Like the Hewlett Foundation, Wiley has a vested interest in the success of OER. One critique points out that several of the 5 Rs require access to technology and the requisite skills (Lambert, 2018). It is clear and concise while articulating a broad set of practices. Wiley’s 5 Rs model is arguably the preeminent OER definition. In 2019 Hewlett granted nearly $8 million to 18 OER initiatives at universities and organizations, including the University of California at Berkeley, University of Cape Town, Creative Commons, and the Wiki Education Foundation (Hewlett Foundation, Grants). The Hewlett Foundation’s definition signals an interesting shift, emphasizing “high quality” OER, which is not surprising since Hewlett, as an OER funder, has a financial stake in OER development. As an international, aspirational organization, UNESCO’s broad definition is inclusive and emphasizes the public domain and open licenses. These definitions, while useful, hint at the motivations of the organizations and individuals behind them. Wiley cites the 5 Rs of OER as the most important features: the ability to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute (Hilton, Wiley, Stein & Johnson, 2010 Wiley, Bliss & McEwen, 2014). David Wiley, Founder and Chief Academic Officer at Lumen Learning, argues that it is flexible licensing and permissions in opposition to conventional, restrictive copyright that are central to OER. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, a charitable foundation that supports OER initiatives, states OER are “high-quality teaching, learning, and research materials that are free for people everywhere to use and repurpose” (2018). These educational materials encompass everything from textbooks and curricula to lecture notes and animation. In 2012, UNESCO refined their definition to include “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license” (UNESCO, 2012). What are OER? In 2002, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) coined the term OER (2002) and defined them as non-commercial learning materials. In part, this situation can be traced to definitions. Open Educational Resources (OER) are misunderstood and underutilized in higher education (higher ed). The review concludes with suggestions for how to utilize critical pedagogy for future studies and grassroots OER initiatives. Measurables like student outcomes, while important, are too often foregrounded to appeal to administrators and funding organizations. What emerges is an incomplete picture of how OER are adopted, developed, and sustained in higher education. Typically, ample attention is paid to a study’s design and methodology but the underlying institutional infrastructure and decision-making process is unexamined. These criteria are used to make explicit subjects indirectly addressed, if not ignored completely, in the existing literature. This review analyzes studies published since 2008 with regard to cost, access, pedagogy, commercialization, and labor. OER have radical potential as transformative tools for critical pedagogy or they can serve as a cost-free version of the status quo, inclined toward propagating austerity. This selective literature review evaluates open educational resources (OER) efficacy studies through the lens of critical pedagogy.
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