A Comparative Study of National Infrastructures for Digital (Open) Educational Resources in Higher Education


Marin V. I., Bond M., Zawacki-Richter O., Aydin C. H., Bedenlier S., BOZKURT A., ...More

OPEN PRAXIS, vol.12, no.2, pp.241-256, 2020 (ESCI) identifier

  • Publication Type: Article / Article
  • Volume: 12 Issue: 2
  • Publication Date: 2020
  • Doi Number: 10.5944/openpraxis.12.2.1071
  • Journal Name: OPEN PRAXIS
  • Journal Indexes: Emerging Sources Citation Index (ESCI), EBSCO Education Source, Educational research abstracts (ERA), ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Directory of Open Access Journals, DIALNET
  • Page Numbers: pp.241-256
  • Keywords: digital educational resources, comparative case study, digital infrastructures, digitalisation policies, digital transformation, open educational resources (OER), REPOSITORIES
  • Anadolu University Affiliated: Yes

Abstract

This paper reports on the first stage of an international comparative study for the project "Digital educational architectures: Open learning resources in distributed learning infrastructures-EduArc", funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. This study reviews the situation of digital educational resources (or (O)ER) framed within the digital transformation of ten different Higher Education (HE) systems (Australia, Canada, China, Germany, Japan, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Turkey and the United States). Following a comparative case study approach, we investigated issues related to the existence of policies, quality assurance mechanisms and measures for the promotion of change in supporting infrastructure development for (O)ER at the national level in HE in the different countries. The results of this mainly documentary research highlight differences and similarities, which are largely due to variations in these countries' political structure organisation. The discussion and conclusion point at the importance of understanding each country's context and culture, in order to understand the differences between them, as well as the challenges they face.