protection). These licenses
exist as several variants, but the latest variant (4.0) applies to jurisdictions
worldwide. Therefore, OER are also connected to open-source software and
open standards to ensure easy legal and technical adoption.
Figure 1: The understanding of and opportunities for use of Open Educational
Resources
Open educational resources are not only about resources; they are often based
on and inspire open practices in teaching/learning settings and are about what
the use of openly licensed content can bring to the learning process. Thus,
“open educational practices” are teaching approaches closely connected to
the creation and use of OER (Conole & Ehlers, 2010), and “open” pedagogi-
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 4
2024
cal and scholarly practices “are most likely to allow for learning experiences
that are real, rich and relevant” (Geser, 2007, p. 17). Open educational prac-
tices comprise a range of practices that act to open aspects of education in
particular ways (Havemann, 2020), such as open and transparent educational
digital scholarship (Weller, 2014), sharing-based approaches (Cronin, 2017),
inclusive pedagogies (Havemann, 2020), care-based teaching methods (Bali,
Cronin, & Jhangiani, 2019), accessibility dynamics (Tlili et al., 2020), and
socially sustainable innovative approaches (Nerantzi & Atenas, 2022).
“Open education” is even broader and includes all concepts, measures, and
activities aiming to increase educational access, effectiveness, and equity
through the fostering of participation and knowledge co-creation, especially
by marginalized and traditionally underrepresented groups (Campbell, 2020).
Therefore, open education encompasses not only OER and open educational
practices, but also approaches such as open universities, which allow people
to study without a traditional university entrance qualication via distance
education, and Massive Open Online Courses, which open university teaching
to literally everyone. Therefore, “openness” can mean and refer to a variety of
aspects in the eld of education.
Especially in the context of universities and research, the term “open science”
is yet another relevant concept, in which OER are seen as a part. Open science
may be seen as an extension of the idea of “open access,” which pursues the
idea that scientic publications, especially those funded by public money,
should be generally available to all (Persic et al., 2021). Since the rst initia-
tives, for example the founding of arXiv in 1991 and the Berlin Declaration
on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities in 2003, this
understanding has expanded considerably. After initial resistance, scholarly
publishers have also adapted their business models and have beneted in part
from developments through the numerous funding programs (cf. Asai, 2020).
With this in mind, OER are rst dened as educational that are legally avail-
able to be reused, modied and republished. Nevertheless, OER must always
be seen as a conceptual part of the open educational practice, open education,
and open science discussion. When OER publishers see “open” only as “cost-
free,” they are somehow missing important components such as knowledge
co-creation and a general mindset open to sharing.
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 5
2024
3 The Development of the OER Movement
The OER movement began at the end of the 20th century. Initially, the move-
ment’s main motive was to collect educational materials and make them acces-
sible and freely available through the Internet. For example, this was the main
objective of the German “Zentrale für Unterrichtsmedien im Internet” (ZUM.
de) established in 1996 or the Wikieducator.org platform founded in 2006 in
New Zealand. Several terms were used for freely usable educational materials
at the time, for example “open educational content” and “free educational con-
tent.” Later, copyright challenges came more to the fore, and with them the use
of open licenses, initially mostly those within the context of open-source de-
velopments. Some of the early milestones of the world-wide OER movement,
from the UNESCO initiative in 2002 to the OECD study on OER in 2007, are
shown in Figure 2. The establishment and development of the Creative Com-
mons licenses were also important for OER, as they t educational content and
usage better than the open-source software licenses used before.
Figure 2: Some early milestones of the Open Educational Resources (OER)
movement. Illustration based on Santos-Hermosa and Atenas (2022)
Since around 2010, the term “open educational resources” has been applied
comparatively uniformly, and OER projects and initiatives, of varying breadth
and impact, are being implemented worldwide. For the global and European
context, we want to highlight two moments from the OER movement in the
last decade. First, the European Commission published a document in 2013
with the aim of “opening up education” and improving the teaching of digital
skills in schools and universities (European Commission, 2013). The subse-
quent calls for research projects and national strategies in the EU increasingly
referred to OER. UNESCO’s (2019) OER Recommendation brought OER to
the attention of global educational policymakers. To sum up, the open edu-
cation movement brought OER to the agendas of several educational organi-
zations and institutions. Nevertheless, the topic of OER has still not gained
conceptual integration into educational practice and political strategies.
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 6
2024
4 The OER Debate and Criticism
At rst, the demand for OER seemed high, but there were various arguments
and criticisms of the topic and resistance to OER from different stakehold-
ers. The lines of argumentation currently prevailing depend on the respective
national education system, the education sector and its nancing, educational
practice, and legal regulations.
Free Qualitative Education for Everyone
The essential argument in favor of OER is that open licenses provide a legal-
ly secure framework for worldwide use of educational resources. It is thus
possible that even structurally disadvantaged regions and individuals can, in
principle, gain access to high-quality education. This is also addressed by the
United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 4 “Quality Education.” In par-
ticular, this goal calls for free access to the education system for all population
groups, especially those of school age. OER are seen as an essential measure
in this regard (McGreal, 2017). Wherever traditional proprietorial textbooks
must be paid for by learners and their families, the easier accessibility of OER
is of particular interest (for example Hilton et al., 2014). OER also contribute
to the solving of accessibility issues and, therefore, support inclusion.
Better (Open) Teaching Practices
In recent years, many have been convinced of the possibilities of improving
the quality of teaching with the help of OER. The use of OER allows academ-
ics and students to work with resources created by others that can be shared,
widening the spectrum of resources and practices available to students and
embedding transversal skills (including digital and data literacy, alongside
critical thinking, research, teamwork, and global citizenship skills). Moreover,
students can be empowered to be critical and collaborative citizens. Thus,
within the contemporary post-pandemic context, educators have often found
the open sharing of practices just as vital as the sharing of resources (Have-
mann & Roberts, 2021).
Fewer Legal Issues, Especially in Digital Teaching
A more pragmatic argument for educational institutions to engage with OER is
the avoidance of legal disputes. For example, if higher education institutions
allow and encourage their teachers to produce OER, these materials can also
be more effectively reused, at least in the central European legal area; this is
an important argument (see Ebner et al., 2016).
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 7
2024
OER Competence as a Competitive Factor in Open Science
Because international organizations are currently promoting open science and
the associated knowledge required for open licenses as a model for funded re-
search projects, knowledge in dealing with this is important. The development
of competencies in open licensing (or open access, OER, or open data) is thus
pragmatically seen as a competitive advantage, even for people and institu-
tions for whom philanthropic considerations are rather distant. There are also
opposing positions and critical voices in the debate about OER, two of which
are explained.
The Need for New Business Models
and Resistance from Traditional Textbook Publishers
Although there are many initiatives and good arguments for OER, textbooks
and educational resources are still mostly produced proprietarily. OER also
change the possibilities of availability and use, and thus, traditional business
models are turned upside down (cf. Geser et al., 2019). Publishers are resist-
ing such changes particularly for school textbooks. However, in the case of
research publications, several publishers have changed their procedures and
support open access or OER publications, so far largely through advance fund-
ing by the authors or their institutions.
Gaining Inuence with OER:
New Imperialism and Marketing Inuence Risk
OER are seen as a potential vehicle for widely sharing educational content.
However, this principle is also perceived as a problem in some cases. For
example, lobbying associations also create materials as OER, and these, like
workbooks distributed free of charge, also easily nd their way into the class-
room because teachers obtain their teaching materials from the Internet. In a
similar way, other countries or cultures are now beginning to perceive OER,
especially from the US, as neo-imperialistic in nature. Both arguments do not
speak against OER, but for the increased production of one’s own OER that
are desired, qualitatively valuable, and culturally appropriate (cf. Bates, 2016).
5 Current Forms of OER Implementation
in Higher Education
OER in higher education have advanced from an early stage (Schaffert, 2010)
to a phase in which they are more strategically embedded (Camilleri et al.,
2014). However, the situation of the OER actors and institutional development
presents a fragmented picture. The use of OER within higher education set-
tings is increasingly common, even if they are still far from mainstream adop-
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 8
2024
tion, with proprietary resources often being the norm. As shown by several
studies (e.g., Nascimbeni et al., 2018), educators typically start exploring the
use of OER with the aim of increasing accessibility by decreasing the cost of
resources for students, but then discover the potential for pedagogical inno-
vation associated with the use of open resources. This is typically related to
knowledge co-creation by educators and learners, for example, through social
annotation tools, as well as to other open educational practices, including open
course design and open assessment (Cronin, 2017). International, national, and
regional projects are increasingly addressing issues of OER in higher educa-
tion, for example the European Network for Catalysing Open Resources in
Education (ENCORE+) in Europe and research groups in South Africa (Nde-
bele, Masuku, & Mlambo, 2023).
The introduction of OER can empower different kinds of innovation along the
whole process of education, as shown by the Handbook of Successful Teach-
ing Practices by the OpenGame project (Garcia-Holgado et al., 2019). Open
textbooks can be downloaded and printed for free, and students can annotate
the textbook and develop their own revisions, for example, with the WikiTo-
Learn.org platform. In addition, open licensed videos by other lecturers and
experts can easily be integrated into a ipped or inverted classroom setting.
Some students could even take on the role of OER developer, for example, in
a hackathon for OER or apps for sustainable issues.
Many more innovations can be triggered by using OER (Coughlan et al.,
2019), but for this to happen, educators need to be able to use open licenses in
a meaningful and innovative pervasive way. Typically, OER training is used to
spread these ideas. The rst online tutorials on OER were published by Cór-
coles et al. (2007). Several open educational practices and OER competence
frameworks are already published (Ehlers & Bounodo, 2020; Nascimbeni &
Burgos, 2016; Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, 2016). Re-
search on the current acceptance and usage of OER is a good start not only
to verify their state, but also to highlight the importance of the new topic, as
described for India (Padhi, 2018).
There are different approaches to assess and compare the OER situation in
higher education institutions from different countries. Marín et al. (2020)
studied the existence of OER policies and infrastructure in higher education in
different countries. As recommended by UNESCO (2019), activities to moni-
tor OER development, as well as OER in higher education, have increasingly
been undertaken within the last few years. However, Neumann et al. (2022)
have shown that similar higher education settings, such as those in Austria,
Switzerland, and Germany, cannot be monitored using the same measures.
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 9
2024
OER policies as documents or declarations at the national level are already
available for some countries. For example, the Finnish national OER policy
for higher education describes future objectives and activities as an execu-
tive plan (Open Science Coordination in Finland, 2022). In addition to such
national OER policy documents, several institutions or networks in higher
education have produced organizational OER strategy papers. In enabling
sustainable open policies in the higher education sector, elements such as ac-
cess to knowledge and information imposed by copyright reforms, which tend
to benet publishers over people, need to be considered (Atenas et al., 2019,
2020). OER policies should promote the publication of pedagogical resources,
such as open textbooks or handbooks, following the open access licensing ap-
proach, or promote the use of open data as OER to develop data literacy (Ate-
nas et al., 2015; Atenas, Havemann, & Timmermann, 2020). In addition, OER
policies should promote the adoption of open-source software to produce,
adapt, and store OER. Furthermore, OER policies in higher education need
alignment. Open science initiatives as OER are considered key to fostering the
development of scientic capacity as stated in the UNESCO Recommendation
on Open Science (Santos-Hermosa & Atenas, 2022).
The new approach of an OER certicate to acknowledge the OER activities
of higher education institutions is currently implemented in Austria. Based on
the White paper, Concept of OER Certication at Austrian Universities (cf.
Ebner, 2018), a certicate is currently granted to higher education institutions
based on three criteria for “Certied OER higher education institutions”: the
existence of an OER strategy document and offer of OER further education;
an OER repository where staff can publish OER; and a certain number of staff
members with training in OER (Schön et al., 2023).
The measurement of the impact of OER is important for higher education
institutions already working in the eld. Several approaches to OER impact
analysis can be found (Ebner, Orr, & Schön, 2022). An Austrian university,
Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), recently published its approach to
OER impact assessment and ideas for evaluating the effects and impacts of
their OER university (Ebner et al., 2022).
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 10
2024
6 Outlook: Future Directions for
OER Implementation in Higher Education
The implementation of OER in higher education has seen some progress,
but opportunities and challenges still need addressing. Some potential future
directions are discussed below.
Advancing Pedagogical Innovation
Educators are discovering the pedagogical potential of OER, such as knowl-
edge co-creation and open educational practices. Further research and explo-
ration of pedagogical approaches that capitalize on OER can enhance active
learning and collaboration.
Strengthening International Collaboration
Initiatives and research groups are actively promoting OER adoption. The
strengthening of international collaboration can facilitate knowledge exchange
and accelerate progress through the sharing of best practices and experiences.
Empowering Educators through OER Competence Development
Ongoing development of OER competence frameworks and provision of
professional development opportunities can equip educators with the skills to
effectively use open licenses and integrate OER into teaching practice.
Monitoring and Evaluating OER Implementation
Research on acceptance, usage, and impact of OER provides insights into
effective strategies. Standardized measurement frameworks can assess OER
policies, infrastructure, and practices, aiding informed decision-making.
Advocating for Open Policies and Practices
Open policies should promote the publication of resources, use of open data,
and adoption of open-source software. Alignment between OER policies and
broader open science initiatives is crucial for fostering scientic capacities. By
pursuing these directions, higher education institutions can further enhance the
implementation and impact of OER.
AN INTRODUCTION TO OPEN EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES \ 11
2024
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Date received: November 2023
Date accepted: May 2024
