OE Global 2018

Over the course of three years, the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project – with its 100 researchers across 21 countries in 17 sub-projects – has sought to obtain the data and engage in the analysis necessary to answer this. The main research question for this project is: Can OEP and OER provide equitable access to relevant, high quality, affordable and sustainable education in the Global South?
Using a meta-synthesis approach, the open practices reported in the studies were compared to an idealised or maximal set of open processes outlined in Hodgkinson-Williams’ Open Education cycle, drawing upon Archer’s (2003) social realist theory to uncover agential decision-making about OER creation, use and adaptation in relation to structural and cultural environments.
Findings from the ROER4D project show that, in the Global South contexts that were studied, the ideal or maximal Open Education cycle is incomplete in terms of the benefits of OER adoption being optimised. There are five key points of disjuncture: (1) the dependence on copying of existing OER and the corollary failure to localise; (2) the adaptation of OER, but with inconsistent curation and re-hosting of derivative works on a publicly available platform or repository, which limits access to the derivative OER; (3) limited circulation of derivative OER due, in part, to the absence of a specific communication strategy; (4) inconsistent quality assurance processes; and (5) a weak feedback loop for continuous improvement of the original or derivative work

Reference
Archer, M. (2003). Structure, agency, and the internal conversation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.