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Citation: Research in Learning Technology 2023, 31: 2916 - http://dx.doi.org/10.25304/rlt.v31.2916

Research in Learning Technology
Vol. 31, 2023

ORIGINAL RESEARCH ARTICLE

‘Give and Take’ – higher education teachers using open educational
resources

Nadine Schroeder* and Sophia Donat

Department of Educational Sciences, Learning Lab, University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen,
Germany

(Received: 05 October 2022; Revised: 12 January 2023; Accepted: 26 February 2023;
Published: 17 April 2023)

Open educational resource (OER) as free teaching and learning materials can con-
tribute to the collaborative design and development of teaching. To support higher
education teachers in their work with teaching in general and OER in particular
and to encourage their use of OER, it is necessary to pay attention to their needs
and requirements. This paper presents the results of a research project, identi-
fying the usage behaviour of German-speaking higher education teachers. In an
interview study, they were asked about their experience with OER to get detailed
insights into their practices concerning their ‘use’ and ‘revise’ of materials. From
this, four user types were derived according to different OER activities, such as
creating, reusing, editing, and publishing OER, and their scope. Finally, these
user types are transferred to considerations when designing OER infrastructures
and establishing support options. These are aligned with the specifics of each user
type, making the research findings a complementary contribution for application
in higher education.

Keywords: open educational resources; higher education; usage; practices; reusing

Introduction

Open educational resources (OER) provide access to and allow the exchange of dig-
ital teaching and learning materials. In addition, OER also enables access to open
material and gives educators the opportunity to network within a community. They
can create learning materials with feedback and input from all over the world and
thereby improve their teaching professionalism. Therefore, OER have great potential
to make teaching and learning more efficient and more collaborative in open and dis-
tributed environments. One challenge here is to establish a culture of Give and Take
among educators so that communities can emerge to create and edit OER. Therefore,
detailed insights into teachers’ practices when working with OER are necessary to
further develop support structures and technical infrastructures.

This paper presents the results of a research project that explores OER usage
behaviour by higher education teachers as well as their needs and requirements
concerning OER. For this purpose, an interview study was conducted with OER

mailto:nadine.schroeder@fh-bielefeld.de
http://www.alt.ac.uk/
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experienced higher education teachers about their practical usage with OER. How-
ever, barriers that are common among non-users of OER, such as licensing, or tech-
nology acceptance, are not considered in this study. After presenting theoretical
concepts and usage studies that resulted in the methodological approach, basic results
are described. From this, four user types according to different OER activities and
their scope were derived. Finally, these findings are discussed in the current discourse
and the user types are transferred to considerations when developing and establishing
support.

Background

Concepts of OER usage
The idea of OER can be presented in the context of open education (Zawacki- Richter
et al. 2020) and can be seen as part of the concept of open educational practices
(OEP), which describes the creation and use of OER related to the application of open
teaching methods and collaborative practices (Cronin 2017; Ehlers 2011). In addition,
learners can benefit from open practices by developing open materials and shaping
their learning process. According to Wiley and Hilton (2018), this OER-enabled
pedagogy is made possible by the 5Rs.

The concept of 5Rs according to Wiley (2014) illustrates the possibilities of open
licenses when dealing with educational materials. The access to materials and the
permission to own materials as a personal copy (retain) are the prerequisites for the
further rights to use, edit and share OER. Thus, materials with open licenses can be
reused by using and integrating them into one’s own materials (reuse), edited by mak-
ing changes and adaptations (revise), mixed by combining different contents (remix),
and shared publicly (redistribute). These usage rights can be reflected in different OER
lifecycles (Beaven 2018; Fulantelli et al. 2008; Pawlowski 2012) to illustrate how prac-
titioners create learning and teaching materials. These lifecycles have in common that
they include the elements search, design, use, edit and share which reflect the phases of
working with OER.

These approaches systemize the usage possibilities and behaviour regarding
OER so that these are summarized for the theoretical classification of the research
interest of this study. Based on the elements of OER lifecycles and the 5Rs, four
activities as central part of the OER concept (Gurell and Wiley 2008) can be
mapped in the practical usage of OER in the context of creating, reusing, editing
and publishing open materials (see Table 1). In the production of OER, external
open content can be used (reuse) and, if necessary, inserted into own materials with
modifications and adaptations (edit). In distinction to the integration of external

Table 1. OER activities related to OER cycle and 5Rs.

OER activity OER cycle 5R

Create Design
Reuse Use Reuse
Edit Edit Revise, Remix
Publish Share Redistribute

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OER, own materials can also serve as a basis for the development of OER (create).
Finally, compiled OER are publicly shared and disseminated under an open license
(publish).

Usage studies of OER
The application of each element of the 5Rs and the OER cycle has been explored
in various studies in higher education contexts presented below. Educators seem to
engage in various OER activities in their practice by searching, merging, modify-
ing and using OER (Beaven 2018). Integrating external OER into one’s own mate-
rials occurs with and without modifications (Rodés et al. 2019). External materials
are adapted for individual contexts, usually by adapting or changing their content
( Cardoso, Morgado, and Teixeira 2019). Different practices could be observed for dif-
ferent types of materials. While videos and images are reused without modifications,
instructors often make adaptations for course units. Presentations and assignments
are material types that are predominantly self-created and not reused by others (Baas
and Schuwer 2020).

By reusing OER, instructors aim to improve the quality of their teaching, but
they want to avoid too much effort for adaptations and remixing (Baas, Admiraal,
and van den Berg 2019). It is an open question how and to what extent remix activ-
ities are applied (Wiley, Bliss, and McEwen 2014). It could be found that teachers
rarely publish OER in repositories, but instead share their materials with students
and colleagues in informal settings (Beaven 2018). This provided evidence of dark
reuse (Wiley 2009), as use and dissemination take place outside of repositories (Baas,
Admiraal, and van den Berg 2019; Beaven 2018). Moreover, materials are often
shared without open licenses (Baas, Admiraal, and van den Berg 2019; Schuwer and
Janssen 2018).

Five usage types were derived from different usage patterns of educators based on
survey data from the OER Research Hub (Admiraal 2022; Open University 2015).
The characteristics of the usage types are based on activities of instructors related to
the creation, use, adaptation, publication, and commenting on resources in distinc-
tion of material types as well as the purpose of use. Almost half of the participants
could be assigned to Type 1 (49%), which is characterized by a high value of reuse and
editing of OER for various purposes, while own materials are not shared. The other
types are distributed in comparable proportions. Type 2 (12%) has the highest value in
commenting on resources in a repository, in addition to adapting OER. While Type 3
(12%) creates, edits and publishes OER, Type 4 (11%) participants have a high value
in all usage characteristics (creating, editing, publishing and commenting). Type 5
(16%) excels in consuming OER by scoring low on all characteristics. Thus, adapting
OER was found to be the largest proportion, while creating and publishing their own
OER were lowest.

Quantitative usage studies provide basic information about low usage of OER
(Baas, Admiraal, and van den Berg 2019; Schuwer and Janssen 2018) by teachers
and observations determined use and sharing as non-visible (Beaven 2018). However,
detailed insights into practices and behaviours of teachers in using and revising OER
and their needs are lacking (Heck et al. 2020). These insights from qualitative studies
are necessary to support instructors in using OER in their teaching practices. There-
fore, this paper presents the results of a qualitative research project that identifies

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usage patterns of OER by higher education teachers in order to facilitate the design
of support measures specifically for different user types on this basis.

Method

Since previous studies were mostly able to determine rather general information quan-
titatively (Heck et al. 2020), in light of the research needs and the depth of OER activ-
ities presented above, this study aims to identify actual practices of higher education
teachers in dealing with OER. The qualitative approach was chosen in order to gain
these deeper insights into the actual work with OER, which is often not possible with
quantitative research approaches due to operationalization processes (Kelle 2006).
The data were collected through semi-structured interviews as those allow to gather
both specific pieces of information in a comparable format and leave room for details
on individual user experience (Galletta 2013). Based on the overall research question
‘How do higher education teachers use OER?’, the following sub-research questions
were formulated:

• What types of OER-material do teachers create, use, edit and publish?
• How do teachers create, use, edit and share OER in their educational practice?
• What needs and requirements do teachers have when dealing with OER?
• Can certain types of use be identified?

The interviews (N = 18) were conducted with German-speaking university lecturers (8
female; 10 male) from Germany and Austria in video interviews (30–60 min) between
July and September 2020. Since the focus of this study is on the practices of higher
education teachers with OER as well as their explicit and implicit knowledge about
the use of OER, the interviews were conducted with teachers with OER experience
only. Participants were identified from existing networks of OER research projects and
internet searches for active individuals. Based on this, personal recommendations from
colleagues were included. This had the advantage that further participants could be
selected who, due to their background, could contribute to the broadest possible over-
all picture. 22 potential participants were contacted directly by e-mail, resulting in 18
interview confirmations. Prerequisites for the final participation in the interviews were:

• teaching at a German-speaking university
• creating open materials for teaching
• at least one further OER activity (reuse, edit, publish OER)

Accordingly, the interviewees were all active in university teaching (eight doctoral stu-
dents, six postdocs, four professors) and have practical knowledge regarding OER. To
adequately represent the diversity of active OER users some of the interviewees first
encountered with creating OER within the framework of projects, while other teach-
ers have been continuously practicing OER for several years. However, differences in
the extent of experience were not recorded, so no conclusions can be drawn in this
regard in the analysis. In terms of subject, six teachers can be assigned to the natural
sciences and 11 participants to the humanities and social sciences.

To structure the interviews according to the research questions, a semi-structured
interview guide with four main content areas was developed (Roulston and Choi
2018). As an introductory narrative stimulus, the teachers were asked to present one

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of their own OER. The other topics – design, development and implementation/evalua-
tion – were based on the presented theoretical background on OER and supplemented
with more specific questions.

The collected data were partially transcribed using interview-accompanying doc-
umentation, that is, only segments related to the specific research topic were tran-
scribed and considered for the analysis. The corresponding interview segments were
coded and categorized using the MAXQDA analysis software according to the con-
tent structuring qualitative method of Kuckartz (2018), which in contrast to other
qualitative approaches, such as the Grounded Theory Methodology (e.g. Corbin and
Strauss 2015), allows a rather structured analysis of the collected interview data. For
the category formation, main categories oriented to the underlying research questions
were first formed deductively for content framing and focusing. These are, based on
the framework of the interviewees, different types of material, their practices, and
needs and requirements. The first sub-category was formed on the basis of the topics
from the interview guide (see Table 2). To specify the characteristics, various further
subcategories were formulated inductively (Kennedy and Thornberg 2018).

Instead of following up with a type-forming qualitative content analysis,
approaches to type formation were made based on the identified content-structured
categories that refer specifically to the usage behaviour of individuals, using the docu-
ment map in MAXQDA. The typing was done exclusively with first and second order
subcategories that explicitly refer to experiences and practices working with OER.
This approach allows a focused look at the different types of users without including
too many environmental factors. The individual subcategories were then assigned to
the characterising OER activities (see Table 3).

Table 2. Coding scheme.

Main category First order subcategory

General conditions OER experience
OER motivation
Example materials
Origin of materials

Material types Creating
Reusing
Editing
Publishing

Creating and reusing Collaboration
Scope of reusing
Remix
Changes

Editing after use in teaching Feedback
Types of changes after use
Further materials

Sharing Internal
Public

Needs, requirements Difficulties
Suggestions
Version management

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Results

The evaluation of the qualitative study has resulted in findings about the use of OER
in university teaching. After presenting the main results with accompanying quotes
from the participants, derived user types of higher education teachers dealing with
OER are presented. The teachers’ sample OER provided the framework for the details
and background on their open activities and practices.

For seven participants, large-scale materials (e.g. courses, videos) were sup-
ported by projects aimed at publication as OER. Four projects on providing OER
were self-initiated and occurred on a one-time basis. However, all materials have
been used in their university’s own teaching. The conception of these OER was
either directly openly accessible or corresponding OER was published based on
closed courses.

Material types
The first research sub-question aimed to find out what types of materials teachers
create, use, edit and publish. The evaluation was then evaluated based on these OER
activities (see Figure 1).

Presentations, tasks, H5P elements and didactic concepts are mostly created as
open materials. In contrast to this, these material types are not published individu-
aly, but integrated into entire courses. Similar observations can be made for other
large-scale resources with high production effort, such as videos, textbooks, or an
interactive app. Even though published OER usually have a larger scope, teachers
tend to use independent, smaller types of material for their teaching, for example,
images.

Due to easy search options and simple possibilities for integration, images and
graphics are the most frequently reused type of material. Images are usually adapted
by minor changes, for example, cut or color adjusted, before embedding in own mate-
rials. Graphics without open licenses are often reworked or repurposed to avoid legal
consequences. The reuse of videos is mostly done by linking to external platforms.
Edits of videos take place, for example, by integrating H5P elements with interactive
exercises. Worksheets comprise all OER activities by creating own working materials,
reusing external ones, individually adapting, and combining them by remix and finally
making them publicly available.

Table 3. Relevant subcategories for creating user types linked to OER activities.

OER activity Main category First + second order subcategory

Create
Material types Creating
General conditions Origin of materials: Own materials

Reuse
Material types Reusing
General conditions Origin of materials: External OER

Edit
Material types Editing
Creating and Reusing Remix: OER

Publish
Material types Publishing
Sharing Public

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Practices
The second research sub-question ‘How do teachers create, use, edit and share OER
in their educational practice?’ was intended to provide a more detailed look into the
practices of the teachers. Here it was found that as a material base for creating OER,
almost half of the participants (8) rely on their own materials and only occasionally
(8) or not at all (2) on external OER. Poor findability and availability in the subject
areas, lack of open licenses or high adaptation effort are mentioned as hurdles for
the use of OER (‘If material doesn’t fit 100% and it’s too much that I would have to
change, […] then I rather do it myself ’. Participant 13; Translation by the authors).
However, available resources are an important source for impulses because ‘it’s also
living from getting inspired’ (Participant 14).

Eight participants integrate external OER from different types of materials as well
as individual elements of a resource into their own content. Using materials without
any changes happens rather rarely, because usually adaptations to contexts and to
the respective target group are necessary. To integrate external content into one’s own
concept, not only the content but also the scope, structure, arrangement, or design
need to be customized.

Combining different materials into a new resource is a typical scenario for the
creation and reuse of external content, to ‘put things together like a construction kit’
(Participant 01), because ‘it is also about mixing things up, for example, putting things
into a different context again and comparing them […]’ (Participant 14). One chal-
lenge when remixing OER is finding materials that are available with open licenses
because only those can be reused. Five participants stated that they actively use OER
remixing in their daily practice. For these users, ‘Remix [is] a central element of OER.
Swarm intelligence can be used in the process’ (Participant 06). Instead of using
entire courses (‘It would be great coincidence if I found exactly one course that fits’.
Participant 02) some (5) prefer to adopt individual course elements with the addition
of their own content and target group-specific adaptation. In some cases, videos and
courses are applied as complete materials by linking to them as self-study materials.

Figure 1. Material types by OER activities.

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The interviewees usually share materials both in a closed space with students
(18) and partly with colleagues (11) within their own institution or the professional
community as well as publicly. Although materials on a smaller scale are preferably
reused, they are rarely published.

With regard to reusing and editing materials, it emerged during the interviews
that transparency of changes and improvements as well as feedback and exchange
within a community are of particular importance. The resources presented by the
interviewees were created either alone (6), with colleagues from their own institution
(6) or across institutions in project teams (6). In some cases, correction loops were
integrated for collaborative revision of the content. According to the interviewees,
intra- departmental exchange among colleagues and inter-institutional exchange are
only common in a few cases. It can be stated that ‘this community idea […] has not
yet been established’ (Participant 02). Feedback and suggestions for possible changes
are considered valuable by all participants. ‘Every material […] is somehow in need
of improvement’ (Participant 01) and ‘it […] [gains] quality when you have the view
from the outside again’ (Participant 03). An OER-experienced and -active partici-
pant who has already received feedback via a personal blog and Twitter emphasizes,
‘What I really appreciate about OER is that you get peer feedback and can really
improve’ (Participant 16). Peer feedback is thus appreciated, however, some partici-
pants ‘have not yet found an active community to contribute’ (Participant 07). Often
there is not enough time for regular necessary updates, especially with project-based
materials. This is where an active community can provide useful support (‘At best,
others develop it further so that it doesn’t necessarily have to be done by the person
who created the material’. Participant 18).

Needs and requirements
Expectations and needs of the users could be identified, especially regarding the tech-
nical infrastructures. Low-threshold access to standardized and user-friendly OER
tools appears to be central. According to the interviewees, platforms for searching
OER and publishing different types of material could be expanded. The subdivision
of extensive materials into individual units, for example, images from a presentation,
could promote reuse. Functions for creating of materials collaboratively and interac-
tive exchange options are also desirable.

To make further developments of content visible, teachers expect a possibility to
provide new versions. For half of the participants, it is relevant that they can access
older versions and track changes between version. (‘I also wanted to show what
didn’t work so well and where there is still potential for improvement’. Participant
13). However, the freedom of the individual authors must be considered. One partic-
ipant summarizes: ‘I would like to be able to decide, this can stay, this is still relevant
[…] or I can say I don’t want this to be found anymore either, it’s so outdated now’
(Participant 04).

The desire for feedback and exchange as well as an interest in learning about
external reuses of their own materials can be identified. The interviewees them-
selves provided feedback on OER, which they reused and edited, only in a few
cases. Accordingly, there is a lack of an easy way to contact creators and functions
for commenting to realise voluntary feedback in the OER-sense of ‘give and take’
( Participant 04).

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User types
The final research focus addressed the question of whether different types of users
can be identified among teachers. Based on the results presented, the individual inter-
viewees can be assigned to identified OER activities: create, reuse, edit and publish
(see Table 1). For that, coded elements identified in the course of the qualitative con-
tent analysis (see chapter Method) that can be considered relevant to OER activi-
ties were selected. This involves the origin of the used content, differentiated by own
materials as a characteristic for ‘create’ and external open materials as a characteristic
for ‘reuse’. Editing of different types of materials and the use of remix in OER serve
as a reference point for the activity ‘edit’. ‘Publish’ refers to public provision on the
one hand, and to the types of materials shared on the other (see Table 3). Based on
these enabled codes, a document map was created (see Figure 2), with interviewees
clustered according to the Raediker and Kuckartz (2019) similarity measure, which
weights the presence of codes double and the absence of codes single. After plotting
the participants in a distance matrix, four groups matched in terms of OER activi-
ties. Whereupon four types of use emerged in the practical handling and use of OER
(see Table 4). The identification of the types of OER users here primarily serves as
a simple illustration of typical patterns of use (Kuckartz 2018), so that clues can be
drawn to promote the application of OER in higher education. Since these are exclu-
sively participants with OER experience, the user types do not include users who do
not work with OER. Instead, all user types create OER so that this activity is fulfilled
for all of them. The user types differ in the extent and frequency of use of the other
activities. This could be determined on the basis of the individual coded elements
(see Table 3).

Type A (see Table 4) is the largest group, with ten interviewees, who based their
developed materials mainly on their own materials. The creation of the materials was

Figure 2. Document map from MAXQDA showing the similarities of the participants.

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either done openly from the start or was later adapted or transformed to allow public
sharing. Legal difficulties were either avoided in advance by making little reuse of
external resources or by refraining from using materials without open licenses. One
characteristic of this type is that the publication of materials as OER was predomi-
nantly once-only and sometimes supported as part of projects.

Type B develops its content both through own materials and through the reuse and
integration of external OER, although this is predominantly done without special
editing. The finished resources are also mostly published. Three participants could be
assigned to this type.

Type C users create materials with open licenses and, in addition to their own
materials, also reuse and partially edit a high number of external OER, but do not
make them publicly available. Two interviewees practice these OER activities.

Type D includes all four OER activities and is practiced by three OER users. In
addition to the creation, reuse and publication, external materials are also frequently
edited and redesigned.

Discussion

The results of the interview study supplement the current discussion about the use
of OER among higher education teachers with OER experience. Usage studies from
current literature that include participants without an OER background have found
that use and adaptation of OER among teachers are low (Baas, Admiraal, and van
den Berg 2019; Schuwer and Janssen 2018), and sharing does not take place publicly,
so that reuse is not visible (Beaven 2018). The present study shows that the participat-
ing higher education teachers prefer to build their materials on their own materials
instead of reusing external OER. Results on dealing with different types of materials
are also comparable. It was found that presentations and assignments are predom-
inantly self-created and videos and images are often reused without modifications.
Beyond that, however, adaptations are made for use in individual contexts. Editing
in the sense of redesigning and remixing is rarely investigated in the literature. This
study has determined that this occurs only among a few instructors who have fully
aligned their teaching with open materials and practices and thus use all OER activi-
ties. Teachers who created and published OER as part of one-time projects were also
observed to share materials with colleagues in regular teaching contexts. Teachers
also reported that students elaborated content independently using external OER and
created their own OER. Thus, with the help of OER, open teaching methods were
supported in terms of OEP.

Compared to Admiraal (2022), the identified user types and their OER activi-
ties were examined in more detail due to the qualitative approach. For this, a high

Table 4. User types based on OER activities.

User type Number Participants Typical OER activity

A 10 01, 03, 05, 07, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15, 17 Create, Publish
B 3 08, 09, 18 Create, Reuse, Publish
C 2 04, 14 Create, Reuse, Edit
D 3 02, 06, 16 Create, Reuse, Edit, Publish

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number of participants could not be considered to support the distribution of the
types whereas Admiraal (2022) built on a large data basis. In addition, differences
in the underlying activities are present in both approaches. In contrast to the types
according to Admiraal (2022), commenting on OER was not considered in the type
formation of this study, so Type 2 and Type 4 are not comparable. Similarly, Type 5,
which exclusively consumes OER, does not find a counterpart in the presented user
types, since the creation of OER was defined as a prerequisite for participation. Type
1, the largest group with 50%, records the highest values for reuse and adaptation.
This is not reflected in the presented OER user types, especially since here, instead
of minor individual adaptations, edits in the form of redesign and remixing were
included in the evaluation. Type 3 is to be compared with Type D, as all OER activ-
ities are represented by a similar number of people (Type 1: 12%, Type D: 16.67%).

The distribution among the identified user types of this study is primarily due
to the selection of interviewees. To investigate open practices of teachers, the pre-
requisite was the involvement in the creation of an open resource. While recruiting
participants, a first clue was to identify creators of published OER which often had
been created and promoted as part of projects. This is also reflected in the practices
of Type A (55.55%). This user type, on the one hand, mainly uses its own materi-
als served as a basis in the creation and, on the other hand, often uses non-open
materials in their regular teaching. In contrast, there was a difficulty in identifying
participants who reuse external OER in their teaching but do not make their own
materials publicly available. Therefore, it can be assumed that Type C in fact applies
to a larger number of instructors who use OER with external openly licensed mate-
rials, but do not make them public. Type B and Type D, which differ in whether
external OER are processed, can be classified as experienced and active OER users.
The low percentage in Type D, which practices all OER activities, shows that editing
of external OER is limited.

Overall, the identified OER user types contribute to an overview of different
OER activities that should be considered differently in technical infrastructures and
support offerings. In each case, the distribution of the user types must be determined
individually in institutions to develop coordinated offers. The active involvement of
different types can ensure the creation of sustainable and demand-oriented offerings.
Type A, for example, requires the availability of external materials with open licenses
and professional quality. Since teachers prefer to reuse materials with a smaller
scope and integrate individual elements into their content, it should be possible to
divide extensive materials into individual thematic units or formats. The reuse of
materials can be further increased by building communities with opportunities for
exchange and feedback options. Type B can also benefit from this function to find
cooperation partners for the processing of materials. Type C needs support in pub-
lishing resources so that advice on legal issues, licensing, and publishing venues are
beneficial for them. Since Type A usually only publishes individual resources on an
irregular basis, this support can also be valuable for this user group to achieve a con-
tinuation of OER in teaching. In addition, guidance on open file formats and tools
could help increase the editing of external materials. Type D corresponds to the ideal
idea of OER users. Therefore, the aim is to increase this proportion among teachers
by promoting their visibility and active participation in OER communities so that
they can serve as an orientation for other teachers. For example, Type D teachers
could act in a multiplier function to promote the culture of ‘Give and Take’ among
Type A, B and C individuals.

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N. Schroeder and S. Donat

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Conclusion

Focus of this study was on the usage behaviour and application of open practices by
higher education teachers who have already had experiences with OER in their teach-
ing. The identified expectations, concerns and requirements of the teaching staff, must
be taken into account by the responsible actors when designing support measures.
The derived user types therefore serve as an orientation for supporting OER in higher
education. Initial options have been identified that need to be individually expanded
and shaped. It should be noted that due to the selection of interviewees, only a limited
impression of open practices and usage behaviours could be considered. Apart from
the interviewed OER users, there are of course other users with further expectations
and requirements. Furthermore, the limitation to German-speaking higher educa-
tion teachers must be taken into account. Copyright regulations in German-speaking
countries may have an influence on these specific results, for example with regard to
the use of external materials. Nevertheless, the presented interview study as well as the
main results can be used as a starting point for research in other countries or educa-
tional areas. Therefore, the results should be taken into consideration when designing
infrastructures and fostering support structures for OER.

It was found that some participants, in addition to OER activities in the context
of projects, do not use OER practices in their regular teaching. Nevertheless, the find-
ings cannot be projected on teachers who do not use open practices at all. For further
research, it is therefore necessary to also interview higher education teachers with no OER
experience, to evaluate their reasons for barriers, for example, possible fears. As an addi-
tion to the user types presented here, this could create the possibility of creating a more
general and in-depth concept for the implementation of a sustainable OER strategy.

Overall, the overarching goal of increasing and promoting the use of OER in
higher education as well as making it more widespread is still to be pursued to achieve
a cultural change. This can be seen as a prerequisite for developing subject-specific and
interdisciplinary communities that exchange information on materials. Thus, teachers
can benefit from the quality improvement of their materials and possible applications
for their teaching. Through the exchange of didactic concepts, more extensive open
teaching practices can be promoted beyond individual materials. In addition, learners
can be more involved in the design and development of materials and be motivated
to create, share and use them independently. The appropriate design and features of
technical infrastructures can also support this and should be taken into account by
developers of repositories and platforms.

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