ERIC Number: EJ1477908
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Jun
Pages: 24
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1042-1629
EISSN: EISSN-1556-6501
Available Date: 2025-02-10
Analyzing the Discourse on Open Educational Resources on Twitter: A Sentiment Analysis Approach
Kaushal Kumar Bhagat1; Sanjaya Mishra2; Ashis Kumar Parida3; Alyal Samal4; Georgios Lampropoulos5,6; Alakh Dixit7
Educational Technology Research and Development, v73 n3 p1297-1320 2025
This study investigated the sentiment of Twitter discourse on Open Educational Resources (OER). We collected 124,126 tweets containing hashtags related to OER posted from January 2017 to December 2021. We performed fine-grained sentiment analysis using Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) to categorize tweets into five sentiment classes: strongly negative, weakly negative, neutral, weakly positive and strongly positive. In addition, thematic analysis was performed by using PyTorch to identify the hidden themes in the tweets. Findings from this study reveal a predominantly positive sentiment toward OER on Twitter, highlighting the perceived benefits of accessibility, inclusivity, and the potential for enhancing educational equality. However, we also found that there are some negative sentiments expressed towards OER, with concerns about quality and effectiveness being the main reasons for criticism. In addition, longer tweets were more likely to express negative sentiments about OER. Finally, the thematic analysis revealed that most tweets center on resources or products that are obtainable through open licensing. These findings have implications for the promotion and implementation of OER and for understanding the role of social media in shaping discourse on education.
Descriptors: Discourse Analysis, Open Educational Resources, Social Media, Computer Mediated Communication, Classification, Educational Benefits, Criticism
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Advanced Technology Development Centre, West Medinipur, India; 2Commonwealth of Learning, Vancouver, Canada; 3National Institute of Technology, Department of Biotechnology and Medical Engineering, Rourkela, India; 4National Institute of Technology, Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering, Rourkela, India; 5University of Macedonia, Department of Applied Informatics, School of Information Sciences, Thessaloniki, Greece; 6University of Nicosia, Department of Education, School of Education, Nicosia, Cyprus; 7Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Department of Mining Engineering, West Medinipur, India