Open Educational Resources (OER) in higher education cannot be put into practice without considering institutional contexts, which differ not only globally but also within the same country. Each institutional context provides educators with opportunities or limitations where Open Educational Practices (OEP) and OER for teaching and learning are…

Teachers' self-directed professional development (i.e., professional development implemented by teachers on their own) has been considered a useful channel of overcoming external constraints in under-resourced contexts, where external support for teachers may be limited. However, almost no research has focused on how such development could be…

This paper explores faculty's perspectives and use of open educational resources (OER) and their repositories across different countries by conducting a multiple case study to find similarities and differences between academics' awareness, perceptions and use of OER, as well as examining related aspects of institutional policy and quality that may…

This qualitative study explored the emotional trajectories students experienced when faced with open educational resources (OER) that expanded the learning available from a required textbook. Data included students' reflections, group discussions, and interviews, along with field notes which were collected in a classroom at a Chinese university in…

Although open educational resources (OERs) can help bridge high school-university vocabulary gaps, central questions remain unanswered regarding effective design that enables students to go beyond the "small chunks" that typically characterize vocabulary learning in mobile learning environments (MLEs). This bi-national study adopted a…

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project "'Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures--EduArc,'" funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or…

Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory focuses on developing language learners' meta-linguistic understanding of the interrelation among linguistic form (grammar/vocabulary), meaning, and context. Guided by SFL when using a mandatory textbook and open educational resources, this study investigates how exposure to this blended teaching and…

Open and distance education has been playing an important role in China's development of higher education and lifelong learning. In 2012, the Chinese government approved six large-scale radio and television universities (RTVUs) to become open universities (OUs), including the Open University of China (OUC), Beijing Open University (BJOU), Shanghai…