BRIDGING POLICY AND PRACTICE: AWARENESS OF THE UNESCO OER RECOMMENDATION ACROSS INSTITUTIONAL ROLES AND EXPERIENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION
Abstract
Open Education and Open Educational Resources havegained importance in the context of higher education, but thereis less information available on the extent to which the UNESCO OER Recommendation is interpreted at the institutionallevel. The concept of awareness is especially pertinent since it determines the degree to which practice can be informedby policy in professional contexts. This study examined the level of awareness of the UNESCO OER Recommendationamong higher education professionals and explored whether awareness differed by institutional role and experience inOpen Education. A quantitative, cross-sectional design based on secondary data analysis was employed. The study used135 valid responses and focused on organization type, country, institutional role, experience in Open Education, andawareness of the UNESCO OER Recommendation. Descriptive statistics, cross-tabulation, and chi-square tests were usedfor analysis. Awareness was generally moderate to high, with most respondents reporting that they were very familiar orsomewhat familiarwith the UNESCO OER Recommendation. No statistically significant association was found betweenawareness and institutional role. However, awareness was significantly associated with experience in Open Education,with greater involvement corresponding to higher levels of familiarity. Awareness of the UNESCO OER Recommendationappears to be shaped more by practical engagement in Open Education than by formal institutional position. Embeddingopen education in routine institutional practice may therefore be important for strengthening policy uptake in highereducation.
Downloads
References
Aluko, R. (2017). Applying UNESCO guidelines on mobile learning in the South African context: Creating an
enabling environment through policy. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(7).
Atenas, J., Havemann, L., Neumann, J., & Stefanelli, C. (2020). Open education policies: Guidelines for co-creation.
Blomgren, C. (2018). OER awareness and use: The affinity between higher education and K-12. The International
Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(2).
Bossu, C., & Stagg, A. (2018). The potential role of Open Educational Practice policy in transforming Australian
higher education. Open Praxis, 10(2), 145-157.
Bozkurt, A., & Stracke, C. M. (2023). The shift toward openness in education and the implications for learning
ecosystems and ecologies. In Distributed learning ecosystems: Concepts, resources, and repositories (pp. 31-46).
Wiesbaden: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.
Carlisle-Johnston, E. (2023). A short history of OER.
de Beer, J. (2017). Open innovation in development: Integrating theory and practice across open science, open
education, and open data.
Ebner, M., Orr, D., & Schön, S. (2022). OER Impact Assessment: A framework for higher education institutions and
beyond. Approaches to assess the impact of Open Educational Resources. Open Education Studies, 4(1), 296-309.
Enders, J., & Naidoo, R. (2022). The rise and work of new professionals in higher education. In Research handbook
on academic careers and managing academics (pp. 89-98). Edward Elgar Publishing.
Huang, R., Liu, D., Tlili, A., Knyazeva, S., Chang, T. W., Zhang, X., ... & Holotescu, C. (2020). Guidance on open
educational practices during school closures: Utilizing OER under COVID-19 pandemic in line with UNESCO OER
recommendation. Beijing: Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University, 1-80.
Marín, V. I., Zawacki-Richter, O., Aydin, C. H., Bedenlier, S., Bond, M., Bozkurt, A., ... & Zhang, J. (2022).
Institutional measures for supporting OER in higher education: An international case-based study.
McGreal, R., Mackintosh, W., & Lane, D. (2023). OER-based online micro-courses: Supporting UNESCO strategic
development goal 4: Education for all. Journal of Open, Flexible and Distance Learning, 27(1), 5-13.
Ossiannilsson, E. (2019). OER and OEP for access, equity, equality, quality, inclusiveness, and empowering lifelong
learning. The International Journal of Open Educational Resources, 1(2).
Ossiannilsson, E., Leonor Ulloa Cazarez, R., Martins Gomes de Gusmão, C., Zhang, X., Blomgren, C., ChaplinCheyne, T., & Burgos, D. (2023). The UNESCO OER Recommendation: Some Observations from the ICDE OER
Advocacy Committee. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 24(2), 229-240.
Otto, D., Schroeder, N., Diekmann, D., & Sander, P. (2021). Trends and gaps in empirical research on open educational
resources (OER): A systematic mapping of the literature from 2015 to 2019. Contemporary Educational Technology,
(4), ep325.
Palvia, S., Aeron, P., Gupta, P., Mahapatra, D., Parida, R., Rosner, R., & Sindhi, S. (2018). Online education:
Worldwide status, challenges, trends, and implications. Journal of global information technology management, 21(4),
-241.
Ramírez-Montoya, M. S., McGreal, R., & Obiageli Agbu, J. F. (2022). Complex digital horizons in the future of
education 4.0: Insights from UNESCO recommendations. RIED-Revista Iberoamericana de Educación a Distancia,
(2), 09-21.
Reddy, P. R. S., Bhoga, U., Reddy, A. M., & Rao, P. R. (2017). OER: Open Educational Resources for Effective
Content Management and Delivery. Journal of Engineering Education Transformations, 322-326.
Santos-Hermosa, & Proudman. (2022). DATASET SPARC Europe Open Education in European Libraries of Higher
Education Survey 2022 [Data set]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7313632
Schneijderberg, C. (2020). Higher Education Professionals, A Growing Profession. In The International Encyclopedia
of Higher Education Systems and Institutions (pp. 731-736). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands.
Schon, S., Ebner, M., Berger, E., Brandhofer, G., Groblinger, O., Jadin, T., ... & Zwiauer, C. (2021). OER certification
of individuals and organisations in higher education: Implementations worldwide. Open Praxis, 13(3), 264-278..
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 International Journal For Research In Educational Studies
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
