The use of open textbooks in universities is according to some organisations changing the higher education landscape and is promising for the mainstream adoption of OER. The aim of this paper is to analyse authors' views of agency and empowerment when they plan, create and reflect on their open textbooks, their teaching and students' learning.…

In many academic fields Western/white/male/cishetero/abled perspectives are often centered, while other perspectives are presented as "other." Implicitly, this sends messages to students that success looks like one type of person, knowledge is generated in one kind of way, and their background is not worth being centered. While open…

Open educational resources have become a strategic source of a high degree of importance and this explains the reason for the acceleration of countries to join the use of them, but unfortunately, the results of a survey study conducted in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on eight experts in e-learning showed a gap that hinders integration in the use of…

Background: The rapid globalization along with the growing trend of openness and sharing approach enabled widespread of digital technologies all over the world. However, we can still find differences between countries in technology use and perceptions of usefulness for learning. Understanding students' use of educational technology and their…

Objective: The purpose of this study was to explore, develop, test, and refine processes to incorporate meaningful and equitable use of open educational resources (OER) in online classrooms. Method: The intent of this qualitative study was to use an action research process of interactive discussions between higher education practitioners to shape…

This paper discusses the history of the instructional design and technology field in four major time periods: (1) 1900s-1930s, (2) World War II-1970s, (3) 1980s-1990s, and (4) 21st century. Since the 20th century has been discussed in detail in earlier works, this paper puts more focus on the 21st century section, which includes discussions of…

Ecologies of openness--inclusion, intersections, and interstices--raises questions about the concepts of open, openness, opened, and opening, throughout educational contexts. The rise of openness and open pedagogy has impacts on educational paradigm shifts and university reforms in open and flexible learning. The focus of this article is to…

Students need help in transitioning from high school to university. It's important to facilitate their guidance in choosing the course of study and consequently their experience with the first exams, reducing the abandonment. The University of Turin, financially supported by the banking institution Compagnia di San Paolo, has invested in…

Open Educational Resources (OER) have the potential to change the domain of higher education; however, adoption is still limited. As teachers are the pivotal actors to adopt OER, more insights are needed on their practices with OER and need of support. This exploratory study uses the OER Adoption Pyramid as a framework to analyse adoption of OER…

This article takes a first look at the major issues and trends that are currently being seen in 2019 emerging in the region's legislatures related to higher education and workforce development. Topics include: affordability, student loan debt, and college closures/mergers/acquisitions/collaborations. Other bills touch on emerging issues:…

"Open" initiatives, which focus on increasing access to education, resources, and research, are often practised by individuals rather than universities. However, universities must now produce openly accessible research to comply with research funding and assessment requirements. To encourage staff participation, universities need to…

This case study describes the development of a free-to-use online platform for storing, sharing, and accessing 360-degree Virtual Reality (VR) videos. Although in the past VR was mostly used for gaming purposes, in recent years it has become increasingly popular in numerous areas, including education. In the field of language learning, little is…

Crowdsourcing is an important tool for collecting spatio-temporal data, which has various applications in education. The objectives of this study were to develop and test a laboratory exercise on soil erosion by water and field data crowdsourcing in an online introductory soil science course (FNR 2040: Soil Information Systems) at Clemson…

The founding goal of using standards within acquisition of distributed learning content and technology is to reduce cost in both current and future acquisitions and collaborative efforts across organizations. This document explores existing successful acquisitions and supplies that language as well as successful ways to implement best practices of…

Many Open Educational Resource (OER) and Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) studies explore cost savings, impact on learning outcomes, and student perceptions of the materials. While OER/ZTC research reports positive student perceptions (Brandle et al., 2019), textbook research reports negative student perceptions of digital textbooks (Behnke, 2018). This…