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A critical attribute of open educational practices (OEP) is the pursuit of open scholarship which comprises the release of educational resources under an open licence scheme that permits no-cost access, use, reuse, adaptation, retention and redistribution to others. The degree of openness in relation to this attribute will depend on the context and culture of the place and the people in it. When left to chance, the adoption and practice of open scholarship by educators is at best sketchy. For optimum impact, a design-based approach is essential. A central focus of such an approach will need to target educators’ belief systems and practices about their scholarship. Any such work will involve researchers collaborating with practitioners in real-life settings to improve educational practices through iterative analysis, design, development and implementation. The purpose of this paper is to report on how the development and use of such a design-based approach, implemented by the Open University of Sri Lanka, impacted the adoption and uptake of open scholarship among teachers in the Sri Lankan school system in terms of changes in their use of instructional resources, pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices.

The study adopted a design-based research (DBR) approach (Reeves, 2006), which involved researchers collaboratively working with practitioners in real-life settings to improve their educational practices along three aspects – instructional resource use, pedagogical perspectives and pedagogical practices. Based on the four stages of the DBR approach – analysis, solution, testing and refinement, and reflection, a professional development intervention programme was designed and implemented to support teachers on the integration of open educational resources (OER) and adoption of OEP in their teaching-learning process. Data collected throughout the process using multiple strategies such as questionnaire surveys, concept mapping, lesson plans, focus group interviews, self-reflections and “stories”, were analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods.

By the end of the intervention, significant changes were observed in teachers’ use of instructional resources, their pedagogical thinking and pedagogical practices. While resource usage has shifted from no or low usage of OER to reuse, revise, remix and creation of OER, the pedagogical thinking and practices of teachers moved from a content-centric and individualized patterns to more constructivist, context centric and collaborative ways. The diffusion of OEP was prominent along two dimensions – enhancements in the individual practices in innovative OER use as well as collaborative practices of sharing of resources, knowledge and good practices.

The systematic and flexible methodology adopted based on the DBR approach via a framework designed as a contextualized, process oriented and a self-reflective enquiry has been very useful to support changes in OEP among practitioners over time.

This iterative process allowed the researchers to function as “designers”, while investigating real-life issues in collaboration with the practitioners through reflective enquiry to further refine innovative practices towards OEP. This provides valuable insights for improved design solutions for future interventions in similar contexts.

The aim of this paper is to present an initiative to apply the principles of Linked Data to enhance the search and discovery of OpenCourseWare (OCW) contents created and shared by the universities.

This paper is a case study of how linked data technologies can be applied for the enhancement of open learning contents.

Results presented under the umbrella of OCW-Universia consortium, as the integration and access to content from different repositories OCW and the development of a query method to access these data, reveal that linked data would offer a solution to filter and select semantically those open educational contents, and automatically are linked to the linked open data cloud.

The new OCW-Universia integration with linked data adds new features to the initial framework including improved query mechanisms and interoperability.

Research in the area of technology‐enhanced learning (TEL) throughout the last decade has largely focused on sharing and reusing educational resources and data. This effort has led to a fragmented landscape of competing metadata schemas, or interface mechanisms. More recently, semantic technologies were taken into account to improve interoperability. The linked data approach has emerged as the de facto standard for sharing data on the web. To this end, it is obvious that the application of linked data principles offers a large potential to solve interoperability issues in the field of TEL. This paper aims to address this issue.

In this paper, approaches are surveyed that are aimed towards a vision of linked education, i.e. education which exploits educational web data. It particularly considers the exploitation of the wealth of already existing TEL data on the web by allowing its exposure as linked data and by taking into account automated enrichment and interlinking techniques to provide rich and well‐interlinked data for the educational domain.

So far web‐scale integration of educational resources is not facilitated, mainly due to the lack of take‐up of shared principles, datasets and schemas. However, linked data principles increasingly are recognized by the TEL community. The paper provides a structured assessment and classification of existing challenges and approaches, serving as potential guideline for researchers and practitioners in the field.

Being one of the first comprehensive surveys on the topic of linked data for education, the paper has the potential to become a widely recognized reference publication in the area.

The implementation of the national education and lifelong education should break through the traditional learning mode in the digital era. A seamless learning environment is the intelligent form of deep integration of digital learning environment and physical learning environment. The development and construction of seamless learning space and platform is a new trend of international mobile learning research and practice. So, the purpose of this paper is to build a seamless learning platform of the open education system by expanding and improving the connotation and extension of seamless learning, based on the theories of mobile learning, ubiquitous learning and open education, combining with the characteristics of the big data era.

A seamless learning platform model will be constructed through constructing five modules including resource integration module, requirement module, management module, teacher integration module, and carrier module, using interdisciplinary research methods (combined with economics), functional analysis, model methods and exploratory research methods. Finally, this paper attempts to realize the application of a seamless learning platform in open education through the strategic path of public-private partnership (PPP).

Seamless learning platform model given by this paper can effectively eliminate the problem of information asymmetry between learner-demander and educational manager through the effective management of carrier fusion module. Furthermore, it can effectively integrate the learning resources and teachers of the open education system and social individual education system, and provide high-quality shared learning resources and diverse stratification teachers to students and social workers through PPP project cooperation ways.

There are many papers on the study of open education and resource construction. However, few papers have studied how to effectively integrate and optimize various existing scattered online resources, including various system courses, teachers and platform systems. The paper provides an effective way to solve the above sub-problems and the realization path/model reference for the effective and accurate promotion of lifelong sustainable learning for all.

Open educational resources (OERs) are internet-based digital content that is used for academic purposes by instructors, students and researchers in the era of the information economy. Hence, this study aims to systematically review the literature, focusing on OERs’ benefits and challenges in the academic world.

The relevant literature systematically reviewed following the preferred reporting items for systematic literature reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The pertinent literature was obtained from four main scholarly databases, and finally, 21 papers that met the inclusion criteria were included in this study.

The findings revealed that the key benefits of OERs include expanded access to knowledge, supporting lifelong learning, pedagogical benefits and enhancing students’ learning outcomes. However, the key challenges include lack of time to find appropriate resources, lack of awareness about the usage and copyrights, quality assurance and technological limitations and lack of organizational support.

The practical and policy implications highlight the joint venture of academia and library professionals to help the students evaluating OERs, quality assurance, copyright issues and lifelong learning.

Earlier studies missed few significant insights of OERs, such as they did not address the quality assurance of OERs; the issue of understanding of copy right (creative common license) challenges related with OERs; and lack of time for finding suitable resources. Hence, this study identified significance insights related with OERs.

This paper aims to examine librarians’ professional motivations and theoretical perspectives to attend to care and student voice, as they pursue open educational resource (OER) initiatives in higher education.

The authors examine OER initiatives that serve as models for their work at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder), describe how they have attended to care and student voice in their work to date and reflect on how they hope to continue to do so in their future OER initiatives.

The authors find connections between theoretical perspectives for care in education and the values and ethics of both the open education movement and librarianship. They propose that these connections provide a foundation for librarians to align their professional motivations and practices in support of learning. The authors provide examples of OER programming that attend to care and student voice and offer related strategies for practitioners to consider.

Librarians at many post-secondary institutions provide critical advocacy and support the adoption, adaptation and creation of OER in higher education. Theories of care, values and ethics in the open education movement and librarianship provide a foundation for librarians to attend to care and elevate student voice as they undertake OER advocacy and initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to show that pointing to patterns of change in the adoption and institutionalization of educational resources, the appropriateness of traditional heavy and front‐loaded planning and management regimes is challenged in favor of alternative Agile Methods.

Starting from the simple observation that the original introduction of Course Management Systems to support online learning was ad hoc and evolutionary, rather than planned at an enterprise level, the paper points to the conflict between, and offers a solution for, open and decentralized resources and traditional teaching, learning, support, and management. By developing a logic to decentralization, a number of managerial strategies to improve agility are provided that address the changing nature of the university from one fundamentally designed to control, to one positioned to influence and adapt under the assumptions of change.

It is found that many components of the university including teaching, learning content, learning design, content development and management, and core infrastructure are shifting from centralized to decentralized models, while current management and governance practices remain centralized resulting in lagging development and increased risk.

The connections made here open a dialog for challenging and changing traditional management and decision‐making approaches within the organization, to better account for the environment that decentralized systems create.

Informal learning is an effective and motivating strategy to support the learning process. Informal learning has received increased attention recently due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. However, finding effective ways to facilitate innovative teaching and learning through open educational resources (OER) is a vital issue. The purpose of the current study is to investigate the informal learning characteristics (ILC) (i.e. observation, imitation, exploration, innovation and articulation) of teachers in using OER and whether these characteristics have any relationship with teachers' innovative work behavior (IWB, i.e. opportunity exploration, idea generation, idea promotion and idea realization) in schools.

The current study utilized a descriptive quantitative survey approach. A survey with three parts was developed: the Open Educational Resources Scale (OERS), the Teachers' Informal Learning Characteristics Scale (TILCS) and the Teachers' Innovative Work Behavior Scale (TIWBS). The information was gathered from a sample of 2,024 teachers working in Kuwait's public schools through an online survey.

The results revealed that social media, YouTube, PowerPoint and games were the most common open resources used by teachers. Teachers' responses on the TILCS showed that observation was the most common among teachers and exploration was the second. Responses on the TIWBS showed that idea generation was the highest. When using OER, the results showed that all five subscales of the TILCS and all four subscales of the TIWBS were linked in a good way.

This study had several limitations that should be considered in future research. First, the data collection method was self-report. Future research necessitates adopting qualitative methods such as participant observations where IWB can be monitored and documented. Another limitation is almost all teachers have smartphone with Internet access, which may have affected the results. This situation might not be found in other countries since a large percentage of young people in Kuwait use information and communication technology as is the case in other Gulf region countries.

This study expects that this kind of support will be reflected on teachers' IWB which accelerates teachers' movement toward upper IWB tasks such as idea promotion and idea realization. This support will motivate teachers to transform teachers' innovative ideas into useful applications and try to assist teachers' colleagues through conducting workshops or inviting well-known educators to present their experiences to school personnel.

This study can be a guide to help teachers be independent, self-directed, problem-solving-oriented and internally motivated by incorporating the assumptions of andragogy theory. Furthermore, this study points out the high tendency of teachers to use OER and helps to plan teachers' professional development programs that take Andragogical tendencies into account in addition to developing teachers' lifelong learning skills.

The results implied that teachers have obvious ILC toward OER, specifically through observation and exploration to create their own innovations in their work environments. With the appropriate internal and external incentives and support from school administrators, this study expects that teachers will move forward toward upper informal learning stages such as innovation and articulation and toward upper tasks in IWB such as idea promotion and idea realization. As a result, schools as places of work can go through a lot of changes if new OER-related applications and workshops are added.

This paper is intended to contextualize the major themes of the special issue, “The Intersections of Open Education and Equity Pedagogy” in the Journal for Multicultural Education, by providing a brief history of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) and highlighting the growing focus on social justice within the field. The purpose of this paper is to generate discussions around the potential of OER and OEP to increase equity within education.

This featured paper summarizes and reviews a brief history of OER and OEP, discusses the integration of equity pedagogy within open education, elaborates on the rationale and process for developing the special issue and concludes by identifying challenges and ongoing conversations for the field as a response to the need for social justice action.

Despite increasing acceptance of OER, educators are not aware of how to implement OER and OEP with equity in mind. As OER and OEP continue to expand, teachers across all educational sectors need examples of how to teach effectively with these resources and practices. There is also a rising focus on culturally relevant and sustaining teaching practices, which OEP can complement.

The authors provide this featured piece to contextualize the special issue for those new to open education. The authors hope to further the discussion of social justice and equity pedagogy within open education.

This paper provides background for the special issue, to orient readers to the field of open education.

This paper presents recently published resources on library instruction and information literacy, providing an introductory overview and a selected annotated bibliography of publications covering various library types, study populations and research contexts.

This paper introduces and annotates English-language periodical articles, monographs, dissertations, reports and other materials on library instruction and information literacy published in 2020.

The paper provides a brief description of all 440 sources and highlights sources that contain unique or significant scholarly contributions.

The information may be used by librarians, researchers and anyone interested in a quick and comprehensive reference to literature on library instruction and information literacy.