Over the last decade, open educational resources (OER) initiatives have created new possibilities for knowledge-sharing practices. This research examines how, where, and when OER are attracting attention in the higher education sector and explores to what extent the OER discussion has moved beyond the English-speaking world. This study analysed…

Since the birth of the World Wide Web, educators have been exchanging ideas and sharing resources online. They are all aware of the turmoil in higher education created by freely available content, including some hopeful developments charted in this issue. Interest has grown steadily over the past decade in making a university-level education…

The open educational resources (OER) movement has gained momentum in the past few years. With this new drive towards making knowledge open and accessible, a large number of OER repositories have been established and made available online throughout the world. However, the inability of existing search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, and Bing to…

Nigeria has joined the global race of teaching and learning in a changing educational environment by adopting open and distance learning (ODL). Although it is a global trend, ODL poses some challenges at local levels, one of which is the untimely production of teaching materials currently affecting instructional delivery in Nigeria. The modern…

Given the ongoing alarm regarding uncontrollable costs of higher education, it would be reasonable to expect not only concern about the impact of MOOCs on educational outcomes, but also systematic efforts to document the resources expended on their development and delivery. However, there is little publicly available information on MOOC costs that…

Open educational resources (OER) are a global phenomenon that is fast gaining credibility in many academic circles as a possible solution for bridging the knowledge divide. With increased funding and advocacy from governmental and nongovernmental organisations paired with generous philanthropy, many OER repositories, which host a vast array of…

A field enquiry in French distance education allows us to analyze the evolution of a specific institution towards new public management: Parallel to a trend of free courseware and open education, there is a paradoxical reality of distance education monetization. Whereas history shows how traditional French education is a state controlled public…

The United Nations (UN) constituted 2005-2014 as the decade for educational sustainable development when bridges have to be built between academic institutions and their communities. In this article I will therefore do a literature search from 2005-2011 on what it means to be a sustainable university with a sustainable curriculum by looking at…

Researchers, educators, policymakers, and other education stakeholders hope and anticipate that openness and open scholarship will generate positive outcomes for education and scholarship. Given the emerging nature of open practices, educators and scholars are finding themselves in a position in which they can shape and/or be shaped by openness.…

Open educational resources (OER) are making their way into a variety of educational contexts from formal lesson planning to just in time learning. Educators and training professionals have been recognized as an important audience for these materials. The concepts of "self-efficacy" and "outcome judgment" from social cognitive…

In a learning system, multiple communities represent a networked structure of learning experiences. Individuals belong to multiple communities connected though complex relationships consisting of people, resources, rituals, and ties. Learning occurs as individuals traverse this network from one community to the next. This paper explores the…

This paper presents an analysis of teachers' ratings on distance learning undergraduate study programs: 7,156 students enrolled in traditional and 528 students enrolled in distance learning studies took part in the evaluation questionnaire, assessing 71 teachers. The data were collected from the Moodle platform and from the Singidunum University…

While e-learning is now characterized by a past and trends within that past, there continues to be uncertainty about how e-learning is defined and conceptualized, whether or not we like e-learning, and whether or not it is as meaningful to us as face to face learning. The purpose of this study was to document the e-learning perceptions of students…

The high cost of textbooks is of concern not only to college students but also to society as a whole. Open textbooks promise the same educational benefits as traditional textbooks; however, their efficacy remains largely untested. We report on one community college's adoption of a collection of open resources across five different mathematics…

E-learning is advancing in Iran right now. The Iranian higher education system is applying electronic learning in order to conquer the limitations of the existing education system. These limitations include the growing number of applicants for entering universities, lack of classrooms for education, and universities' tensions in replying to these…