Open educational resources (OER) have been praised for revolutionizing education. However, practitioners and instructors battle keeping OER updated and measuring their impact on students' performance. Few studies have analyzed the improvement of OER over time in relation to achievement. This longitudinal study uses learning analytics through the…

Almost all open educational resources (OER) definitions encompass key concepts such as the 5R activities and open licenses. However, little attention is given to the technical aspects and tools that allow the user to interact with these resources. This study aims to answer five research questions regarding (a) 5R activities, (b) open licenses and…

Extended reality (XR), which encompasses virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), offers powerful affordances for improving teaching and learning experiences in a post-pandemic world. Increasingly, many governments and institutions around the world are making major investments in XR technologies to prepare education…

Given the upsurge of textbook costs, college students increasingly expect universities and instructors to offer alternatives to traditional textbooks. One textbook alternative is using open educational resources (OER). While OER unquestionably save students money, the question remains whether the adoption of OER (instructional materials) is…

This paper describes the functionality, scalability, and cost of implementing and maintaining a suite of open source technologies, which have supported hundreds of thousands of learners in the past year, on an information technology infrastructure budget of less than US$10,000 per year. In addition, it reviews pedagogical opportunities offered by…

There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the role Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can play in improving access to education globally, and particularly to thousands of people in developing and developed countries. There is increasing concern, however, that the millions of displaced refugee learners throughout Europe, the Middle…

Digital education refers to in-person, blended, and fully online learning efforts, as well as attempts to capture a wide range of teaching and learning contexts which make use of digital technology. While digital education is pervasive in Canada, pan-Canadian data on digital education are relatively scarce. The Canadian Digital Learning Research…

This study explores the activities, tools, and resources that instructors of massive open online courses (MOOCs) use to improve the personalization of their MOOCs. Following email interviews with 25 MOOC and open education leaders regarding MOOC personalization, a questionnaire was developed. This questionnaire was then completed by 152 MOOC…

Open educational resources are not available "as such". Their provision relies on a technological infrastructure of related services that can be described as an informational ecosystem. A closed informational ecosystem keeps educational resources within its boundary. An open informational ecosystem relies on the concurrence of…

The use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), a subset of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), can reduce the cost of purchasing software. Despite the benefit in the initial purchase price of software, deploying software requires total cost that goes beyond the initial purchase price. Total cost is a silent issue of FOSS and can only…

As freely adoptable digital resources, OpenCourseWare (OCW) have become a prominent form of Open Educational Resources (OER). More than 275 institutions in the worldwide OCW consortium have committed to creating free access open course materials. Despite the resources and efforts to create OCW worldwide, little understanding of its use exists.…

Open educational practices (OEP) is a broad descriptor of practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of open educational resources (OER) as well as open pedagogies and open sharing of teaching practices. As compared with OER, there has been little empirical research on individual educators' use of OEP for teaching in higher education.…

Financial issues regarding the sustainable production, dissemination, and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education are reviewed and proposed solutions critiqued. Use of OER produce demonstrable cost savings for students. Yet OER development continues to rely almost completely on government and philanthropic funding. This…

This paper presents a case study of the co-design process for an online course on Sustainable Development (Degree in Tourism) involving the teacher, two students, and the project researchers. The co-design process was founded on an inquiry-based and technology-enhanced model that takes shape in a set of design principles. The research had two main…