Behind the curtain is where what makes things happen, happens. How do design teams really design? Five doctoral students from Learning Design and Technology programs across the US had a unique opportunity to pay attention to graduate instructional design teams behind the curtain designing open educational resources for a non-profit that provides…

Adult educators integrate digital activities into instruction to provide flexible, engaging learning opportunities and help learners gain digital skills. Teachers are eager to create digital resources for their classes, but often are limited by the time and/or skills necessary to do so. A promising free-to-teachers solution employed in…

Shifting from open educational resources (OER) to open educational practices (OEP) is the next stage in the OER movement, but there have been few attempts to understand how the next phase in this movement will be achieved. Addressing this question can uncover the potential benefits of OER besides cost reduction. The current study represents the…

Open Educational Resources (OER) integrated online courses provide a rich and a flexible learning environment to acquire knowledge and skills among undergraduates. A significant issue with OER-integrated online courses is the poorly addressed instructional design features. Instructionally rich online courses will have a greater impact on both…

Open Education Practices (OEP) have been proposed as a way to increase both engagement in learning, and lower costs. Broadly, Open Educational Practices involve learners in creating, evaluating, remixing, or otherwise modifying Open Education Resources (OER). Aspirational descriptions of OEP frame them both as liberatory by engaging learners…

The educational paradigm has been changing, impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, that made witness the field's strengths, weaknesses, and lack of readiness making the transition from traditional classroom teaching to Online Remote Teaching and Learning (ORTL). While pre-pandemic studies state that teachers were willing to change, post-pandemic…

This exploratory piece is intended to set the stage for an ongoing conversation about Open Educational Resources (OER). The current OER landscape has hundreds of repositories and thousands of curated guides and lists for finding OER--few of which "talk" to each other behind the scenes, resulting in separate and often redundant resources…

Following the institution's strategic goal to make it an affordable campus, institutional administrators advocated using open educational resources (OERs) to reduce the cost of attendance and improve low retention rates in gateway courses. In this project, researchers invited faculty members to systematically design, develop, and deliver three…

This study tested the influence of instructional elements within an online Open Educational Resource (OER) focused on information literacy (IL) on outcome measures of IL achievement, learner satisfaction and IL self-efficacy among undergraduate students. An online OER was designed to address the domains of access, evaluation and communication of…

This study utilizes a qualitative research design to investigate the design experiences of massive open online courses (MOOCs) instructors in South American academic institutions. It reveals that MOOC instructors are primarily motivated to teach MOOCs from their desire to make contributions to society (e.g., providing free and accessible MOOCs on…

While several studies have investigated the various effects of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP), few have focused on its connection to learning achievement. The related scientific literature is divided about the effects of OER and OEP with regards to their contribution to learning achievement. To address this…

We seek to guide design, development, and adoption of Renewable Assignments by testing ways learners can contribute to Open Educational Resources (OER). We design, test, and iterate four assignment structures to this end. Testing was completed in an upper-division undergraduate endocrinology course, taught emergency remote due to COVID-19. Using…

Video and interactive media provide visual exposition and review for students to formulate cognitive representations where learning and reflection take place, especially in science laboratories. More inclusively, open educational resources (OER) with interactive content can facilitate access to media-enhanced learning. This paper reports part of a…

That writing can support students' learning in science and mathematics has been documented, yet little is known about how empirical findings have been applied in (1) materials designed to support science and math instruction; and (2) informal learning environments mediated by peer instructors. This dissertation examines two relatively unexplored…

This study aimed to investigate distance education practices in higher education during the pandemic, focusing on lived experiences, and proposing a policy decision framework for future distance education in similar conditions. Additionally, the study aimed to establish a design framework for an Emergency Action Plan for similar crisis periods. In…