Opportunities and Challenges of Open Educational Resources for the Learning Communities

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 Practices (OEP) have the potential to support sustainable educational practices, but these have not yet reached their capacities to benefit wider learning communities. It is not yet known if the global academia is prepared towards embracing OEP due to limited pieces of evidence. OE policies have been successfully adopted by a few countries, but others have failed to accept open policies due to a lack of a supportive environment. MOOCs have benefitted the academic community in many ways, but openness, equality, lifelong learning, and liberation remain major challenges. A vast number of open repositories offer free resources, but learners and teachers have been unsuccessful to develop quality learning resources due to a lack of capacity to adapt and re-use OER. Documentary evidence confirms the use of digital licenses by global learning communities, but lack of awareness, incompatibility of Creative Commons (CC) with the traditional copyright laws, and lack of uniform global policy framework have deterred OEP. The strategic implementation model of OER can potentially accelerate communities of practices in academia through capacity building for the recreation of knowledge.