Implementing open educational resources in digital education
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Implementing open educational resources in digital education Hengtao Tang1 Accepted: 6 November 2020 © Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2020
Abstract The outbreak of COVID-19 leads to an increasing demand for online educational resources to continue teaching and learning. Open educational resources (OER), with the benefits of cost-saving and open licenses, have great potential in facilitating the rapid transition to digital education, but concerns about whether OER decrease the effectiveness of student learning remains unsolved. Hilton’s review article (2016) provides synthesized evidence stating that OER can help decrease college students’ textbook spending without undermining student learning effectiveness. It is also noteworthy that implementing OER in digital education needs additional considerations beyond the efficacy of OER. Therefore, this special issue article extends Hilton’s (2016) synthesized findings by presenting four additional perspectives in research, design, culture, practice about implementing OER in digital education. Keywords Open educational resources · Digital education · Efficacy · Openness · COVID19 Open educational resources (OER) are free, open-licensed educational resources that users can retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute for personalized needs (Wiley & Hilton, 2018). Hilton (2016), synthesizing evidence about the efficacy of OER from 16 studies, argued that learning with OER saved college students’ educational cost without undermining their learning achievement. Some of the reviewed studies (e.g., Feldstein et al. 2012; Hilton and Laman 2012) even supported that OER improved college students’ grade or retention. Most college instructors and students in the reviewed articles were also positive about the quality of OER (Hilton 2016). Therefore, Hilton (2016) claimed OER as an efficient low-cost alternative to commercial textbooks in higher education. Hilton (2016) also explained that the review was limited by a small number of relevant studies available at the time of writing, especially few studies with sound research design. Future research about OER efficacy needs to develop a well-refined research design to further confirm the causality between OER and learning effectiveness.
* Hengtao Tang [email protected] 1
Department of Educational Studies, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA
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Implications for shifting to digital education This review is significant for educators to provide personalized instruction during the shift to digital learning in higher education, especially when the shift (1) needs to be accomplished in a short timeframe with a shortage of resources and (2) the transition is challenged by a lack of sufficient funding support. The outbreak of COVID-19 resulted in new waves of online courses offerings in higher education, but when responding to abrupt changes in course delivery, college instructors especially novice online instructors may have hardships in addressing each stu
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