For most open text authors, the focus is toward publication and use. When an open text is finally completed and released, it is a cause for celebration; months of work have culminated in a resource that can be used locally and abroad and has contributed to the university’s role in social good and sharing knowledge. As the preceding chapters have demonstrated, this can be a complex undertaking and doesn’t explicitly include reference to research outcomes. This chapter will explore the rationale and benefits for integrating research with open textbook publishing, introduce established frameworks for research, and discuss the role of open licensing in the research process.

Why Conduct Research?

An open text or suite of OER represents a significant investment of time, intellectual effort, and often the combined skills of a team of staff. Initially, the research may be

• evaluative (has the investment of resources yielded any difference to learning and teaching?),
• to inform continuous improvement (what aspects of the open textbook didn’t perform as expected? Did students experience specific difficulties with the content, the format, or the functionality of the open text? What can be reasonably improved in the short- and long-term?),
• or to provide analysis that improves understanding of, and practice with, open texts (what are the good practice guidelines? Are there local differences in open text adoption when compared to other research? Does your institution serve a specific cohort of students and what are the implications in this context?)

However, open texts are not created in a context-less vacuum – an underlying rationale should be present for staff engagement. Some of the reasons to produce an open text can include:

• Addressing the lack of an existing commercial text, or the lack of an appropriate commercial text for the discipline.
• Addressing the lack of an existing text that recognises the learners’ context, or recent advancements in the discipline.
• A desire to ensure all students have equitable access to learning resources.
• The implementation of a new pedagogical approach, such as open assessment that results in student-authored works.
• To publish the authors’ work in a manner that reduces barriers to building readership and acts as a catalyst to future projects.

This is not a comprehensive list but provides a starting point to reflect on the reasons to engage with open textbooks and should acknowledge the reasons are not mutually exclusive. Authors may address a lack of appropriate disciplinary resources, but also ensure equitable access, and build readership for their work – recognising individual nuance within an institution is integral to unearthing the underlying rationale.

Furthermore, the reason to engage provides a foundation for success criteria. When initiating an open textbook project, the reason is often articulated (usually as a current challenge or opportunity that can be realised by open educational practices) but establishing deeper issues and the conditions for success are rarer. It is extremely difficult to assess the extent to which the open textbook addresses the challenge or opportunity without identifying the parameters for evidence in advance. The textbox below provides an example exploring issues associated with open textbook engagement.

1. The Stated intent can be a high-level, sometimes ideological statement arising from a Catalyst event and thus the two columns are interchangeable if viewed sequentially.
2. Catalyst events trigger action, often as the event creates negative consequences for students and faculty, although a positive opportunity (such as an offer of funding that enables action) can likewise act as a catalyst.
3. The Deeper issues explore underlying assumptions, consequences, learning design choices, and other factors that directly affect the student learning experience and influence student outcomes.
4. Reflection on these deeper issues (and the preceding columns) structures the conditions for success and examines the evidence sources that would support a claim of success. At the point of open textbook implementation, the Conditions of success are likely aspirational, a constructed ideal future state for the learning experience that can be measured through the collection of evidence.

Locating Sources of Evidence

Any claim of success requires substantiation through the purposeful collection of relevant data. However, the implementation of an open textbook is a single variable of the course experience, meaning nuanced discussion that acknowledges multi-causal environmental factors and limitations is essential for any claim. Learning (and learner) context becomes part of the research narrative.

For example: A lecturer views the 2020 and 2021 data for their course and notes the high levels of attrition, lower achievement rates, and a significantly higher incidence of assignment extension requests. A narrative without the benefit of context will differ from one that acknowledges the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, lockdowns, job and housing instability, increased financial stress, and the effects of increased incidence of mental health conditions. As part of a curriculum refresh, the lecturer adopted an open textbook for 2022 and has noted measurable positive learning outcomes – but these cannot be solely attributed to the open textbook.

Understanding the context for the student experience includes an acknowledgement of factors such as (but not limited to):

• The environmental influences external to the university (as in the above example).
• Change in assessment, format of the course, or mode of offer.
• Curriculum refresh leading to a revision of all course content.
• Internal restructuring of the degree and the role of this course. For example, has the course changed from compulsory to elective, or now undertaken by students in a range of degrees (commonly associated with statistics, maths, and science disciplines and courses on research methods)?

This forms part of the context that allows others to understand the immediate environment and provides a foundation for discussing the content outlined above.

Table 3 (below) examines a range of data sources available to faculty and explains their usefulness in narratives about open textbooks. These may differ by institution, as will levels and ease of access, gatekeepers, and policy. Readers are advised to become familiar with local requirements and processes.

Table 3: Strategies for Inquiry

One Activity, Many Uses

The discussion in this chapter is primarily concerned with research publications. However, to maximise the potential impact of this investment of workload, the data can equally support a range of other activities. Consider using the data to

Support promotions documentation.

• In the long term, support a learning and teaching award (both internal, and externally conferred).
• As the basis for an internal learning and teaching seminar (whole of institution, or for discipline colleagues) especially during Open Education Week or Open Access Week.
• Conference papers, and book chapters.
• Institutional webpages (many academic libraries maintain a webpage to highlight good practice, especially when librarians are integrated with open educational practice institutionally)
• Act as the foundation for a learning and teaching grant to extend the scope and impact of the practice.

Ethical Approval

Bear in mind that publishing this data (and the definition of ‘publishing’ can differ by institution) usually requires Ethics Committee Approval. Ensure that you understand your ethical obligations before collecting data, and that you have appropriate approval to proceed. Some institutions provide avenues for retrospective ethical approval for data, but this is often time-consuming, cumbersome, and does not guarantee approval. It is far better to invest time up-front, use the Committee feedback to strengthen your approach, and proceed with approval.

Frameworks for Open Research and Scholarship

Open education research aligns with learning and teaching research, and can often be a part of the Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoTL). Stemming from the work of Ernest Boyer’s Scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate (1990), SoTL focuses on the researchers’ immediate teaching context, uses the teaching environment and participants as sources of not only information but also the identification of emerging or persistent challenges and opportunities, relies on evidence to illuminate innovative approaches to meeting challenges or leveraging these opportunities, and requires researchers to share and disseminate their findings to advance the practice of learning and teaching.

These principles have remained stable since this publication over thirty years ago, and lend themselves well to open educational practices (OEP) as evidence-informed, practically-focused, and human-centric research outcomes. The emphasis on sharing and disseminating outcomes with a broader community is consistent with OEP values too.

The COUP framework is one approach that supports research and scholarship in OEP and emerged from the Open Research Group (Bliss, Robinson, Hilton III, & Wiley, 2013). COUP stands for Cost, Outcomes, Use, and Perceptions and relates to OER. The initial research drew on survey responses from fifty-eight teachers, and 490 students, and the study refined questions in the following manner:

Cost-focused questions concerned the cost of commercial textbooks prior to the implementation of open texts and other OER for the course, asked students to report their actual spending and number of courses enrolled, and explored the reasons why students did not purchase textbooks.

Outcomes-based questions discussed the time taken by teachers to develop courses/units, the presence of changes to pedagogical approach by teachers, student preparedness levels, and student reflections on learning.

Use is predominantly aimed at discovering the frequency and types of use of open textbooks and other OER by students. While this study did not specifically use the term, it can gauge student-resource engagement within a course, and can link to Outcomes questions regarding the extent to which their engagement led to potentially deeper learning and/or higher achievement.

Finally, Perception is concerned with ‘perceptions of quality’, and questions included comparisons against commercial textbooks in the same discipline, student perceptions of ease-of-use, customisation of OER and open textbooks by educators, and the functionality enabled by digital copies of the open texts and OER.

A copy of the survey instrument used in this study can be found in Annex A of the original article. Since 2013, the COUP Framework has been reimplemented and contextualised by several researchers; these can be found in the Further Reading section of this chapter.

The Australian OEP research environment is still relatively greenfield, but conference papers, journal articles, and theses are steadily emerging. Presently, large-scale data (such as that found in US, and Canadian publications) is absent, reflecting both the nascent nature of research publications about OER and OEP, and also the lower awareness levels of open education in both Australian higher education and governments at both the State and Federal level.

Open Access publishing is the focus of the Chief Scientist, and several lobbying groups (such as OA Australasia) are pivotal in supporting, encouraging, and advocating for OA, but this is not presently the case for OEP. On the note of OA, researchers are encouraged to seek open access journals in which to publish. A discussion with a liaison or research librarian will reveal avenues for open publishing, and many Q1 options are available; allowing researchers to meet institutional targets for Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) audits.

A list of Australasian publications can be found in the Further Reading section, and represent opportunities to analyse potential gaps, reimplement instruments for longer-term comparison of data, or as meta-analysis. No Australian study (at the time of writing) has reimplemented the COUP Framework, but many have focused on elements that are familiar to the framework.

In addition to the COUP Framework, researchers will be interested in linking established research methods (such as action research, case study, phenomenology, and social network analysis) to open research. The Global Open Graduate Network (GO-GN) based at the Open University UK released the Research methods handbook (Farrow, Iniesto, Weller, & Pitt, 2020), covering topics such as conceptualising open research, paradigm, research design, and research methods.

Other Considerations

This chapter considers reasons for engagement with research, types of data and limitations, uses of collected data, and introduces frameworks and previous research for readers. It concludes now with three methods open researchers can employ to enhance their research outcomes, invite collaboration, encourage comparative data collection, and build readership and reuse. This section is followed by a curated list of readings for further exploration.

Many institutions can include open data within research repositories or similar technical infrastructure. Making data accessible in this manner can encourage others to (re)use or combine the data for further research, and you are able to do the same with other sources of open data. It can represent a time- and cost-effective method to obtain data sets and expand the scope of potential publications, and research collaborators. Before committing to open data storage, ensure your institution permits the approach and under what conditions the Ethics Approval Committee (or equivalent) supports open access to research data.

Additionally, investigate if you can store the research instruments (surveys, interview protocols) in an open research repository. Instruments that have already been field-tested are an attractive and viable resource for other researchers and create opportunities for comparative data publications. As previously discussed, these instruments can be repurposed as OER for student use.

Example: The New Zealand textbook access and affordability study. Link to the podcast episode interviewing the authors.

Finally, consult with your research librarian to identify open access journals. These journals do not incur an Author Processing Charge (APC) and provide open licencing and access for all articles. Open access journals with a Q1 rating meet the needs of faculty encouraged to publish in this quartile who also want to ensure unfettered access to their work. Publishing research under open access arrangements has been shown to increase readership and citations. Likewise, the openly licenced nature of these articles enables free reuse as course readings (again, transforming research into an OER). There is a particular irony or dissonance in choosing to publish research articles pertaining to open education in a closed journal imposing a paywall that is incongruous with a commitment to providing equitable access to knowledge.

Further Reading

Australasian Research

If you would like to add to this list, please email the citation to open.content@usq.edu.au

Conference Papers

Chruścik, A., Kauter, K., Whiteside, E., & Windus, L. (2022). The impact of an anatomy and physiology open textbook on student satisfaction and engagement in a regional Australian university. In S. Wilson, N. Arthars, D. Wardak, P. Yeoman, E. Kalman, & D.Y.T. Liu (Eds.), Reconnecting relationships through technology. Proceedings of the 39th International Conference on Innovation, Practice and Research in the Use of Educational Technologies in Tertiary Education, ASCILITE 2022 in Sydney: e22183. https://doi.org/10.14742/apubs.2022.183

Hargreaves, W & Howarth, D. (2022). Open at both ends: how a remixed OER project expanded the inner world of an Australian university’s Library Services team. VALA Online. https://www.vala.org.au/vala2022-proceedings/vala2022-online-session-1-hargreaves/# 

Partridge, H., Stagg, A. & Power, E. (2016). Developing low barrier courses using open textbooks: a University of Southern Queensland case study. In S. Barker, S. Dawson, A. Pardo, & C. Colvin (Eds.), Show Me The Learning. Proceedings ASCILITE 2016 Adelaide (pp. 498- 508). http://2016conference.ascilite.org/wp-content/uploads/ascilite2016_partridge_full.pdf

Stagg, A., & Partridge, H. (2019). Facilitating open access to information: A community approach to open education and open textbooks. Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 56(1), 477-480. https://asistdl.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/pra2.76

Tualaulelei, E. (2020). The benefits of creating open educational resources as assessment in an online education course. ASCILITE 2020. The University of New England. https://2020conference.ascilite.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/ASCILITE-2020-Proceedings-Tualaulelei-E.pdf

Journal Articles

Bossu, C. & Stagg, A. (2018). The potential role of Open Educational Practice policy in transforming Australian higher education. Open Praxis, 10(2), 145-157. International Council for Open and Distance Education. Retrieved March 5, 2023 from https://www.learntechlib.org/p/183576/.

Bossu, C., & Tynan, B. (2011). OERs: new media on the learning landscape. On the Horizon, 19(4), 259 – 267. doi: 10.1108/10748121111179385.

Funk, J., Guthadjaka, K., & Kong, G. (2015). Posting traditional ecological knowledge on open access biodiversity platforms: implications for learning design. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 44(2), 150-162. doi:10.1017/jie.2015.25

Funk, J. (2021). Open Educational Practice and Workforce Competence in Cultural Studies. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2021(1), 20-28. [20]. https://doi.org/10.5334/JIME.672

James, R. and Bossu, C. (2014), Conversations from South of the Equator: Challenges and Opportunities in OER across Broader Oceania, RUSC Universities and Knowledge Society Journal, 11(3), pp. 78–90, http://dx.doi. org/10.7238/rusc.v11i3.2220

Judith, K., & Bull, D. (2016). Assessing the potential for openness: a framework for examining course level OER implementation in higher education. Education policy analysis archives, 24(42), 1-15. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.24.1931

Julien, B. L., Lexis, L., Salisbury, F., Russell, K., & Loch, B. (2018). Human physiology students’ perceptions of etextbooks: towards open access as an alternative to traditional textbooks. International journal of innovation in science and mathematics education, 26(7). From: https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/human-physiology-students-perceptions-etextbooks/docview/2247799406/se-2?accountid=10424

Lambert, S., & Funk, J. (2022). Open educational practices in a Cultural Capability unit: Learning at the cultural interface. Journal for Multicultural Education, 16(5), 522-537. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-01-2022-0005

Ponte, F., Lennox, A., & Hurley, J. (2021). The evolution of the open textbook initiative, Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 70(2), 194-212, https://doi.org/10.1080/24750158.2021.1883819

Salisbury, F., Julien, B., Loch, B., Chang, S., & Lexis, L. (2023). From Knowledge Curator to Knowledge Creator: Academic Libraries and Open Access Textbook Publishing. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.31274/jlsc.14074

Stagg, A. (2014). OER adoption: a continuum for practice. International journal of educational technology in higher education 11, 151–165. https://doi.org/10.7238/rusc.v11i3.2102

Stagg, A. (2017). The ecology of the open practitioner: a conceptual framework for open research. Open Praxis, 9(4), 363-374, https://doi.org/10.5944/openpraxis.9.4.662

Stagg, A., Nguyen, L., Bossu, C., Partridge, H., Funk, J., & Judith, K. (2018). Open educational practices in Australia: A first-phase national audit of higher education. International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(3). https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i3.3441

Stevens, J., Bradbury, S., & Hutley, S. (2017). Open education in practice – how policy can lead to positive change. Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association, 66(3), pp. 249-258. https://doi.org/10.1080/24750158.2017.1357914

Tualaulelei, E & Green, N. (2022). Supporting educators’ professional learning for equity pedagogy: the promise of open educational practices. Journal for Multicultural Education, 16(5), pp. 430-442. https://doi.org/10.1108/JME-12-2021-0225.

Udas, K., & Stagg, A. (2019). The University as Ideological State Apparatus: Educating to Defend the Corporate Status Quo?. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 18(1), 66-79, https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1212312.

Reports

Bossu, C., Brown, M., & Bull, D. (2014). Adoption, use and management of Open Educational Resources to enhance teaching and learning in Australia. Sydney: Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching. Retrieved from http://www.olt.gov.au/system/files/resources/CG10_1687_Bossu_Report_2014.pdf.

Brown, M. and Bull, D. (2014). Feasibility Protocol for OER and OEP: A Decision Making Tool for Higher Education, Sydney: Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching, www.olt.gov.au/system/files/resources/ CG10_1687_Bossu_Feasibility Protocol_2014.pdf

Conrad, D., Mackintosh, W., McGreal, R., Murphy, A., & Witthaus, G. (2013). Report on the assessment and accreditation of learners using OER. Retrieved from https://auspace.athabascau.ca/bitstream/handle/2149/3471/Assess-AccredOER_2013.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Wills, S., Alexander, S., & Sadler, D. (2016). Students, universities and open education: Final report 2016. OpenEdOz. From: http://openedoz.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/ID14-3972_CSU_Wills_Final-Report_2016.pdf

Theses

Funk, J. (2019). Open for whom? Open educational practice with Indigenous workforce development and learners. [PhD thesis]. https://researchers.cdu.edu.au/en/studentTheses/open-for-whom-open-educational-practice-with-indigenous-workforce

Lambert, S. (2019). Open education as social justice (Version 1). Deakin University. https://hdl.handle.net/10536/DRO/DU:30147773.

Thiel, J. (2022). Open publishing and the value of access. PhD thesis, Queensland University of Technology. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/235896/

COUP

Bliss, T., Robinson, T. J., Hilton, J., & Wiley, D. A. (2013). An OER COUP: College teacher and student perceptions of open educational resources. Journal of Interactive Media in Education, 2013(1), 4. https://doi.org/10.5334/2013-04

Clinton, V. (2018). Cost, outcomes, use, and perceptions of open educational resources in psychology: A narrative review of the literature. Psychology learning & teaching, 18(1), 4-20. https://doi.org/10.1177/1475725718799511

Cozart, D., Horan, E. M., & Frome, G. (2021). Rethinking the traditional textbook. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 9(2). https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.9.2.13

Tillinghast, B., Fialkowski, M. K., & Draper, J. (2020). Exploring aspects of open educational resources through OER-enabled pedagogy. Frontiers in Education, 5. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2020.00076

Warner, T. L. (2020). Analysis of HBCU faculty awareness and perceptions regarding open educational resources (OER) for teaching enhancement [Doctoral dissertation]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, https://www.proquest.com/openview/134a65d974eebb0c4a0479e172287d92/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=44156.

Empirical Outcomes for OEP

The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, Vol. 18 No. 4 (2017): Special Issue: Outcomes of Openness: Empirical Reports on the Implementation of OER.

An entire issue is dedicated to empirical approaches to evaluating the effectiveness of OER and OEP. If readers are not already familiar with this journal, IRRODL is one of the highest quality OA journals for open education internationally and covers a diverse range of geographical locations and authors.

Research Methods in Open Education

Farrow, R., Iniesto, F., Weller, M. & Pitt., R. (2020). The GO-GN research methods handbook. Open Education Research Hub. The Open University, UK. CC-BY 4.0. http://go-gn.net/gogn_outputs/research-methods-handbook/

Scholarship of Learning and Teaching

With thanks to Dr Trisha Poole, UniSQ for this section.

Boyer, EL. (1990). Scholarship Reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, N.J.: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Felten, P. (2013). Principles of good practice in SoTL. Teaching and learning inquiry, 1(1), 121-125. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.1.1.121

Haigh, N. (2010). The scholarship of teaching and learning – A practical introduction and critique. Ako Aotearoa. https://ako.ac.nz/knowledge-centre/the-scholarship-of-teaching-and-learning/the-scholarship-of-teaching-and-learning-a-practical-introduction-and-critique/

Pechenkina, E. (2020). Chasing impact: The tale of three SoTL studies. Teaching and learning inquiry, 8(1), 91-107. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.8.1.7

Rowland, S. L., & Myatt, P. M. (2014). Getting started in the scholarship of teaching and learning: A “how to” guide for science academics. Biochemistry and molecular biology education, 42(1), 6-14. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1002/bmb.20748