OER Studies

College students working together

In partnership with Achieving the Dream, SRI is studying how using OER materials can facilitate improved educational experiences for college students through easier access to learning materials and transformative teaching and learning practices.

OER and Open and Culturally Responsive Practices in Higher Education

The open education movement is rooted in the desire to break down barriers to education and democratize opportunities for access and participation in education, especially for students from historically marginalized populations. While prior research has documented several benefits of open educational resources (OER) for students, some proponents of open education argue that the greatest potential of OER is the opportunity to use innovative instructional strategies.

The flexibility of open licenses allows instructors to adapt, adopt, curate, or create OER materials to support the redesign of a course. In reimagined courses, instructors can enact more student-centered, equity-focused approaches that elevate students’ knowledge and cultures and give students greater agency over their learning. There is a pressing need for greater insight into how the use of OER and OER-enabled open education practices (OEP) and culturally responsive educational (CRE) practices can support educational equity, particularly in settings that serve diverse student populations.

OER are defined as teaching and learning resources that have an open intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing. OEP are instructional practices that use the affordances of OER to empower learners as co-producers of knowledge and to value and incorporate diverse learner backgrounds, needs, and voices into their learning. Lastly, CRE practices are those that seek to embed students’ cultures deeply within the processes and structures of learning and view the classroom as a site for social change.

Since 2016, SRI Education, in partnership with Achieving the Dream (ATD), has been exploring how college instructors use OER materials and OEP and CRE practices to improve learning for students. Over the years, SRI has engaged in a series of studies examining instructors’ use of OER materials and OER-enabled OEP and CRE practices.

  • The OER Degree Initiative examined how faculty redesigned their courses through OER materials.
  • Teaching and Learning with OER studied how instructors had begun to incorporate OER-enabled OEP and CRE practices into their courses, which led to the design and development of the Framework for Enacting Open and Culturally Responsive Practices.
  • Open and Equitable Education Practices in a State-Led Program investigated how professional learning opportunities and other supports led to meaningful change in instructional practices and students’ learning experiences.
  • Scaling Open Education in Tennessee documented practical strategies for embedding OER into institutional systems and explored the emerging role of GenAI in scaling open education.

OER Degree Initiative (2016–2019)

The OER Degree Initiative aimed to boost college access and completion, particularly for underserved students, by engaging faculty in the redesign of courses and degree programs through the replacement of proprietary textbooks with OER. SRI, along with Achieving the Dream, conducted the research and evaluation for the OER Degree Initiative. SRI researchers examined the impact of OER degrees on key student outcomes and costs for students and institutions, as well as facilitators and barriers to successful implementation of this model. A primary goal of the study was to determine, with as much confidence possible, whether the availability of OER degree options enabled students to attempt and complete more college credits and thus progress more quickly toward attaining degrees. We determined that students who were exposed to OER courses achieved significantly more academic credits, and that institutions were able to recoup their investments in OER degree programs.

Learn more about the OER Degree Initiative and related publications.

Teaching and Learning with OER (2020–2022)

SRI and ATD investigated how a group of leading practitioners were using the affordances of OER to enact OEP and CRE practices in community colleges. These practices include giving students agency over their learning, integrating diverse voices in the classroom, creating opportunities for new knowledge generation, connecting course concepts to real-world issues that matter to students, bringing a critical lens to course topics, and building safer and supportive classroom cultures. SRI researchers developed the Framework for Enacting Open and Culturally Responsive Practices, which draws from literature on OEP and CRE practices and captures how those practices can be enacted across the components of a course, including course design, instructional materials, classroom teaching practices, assessments and assignments, and interactions. We found that implementation of OEP was mixed, with some instructors using OER to enhance their existing student-centered practices, and others for whom OER usage opened the door to begin using OEP. Furthermore, we found that institutional supports for OER focused on materials conversion more than on transforming teaching practices through the affordances of OER.

Related Publications

Open and Equitable Education Practices in a State-Led Program (2022–2025)

This partnership between a state agency overseeing higher education institutions, Achieving the Dream, and SRI aimed to understand the implementation and impacts of a state-led program supporting the use of OER-enabled OEP and CRE practices in state public institutions of higher education. The study examined how 2- and 4-year college instructors used OEP and CRE practices as enabled by OER materials and how students experienced the use of these materials and practices. 

The study adds to the growing body of literature on OER-enabled OEP and CRE practices by documenting instructors’ experiences with professional supports on OER, OEP, and CRE practices; observing instructors’ use of these materials and practices; and examining the relationship between these practices and students’ academic and social-emotional outcomes. Findings show that instructors made material changes to course design and delivery, including more student-centered practices and inclusive content, and that students in redesigned courses reported greater participation and more opportunities for their voices to be heard, although the study found no overall difference in course grades.

Related Publications

Scaling Open Education in Tennessee (2024–2026)

Despite rapid growth, scaling OER within and across institutions remains complex. Adoption often depends on individual champions rather than on institutional policies or infrastructure. In addition, generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) may offer new opportunities to reduce the time and effort required to use OER. This multi-site qualitative case study examined how Tennessee public institutions of higher education have progressed toward OER at scale and how GenAI may support continued adoption.

Findings suggest Tennessee had a maturing but decentralized open education ecosystem. State and institutional investments created momentum, but scaling remained uneven and often depended on individual instructors, librarians, and departmental leaders. GenAI use for OER development was promising but emerging; instructors reported using GenAI to improve efficiency, clarity, accessibility, and assignment design but raised concerns about accuracy, authorship, and bias.

Related Publications