Purpose: The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) was a milestone when it was uniformly adopted by its member states on November 25, 2019. The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide an overview of the OER Recommendation in relation to some of the UN…

University systems maintain prohibitive closures that constitute a closed-loop system: opaque academic practices, control of what counts as knowledge, financial and social exclusion, and the perpetuation of privilege. Yet this closed-loop system is also governed by adherence to values around education as a public good, openness, and authenticity,…

Models of education that we find in city museums in Austria bear the danger of avoiding discussing the Nazi past. But on the other hand, there is potential in the freedom of being about to skirt it. The lack of pressure to address the topic can lead to a more open approach in discussions, but the ease with which the topic can be avoided is…

For a successful transition from distance learning to first careers, adolescents' psychosocial and career decision-making will require analytics-driven support services. However, current distance-education support services in Ghana have yet to adopt psychometric techniques for effective career guidance and innovative pedagogy in the post-COVID…

The academic success of first-year students' learning in science faculties is by no means assured, especially in an Open Distance Learning setting with its limited number of face-to-face encounters between students and lecturers or tutors. Therefore, such encounters should be highly efficient in view of the considerable amount of knowledge…

Student support is seen as a necessity to better students' progress. For students to succeed when studying at a distance, they need a great deal of support to adjust to the institution of higher learning. Independence theory was used as a lens to understand the role of student support staff in providing services to students. A qualitative case…

Within the scope of this study, it is aimed to determine the usability of the Internet of Things Technology in open and distance learning environments. In this context, the phenomenology method was used in order to get the opinions of field experts. The criterion sampling method, which is one of the purposeful sampling methods, was used in…

Purpose: In 2019, the goal of developing a world-class open university through different stages was put forward by the Open University of China (OUC), which indicated that internationalization for Chinese open universities came to the agenda. However, international activities of open universities are different from those in conventional…

This paper offers overarching insights into the benefits and drawbacks of Open Educational Resources (OER) for learning communities. A semi-systematic literature review (SSLR) is used as a research approach. Data is gathered from research articles, books, and other published work, and analyzed using thematic analysis. OER and Open Educational…

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) are top universities' digital innovative educational resources and provides broadly, are open to the public, offer teaching guidance, and conduct interactive exchanges. MOOCs has been a reasonably widespread entrant in the field of open and distance education. This innovative approach is pronounced to have the…

This paper examines the introduction of Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) in Denmark and its potential as a pedagogical tool used throughout Danish education culture and particularly in Danish primary schools. The first active Danish users of and trainers in VTS in the country provide purposive qualitative interview data through structured e-mail…

The global pandemic has led to an explosion of open learning opportunities for academics to connect, share and develop ideas together. This paper presents a collaborative autoethnographic case study on the educational leadership approaches enacted and experienced in the voluntary Creativity for Learning in Higher Education (#creativeHE) community.…

The aim of this study is to examine the variables that influence the learners' intention of using online learning platforms and usage behavior continuity to evaluate relationships between variables with a model proposal and to determine the predictive power of the model. Accordingly, a sustained technology acceptance model (STAM) was developed to…

This study examined the problems that pre-service teachers face in the online assessment process and their suggestions for solutions to these problems. The participants were 136 pre-service teachers who have been experiencing online assessment for a long time and who took the Foundations of Open and Distance Learning course. This research is a…

We educators may have been obsessed with perfection, expertise, polished experiences and performances too much for too long. Where is the human? Ironed out? This provocative opinion paper is a collection of the authors' reflections based on experiences, observations, ideas and readings. We invite educators to consider and explore what may help…