Open educational resources: undertheorized research and untapped potential
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Open educational resources: undertheorized research and untapped potential David A. Wiley1 Accepted: 17 November 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract This paper is in response to the manuscript entitled “Open educational resources and college textbook choices: a review of research on efficacy and perceptions” (Hilton in Educ Technol Res Dev 64(4): 573–590, 2016) from a theoretical perspective. The response describes the way many of the papers reviewed by Hilton were undertheorized, limiting their potential for impact. A brief summary of more recent research shows one current direction toward stronger theorization of OER research. Over the short-term, including during the rapid shift to digital learning catalyzed by the COVID-19 pandemic, OER adoption can be expected to save college students money and close the achievement gap between Pell-eligible students and their wealthier peers. Over the longer term, this benefit will likely disappear, and faculty will need to more fully explore the affordances of the 5Rs in order to create dramatic improvements in success for all students. Keywords Open educational resources · Student success · Cost savings · OER-enabled pedagogy
Introduction Hilton (2016) provides a review of nine studies assessing the impact of faculty decisions to adopt open educational resources (OER) on a range of student outcomes. These studies were all conducted in the United States, and this response focuses on OER in the US context. Informally, OER are teaching, learning, and research materials that can be copied, edited, and shared freely and legally. More formally, Creative Commons (n.d.) defines open educational resources as: Teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities.
* David A. Wiley [email protected] 1
Lumen Learning and Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, USA
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• • • •
Retain—make, own, and control a copy of the resource Reuse—use your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource publicly Revise—edit, adapt, and modify your copy of the resource Remix—combine your original or revised copy of the resource with other existing material to create something new • Redistribute—share copies of your original, revised, or remixed copy of the resource with others (para. 2) Hilton’s review found that outcomes are similar for students whose faculty adopt OER and students whose faculty adopt traditionally copyrighted materials. While a small number of studies found positive or negative effects on student outcomes, the majority found no significant differences.
Limitations Many of the articles reviewed in Hilton (2016), including some articles on which I was an author, are woefully undertheorized. They are essentially media comparison studies or, to be more precise, license comparison studies. Without conceptualizing an explanatory mechanism—a reason to believe a difference might exist—they simply
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