5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources

Abstract:
This chapter summarizes the growth and promise of the open educational
resources (OER) movement. At the same time, it emphasizes that in order for
OER to achieve its potential in widening equitable access to education,
practitioners must be mindful of several pitfalls. These problems and pitfalls
include the assumption that all students have access to digital technologies.
Another issue relates to the overreliance on under-compensated or voluntary
academic labour to create OER. A third pitfall is the ignorance of critical
accessibility requirements while developing OER. The fourth issue relates to
the disregard for data privacy when utilizing educational technologies.
Finally, there is the mounting problem of the undermining of the spirit and
practice of “open” education with the entry of commercial publishers into the
OER space. Each of these challenges and issues is addressed in this chapter.

Section 1

Page 1 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources
Running Head
RESOURCES

Right-hand:

THE

PROMISE

OF

OPEN

EDUCATIONAL

Running Head Left-hand: Rajiv S. Jhangiani

5
DELIVERING ON THE PROMISE OF OPEN
EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES
Pitfalls and Strategies

Rajiv S. Jhangiani

“Higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit,” or at least so
proclaims Article 26 of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(1948). However, whether due to a shortage of seats, deficient infrastructure, or geographic
or economic barriers, access to higher education remains an elusive dream for millions.
This access dilemma is true in the Global South as well as the Global North, where
education continues to shift in many countries from being considered a public good worthy
of societal investment to an individual choice available only to those who enjoy significant
privilege. For example, according to a study commissioned by the U.S. Department of
Education, in just the first decade of this century, an estimated 2.4 million students in that
country could not attend or complete college because of the cost barrier (Advisory
Committee on Student Financial Assistance, 2006). Indeed, higher education is structured
to reinforce and replicate existing power structures in ways that are sometimes blatant
(e.g., legacy admissions) and sometimes subtle (e.g., exorbitant textbook costs).
While there are numerous institutional innovations and international initiatives that are
being developed and deployed to address this problem (e.g., MOOCs, OERu,
Commonwealth of Learning, etc.), in this chapter I will discuss the potential of open
educational resources (OER) to help widen equitable access to higher education, including
within traditional post-secondary institutions. In addition, given increasing government
and institutional support of the creation, adaptation, and adoption of OER through both
funding and policy, I will briefly outline a few pitfalls that OER advocates and
practitioners and policy makers must attend to if they wish to deliver on the great promise
of OER.

Section 1

Page 2 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources

The Problem of Unaffordable Textbooks
The cost of commercial textbooks in North America rose by over 1,000% between 1977
and 2016, and by 204% between 1997 and 2018 (Perry, 2018). For context, this was
between three and four times the rate of inflation and, incredibly, at a higher rate than any
other consumer good. These data often surprise faculty who select and assign these
expensive textbooks to their students. But faculty ignorance of the price of commercial
textbooks is facilitated by what is a good example principal-agent problem, wherein one
person (an agent) makes decisions that impacts another (the principal; Eisenhardt, 1989).
What these faculty members might want to remind themselves when selecting textbooks
is that the true cost of expensive textbooks is measured in terms of educational outcomes.
For example, a survey of over 22,000 students in Florida showed that two-thirds of
undergraduate students in that state do not purchase at least some of their required
textbooks because of their high cost, while nearly half tend to choose or drop courses on
the basis of textbook costs (Florida Virtual Campus, 2016). These findings have been
echoed by recent research in British Columbia, where students who make these same
choices were found to be more likely to hold a student loan, work more hours during the
week, or identify as members of a visible minority group (Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017).
The problem of unaffordable textbooks, while certainly not the most significant
contributing factor to inequitable access to higher education, is a tangible issue that the
open education movement has great potential to tackle. Indeed, the creation, adaptation,
and adoption of open textbooks and other OER is rapidly becoming normative practice in
North America. For example, OpenStax, an open textbook project based at Rice
University, reports that its 29 textbooks have been adopted by 48% of all U.S. postsecondary institutions (Ruth, 2018). In British Columbia, open textbooks from the curated
BCcampus repository have been adopted by more than 450 faculty at 40 institutions
(BCcampus, 2018). The UK Open Textbook project was launched in 2017
(UKOpenTextbooks, n.d.). And the University of Minnesota–based Open Textbook
Network continues to grow rapidly, exceeding 600 campus members at the time of writing,
including expansion into Australia.
Although the use of open textbooks is a burgeoning phenomenon in the Global North,
despite significant challenges (cf. Hodgkinson-Williams, 2014, 2015), it is also beginning
to gain traction in pockets across the Global South for reasons that range from a preference
for localized content to reducing textbook costs. For example, approximately 10 million
Siyavula open textbooks were printed and distributed to government schools across South
Africa between 2012 and 2014 (Pitt & Beckett, 2014). In addition, OER have been
integrated into the teacher education program at the Open University of Sri Lanka
(Karunanayaka & Naidu, 2017). These are not singular initiatives. In fact, projects to
support OER creation and use by teachers have been launched in India (Kasinathan &
Ranganathan, 2017), Afghanistan (Oates, Goger, Hashimi, & Farahmand, 2017), Colombia
(Sáenz, Hernandez, & Hernández, 2017), and Mauritius, Tanzania, Uganda (Wolfenden,
Auckloo, Buckler, & Cullen, 2017). In a survey of 295 randomly selected instructors from
29 higher education institutions in Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa,
India, Indonesia, and Malaysia, 51% reported having used OER (de Oliveira Neto, Pete,
Daryono, & Cartmill, 2017).
With a view to sustainability, many post-secondary institutions have been taking steps
to embed support for open textbooks in several key ways including within their policies
Section 1

Page 3 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources
(e.g., tenure and promotion criteria), procedures (e.g., course development workflow),
practices (e.g., course registration timetables that indicate courses that are using OER),
roles (e.g., the creation of OER librarian positions), and budgets (e.g., allocations for OER
grants). Open textbook initiatives themselves have grown more intentional and
programmatic such that a number of institutions across North America now offer entire
academic programs with zero required textbook costs, known as Z Degrees or Zed Creds
in the U.S. and Canada, respectively (Bliss, 2015).
On the surface, the argument for OER as a force for equity is straightforward and
powerful: Ensure free, immediate, and permanent access to educational resources and
marginalized students who disproportionately suffer as a result of high textbook costs will
disproportionately benefit, in both economic and educational terms (see Colvard, Watson,
& Park, 2018 for evidence of this disproportionate impact). However, alongside this
transformational potential lies several pitfalls, including inequitable access to the
technology and platforms necessary to deliver OER, an overreliance on voluntary
academic labor to create OER, a neglect of accessibility requirements when developing
OER, disregard for data privacy, and the practices of commercial publishers of “open
washing” (explained later in this chapter).

Digital Redlining
A term derived from racist housing loan practices in the United States known as
“redlining,” digital redlining examines the causes of the digital divide, including “a set of
education policies, investment decisions, and IT practices that actively create and maintain
class boundaries through strictures that discriminate against specific groups” (Gilliard &
Culik, 2016). In the context of OER, considering digital redlining might interrogate the
assumption that all students own or have access to internet-enabled devices or that they
enjoy internet access of sufficient quality, including when off campus. More broadly,
considering digital redlining requires investigating whether initiatives that center on free
digital textbooks are addressing or in fact exacerbating present inequities in the classroom.
Strategies that may be deployed to tackle this issue include ensuring after-hours access to
computing facilities on campus, establishing a no-cost student laptop/tablet loan program,
delivering digital content offline (e.g., using CDs, USB drives, or other innovations such
as the Commonwealth of Learning’s Classroom-Without-Walls system), and exploring
low-cost print (including print on demand) options for open textbooks.

Over-Relying on Voluntary Academic Labor
Although advocates of OER often articulate the importance of social justice and equity,
this thinking is usually limited to students and not extended to the educators and subject
matter experts who create or adapt OER. It is a fair appraisal to say that the OER movement
is guilty of an over-reliance on voluntary academic labor (or at least severely undercompensated academic labor) to create, peer-review, and contextualize OER. This practice
perpetrates an implicit form of creative redlining, one that reserves the capacity to create
or adapt OER for those who already enjoy positions of privilege, such as the tenured or
those who do not need the income (Jhangiani, 2018). Unfortunately, problems that stem
from a lack of diversity in design teams have long been witnessed in products that range
from automatic soap dispensers (that have been known to fail to recognize hands with
Section 1

Page 4 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources
darker skin tones) to voice recognition applications (that fail to correctly interpret
women’s voices). If the OER movement values not just diversity but also inclusion, it must
ensure equitable access not just to knowledge but also to knowledge creation. Providing
incentives for OER creation and adaptation, whether during the tenure and promotion
process, time releases, or other forms of institutional recognition is an effective strategy.
However, institutions should ensure that these incentives and opportunities are also
available to contingent and non-tenure-track faculty.

Overlooking Accessibility
Consider the following: Open textbooks that are published in only PDF format; images
that are embedded without including alternative text; videos that are uploaded without
captioning; and charts that cannot be interpreted by those with color blindness. These are
just four of the many ways in which the issue of accessibility is often overlooked when
trying to address access via open educational resources. Although resources such as
BCcampus’ Open Textbook Accessibility Toolkit (Coolidge, Doner, Robertson, & Gray,
2018) and projects such as the Inclusive Design Research Centre’s Flexible Learning for
Open Education provide guidance and support to the OER movement, inclusive design
practices have not yet been universally adopted. A simple but effective strategy to address
this issue is for institutions and granting agencies to embed accessibility requirements
among the criteria for OER projects that receive funding while ensuring that the necessary
training and support is made available (e.g., from the institution’s Office for Services for
Students with Disabilities).

Disregarding Data Privacy
Educators are too often unwitting brokers for surveillance capitalism. Whether it is the use
of platforms like Turnitin, where students are required to submit their academic work for
automated plagiarism detection or the use of the platforms of commercial publishers that
monitor students’ online activity, student data is often commodified and monetized by ed
tech companies (Morris & Stommel, 2017). These concerns apply equally within open
education, given both the number of commercial players entering this space and the
number of groups using proprietary tools and platforms to achieve open ends. As Amy
Collier reminds us:
we have to realize that there is no such thing as harmless collection of data. Or
benevolent collection of data. Much of what we collect could be used in ways we do
not want it to be used, to harm or imperil our students. This disproportionately affects
our most vulnerable students. Low-income students, students of color, LGTBQ+
students, students who are immigrants . . . their data are most at risk to surveillance,
discrimination. And many of our vulnerable students are less likely to have experience
with digital literacy skills.
(2017, para 33)
Two tools that are helpful when critically evaluating digital tools and platforms are
Audrey Watters’s “Audrey Test” for education (2012) and Jesse Stommel’s (2016) critical
evaluation activity from his Digital Studies 101 course.

Section 1

Page 5 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources

Open Washing
Following the initial strategies of denial (e.g., “OER are not a threat to commercial
publishing”) and discrediting (e.g., “OER are low quality”), commercial textbook
companies have lost enough market share to open textbooks to turn to a third strategy: cooption. At the present time most of the large traditional textbook publishers have launched
their own “open” platforms. However, as with the environmentalism movement and the
phenomenon of greenwashing, we are increasingly witnessing something that has been
referred to as “open washing” (Openwashing, n.d.) or sometimes “faux-pen” (Searls,
2009). In simple terms, open washing involves a company using the language of open
education to dress up what is otherwise a traditional, proprietary practice. For example,
such a practice may involve hosting open textbooks on a platform that requires registration
and password protection, which, in turn, enables data tracking, surveillance, and
monetization. Another instance of this less-than-honest approach is the use of the term
“open” to describe resources that are not openly licensed or that may not be revised or
remixed (Wiley, 2015). Still another widely deployed tactic is to impose restrictions on
uses of content such as copying and pasting or printing. Institutions of higher education
are, thus, increasingly wading through waters that are being deliberately muddied, often
in a way that focuses solely on alleged cost savings to students at the expense of faculty
choice, student agency, and data privacy. Although excellent efforts are being made to
articulate the values and practices of “open” (see the CARE framework; Petrides, Levin,
& Watson, 2018), it is important to be aware that the battle for open is not occurring on
neutral territory (Weller, 2014).
Cable Green from Creative Commons has articulated a number of questions that serve
as an effective starting list when interrogating the use of the term “open” in marketing
materials or vendor pitches. These include:
•
•
•
•

•

What will your company be contributing to the Commons?
What content, software, [and] services will you share freely [without having to register
and without tracking] and under open licenses [in editable and downloadable format]?
How will your work increase equitable access to quality OER?
Will you give more than you take? Are you contributing back useful OER to the
Commons . . . in addition to taking and reusing existing OER? Please give some
examples of what you will contribute.
How will you develop the trust with educators and the open education community?

(2018)

Closing Thoughts
The goals of the open education movement are noble, lofty, and utterly worthy. However,
like all educators, open educators are capable of perpetrating harm even with the very best
of intentions. As the movement continues to mature and grow more diverse, more attention
is being paid to voices at the margins. However, as the pitfalls briefly described in this
chapter illustrate, it is not until the marginalized are truly welcomed, and not suppressed,
tolerated, or perceived as inconvenient, that the open education movement will be able to
Section 1

Page 6 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources
fulfill its true potential. Therein lies the gap between diversity and inclusivity. As Maha
Bali reminds us:
In open online spaces, opening doors is not enough.
In open online spaces, an open door means easy exit just as it means easy entry.
In open online spaces, we are not there on equal footing.
In open online spaces, we are not equally fragile.
It is everyone’s responsibility to listen and care and support marginal voices. Whether or
not they wish to speak. Whether or not they wish to be present. Whether or not they
like what we do.
It is everyone’s responsibility to recognize their own privilege and to use it with purpose.
(2016, para. 19)

Rajiv Jhangiani is the Associate Vice Provost, Open Education, at Kwantlen Polytechnic
University in British Columbia. His research and practice currently focus on open education,
student-centered pedagogies, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. A recipient of the award
for Excellence in Open Education from BCcampus, Rajiv is a co-founder of the Open Pedagogy
Notebook and an Ambassador for the Center for Open Science. A co-author of three open textbooks
in Psychology, his most recent book is Open: The Philosophy and Practices That Are
Revolutionizing Education and Science (2017) which is an open access resource from Ubiquity
Press. You can find him online at @thatpsychprof or thatpsychprof.com. He can be contacted at
rajiv.jhangiani@kpu.ca.

Section 1

Page 7 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources

References
Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance. (2006). Mortgaging our future:
How financial barriers to college undercut America’s global competitiveness.
Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED529499.pdf
Bali, M. (2016, September 4). Reproducing marginality? [Blog post]. Retrieved from
https://blog.mahabali.me/pedagogy/critical-pedagogy/reproducing-marginality/
BCcampus. (2018). Open textbook stats. Retrieved from https://open.bccampus.ca/opentextbook-stats/
Bliss, T. J. (2015, January 16). Z as in zero: Increasing college access and success through
zero-textbook-cost degrees. Retrieved from https://hewlett.org/z-as-in-zeroincreasing-college-access-and-success-through-zero-textbook-cost-degrees/
Collier, A. (2017, September 13). Platforms in education: A need for criticality and hope
[Blog post]. Retrieved from http://redpincushion.us/blog/technology-2/platforms/
Colvard, N. B., Watson, C. E., & Park, H. (2018). The impact of open educational
resources on various student success metrics. International Journal of Teaching
and Learning in Higher Education, 30(2), 262–276.
Coolidge, A., Doner, S., Robertson, T., & Gray, J. (2018). Accessibility toolkit (2 nd ed.).
BCcampus
Open
Education.
Retrieved
from
https://opentextbc.ca/accessibilitytoolkit/
de Oliveira Neto, J. D., Pete, J., Daryono, & Cartmill, T. (2017). OER use in the global
South: A baseline survey of higher education instructors. In C. HodgkinsonWilliams & P. B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the global South.
Chapter
3
advance
publication.
Retrieved
from
http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.154559
Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Agency theory: An assessment and review. The Academy of
Management Review, 14(1), 57–74. doi:10.2307/258191
Florida Virtual Campus. (2016). 2016 Florida student textbook survey. Tallahassee, FL:
Author. Retrieved from https://florida.theorangegrove.org/og/file/3a65c5072510-42d7-814c-ffdefd394b6c/1/2016%20Student%20Textbook%20Survey.pdf
Gilliard, C., & Culik, H. (2016, May 24). Digital redlining, access, and privacy [Blog
post]. Retrieved from www.commonsense.org/education/privacy/blog/digitalredlining-access-privacy
Green, C. (2018, April 14). For-profit companies working with OER [Session notes]. Hot
topic panel at the 2018 creative commons global summit. Toronto, ON. Retrieved
from
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1A061d6zEbHcDxYYLhDorR9bDwlJMjZ
VEfHO87yfGkeA/edit?usp=sharing
Hodgkinson-Williams, C. (2014). Degrees of ease: Adoption of OER, open textbooks and
MOOCs
in
the
global
South.
Retrieved
from
https://open.uct.ac.za/handle/11427/1188
Hodgkinson-Williams, C. (2015, November 10). OER and open textbooks part of the
solution to the current higher education crisis [Blog post]. Retrieved from
http://roer4d.org/1944
Jhangiani, R. S. (2018, April 6). OER, equity, and implicit creative redlining [Blog post].
Retrieved
from
https://thatpsychprof.com/oer-equity-and-implicit-creativeredlining/

Section 1

Page 8 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources
Jhangiani, R. S., & Jhangiani, S. (2017). Investigating the perceptions, use, and impact of
open textbooks: A survey of post-secondary students in British Columbia.
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 18(4).
http://dx.doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v18i4.3012
Karunanayaka, S. P., & Naidu, S. (2017). Impact of integrating OER in teacher education
at the Open University of Sri Lanka. In C. Hodgkinson-Williams & P. B. Arinto
(Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the global South. Chapter 13 advance
publication. http://dx.doi/org/10.5281/zenodo.161293
Kasinathan, G., & Ranganathan, S. (2017). Teacher professional learning communities: A
collaborative OER adoption approach in Karnataka, India. In C. HodgkinsonWilliams & P. B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the global South.
Chapter
14
advance
publication.
Retrieved
from
http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.160680
Morris, S. M., & Stommel, J. (2017). A guide for resisting edtech: The case against
Turnitin. Hybrid Pedagogy. Retrieved from http://hybridpedagogy.org/resistingedtech/
Oates, L., Goger, L. K., Hashimi, J., & Farahmand, M. (2017). An early stage impact study
of localised OER in Afghanistan. In C. Hodgkinson-Williams & P. B. Arinto
(Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the global South. Chapter 15 advance
publication. doi:10.5281/zenodo.161288
Openwashing. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://openwashing.org/
Perry, M. (2018, July 13). The CD “chart of the century” makes the rounds at the federal
reserve [Blog post]. Retrieved from www.aei.org/publication/the-chart-of-thecentury-makes-the-rounds-at-the-federal-reserve/
Petrides, L., Levin, D., & Watson, C. E. (2018, March 4). Toward a sustainable OER
ecosystem:
The
case
for
OER
stewardship.
Retrieved
from
https://careframework.org/
Pitt, B., & Beckett, M. (2014, June 30). Siyavula educator survey results: Educational
contexts (Part I) [Blog post]. Retrieved from http://oerhub.net/college/siyavulaeducator-survey-results-sample-part-i/
Ruth, D. (2018, August 1). 48 percent of colleges, 2.2 million students using free OpenStax
textbooks
this
year
[Press
release].
Retrieved
from
http://news.rice.edu/2018/08/01/48-percent-of-colleges-2-2-million-studentsusing-free-openstax-textbooks-this-year-2/
Sáenz, M. P., Hernandez, U., & Hernández, Y. M. (2017). Collaborative co-creation of
OER by teachers and teacher educators in Colombia. In C. Hodgkinson-Williams
& P. B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the global South. Chapter
5 advance publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.161271
Searls, D. (2009, August 26). Open vs. fauxpen. Linux Journal. Retrieved from
www.linuxjournal.com/content/open-vs-fauxpen
Stommel, J. (2016, January 21). Critically evaluating digital tools. Retrieved from
https://dgst101.com/activity-critically-evaluating-digital-tools-3f60d468ce74
UKOpenTextbooks. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://ukopentextbooks.org/
United Nations. (1948). The universal declaration of human rights. Retrieved from
www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
Watters, A. (2012, March 17). “The Audrey Test”: Or, what should every techie know about
education?
[Blog
post]
Retrieved
from
Section 1

Page 9 of 10

5 Delivering on the Promise of Open Educational Resources
http://hackeducation.com/2012/03/17/what-every-techie-should-know-abouteducation
Weller, M. (2014). The battle for open: How openness won and why it doesn’t feel like
victory. London: Ubiquity Press. https://doi.org/10.5334/bam
Wiley, D. (2015). The MOOC misstep and the open education infrastructure. In C. J. Bonk,
M. M. Lee., T. C. Reeves, & T. H. Reynolds (Eds.), MOOCs and open education
around the world (pp. 3–11). New York: Routledge.
Wolfenden, F., Auckloo, P., Buckler, A., & Cullen, J. (2017). Teacher educators and OER
in East Africa: Interrogating pedagogic change. In C. Hodgkinson-Williams & P.
B. Arinto (Eds.), Adoption and impact of OER in the global South. Chapter 8
advance publication. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.161285

Section 1

Page 10 of 10