Introduction and Background
Open education is a broad ecosystem that includes educational resources, tools, techniques, technologies, pedagogies, or policies that are openly and freely shared and can be used by anyone (UNESCO 2012; Weller 2014; Wiley and Hilton 2018). Within this ecosystem are Open Educational Resources (OER): openly licensed educational resources that anyone can use, save, share, or adapt for free. The creation of new OER is essential to a thriving open education ecosystem, but OER creation can also be resource and time intensive. Research into the impact of OER on learning and teaching is important to institutions and individual educators to help understand whether investments of time, funding, and effort are having a positive impact on learning and teaching. In response to this need at our own institution, we designed a podcast-based research study to explore how library-published OER are shaping learning and teaching. Our approach is grounded in the principles of open education: collaboration, transparency, and open sharing. We share our conceptual study design as proof of concept for more open and transparent approaches to educational research.
In this article, we make an argument for the need for our research project by sharing insights generated through our review of the research literature, through which we found both methodological and context-specific gaps related to OER impact research. We explore how an epistemological framework grounded in intersecting traditions of constructivist, narrative, and testimonial epistemologies informed our development of research questions and a qualitative case study methodology. We demonstrate how an axiology based on the principles of open education led us to identify podcasting as a method of data collection that is collaborative and offers a measure of reciprocity to our research participants. We share our plans for analyzing our data using an Immersion/Crystallization (I/C) approach (Borkan 1999, 2022) and consider some of the ethical considerations of podcasting-based research (Kinkaid et al. 2019; Loring et al. 2021; Meriçliler 2024; Jati 2022). We close the article with commentary on the potential contributions that our research may have on both the academic discipline of open education and our academic community.
We recognize that publishing research before it is conducted is uncommon in education, where findings are typically shared only after a study is complete. However, in fields such as medicine and the social sciences, it is not unusual to publish research ideas or protocols (e.g. BMC Digital Health, Health and Justice, International Review of Social Psychology, Research Ideas and Outcomes, etc.). We argue that there is likewise a place for conceptual or research design papers within education because the design stage is an essential and generative part of scholarly work. For those engaged in open education research, this stage offers a valuable opportunity to model the underpinning principles of transparency, open sharing, and collaboration. Transparency is important in open education because it fosters trust and accountability; without it, open sharing and collaboration are impossible. All three of these values are enacted by openly sharing our design: we are transparent about our plans and accountable to our intended approach; we make our design freely available for others to build on or adapt; and we invite collaboration through dialogue and critique before we conduct the research itself.
Our aim in sharing our design is to contribute to and extend the conversation about open education research by demonstrating how the principles of open education can be embodied at all stages of the research life cycle, not just by publishing research outputs and research data openly, but also by sharing our conceptual research design as a form of open practice. Moreover, we have chosen to publish this piece in a diamond (community-controlled) scholarly journal that practices open peer review and a collaborative publishing process to reflect our commitment to values-driven open scholarship.
Researcher Positionality and Context
Sharing our positionality is an embodiment of our commitment to open education principles of transparency and open sharing. Our team includes a library-based academic, a librarian, and a library leader who came together through our shared work in open education at the Deakin University Library. Deakin University is a midsized university in Victoria, Australia, established in 1974 as Australia’s first regional university and the first to specialize in distance education (Deakin University n.d.). Deakin was established with a clear social justice mission to expand access to higher education both through its commitment to rural and regional communities, and “as a catalyst for positive change in the communities it serves” (Deakin University Act 2009). This mission aligns closely with the principles of open education that shape this research. The library has long been a key enabler of open education at Deakin, from supporting off-campus distance education since the institution’s inception to now leading Deakin in open education where it intersects with information science. As researchers working with this values-driven context, we see collaboration, transparency, and open sharing as professional commitments that guide our research practice.
Literature Review and Study Rationale
The existing literature about OER contains a multitude of studies that report positive impacts of OER on learning and teaching. OER can reduce costs for students (Hilton 2016; Jhangiani and Jhangiani 2017; Cooney 2017) and increase inclusive and equitable access to education and lifelong learning (Bozkurt et al. 2023). Students achieve similar learning outcomes using OER compared to commercial textbooks (Hilton 2016), report high perceptions of quality (Jhangiani and Jhangiani 2017), and report a preference for OER over commercial textbooks (Cooney 2017). OER can also increase teaching efficacy and quality, and there are knock-on benefits to institutional reputation (Pounds and Bostock 2019). Students and faculty feel positively about OER (Rowell 2015; Jhangiani and Jhangiani 2017), and report higher motivation, engagement, and active participation in OER-enabled learning environments (Hutton 2024).
Yet, this optimistic picture is not universally accepted. Several recent meta-analyses of the literature argue that OER have negligible measurable impact on learning outcomes (Clinton and Khan 2019; Grimaldi et al. 2019; Tlili et al. 2025). These conclusions are closely tied to ongoing debate about the best approach to researching the impact of OER on learning, with some scholars (e.g., Hilton 2016, 2020; Wiley 2021) arguing for more rigorous approaches, such as quasi-experimental designs where individual variables associated with learning are isolated and compared. The complexity of measuring learning has led others to explore more holistic and qualitative approaches to exploring the impact of OER on learning (e.g., Tillinghast 2020; Hutton 2024). The growing body of qualitative research aligns closely with our own study, which seeks to capture the nuanced experiences and impacts of OER in practice.
There is also a significant gap in OER impact research in the context of Australian higher education. The current OER literature is primarily based on research conducted in Canada (Jhangiani and Jhangiani 2017) or the United States (e.g., Tillinghast 2020; Rowell 2015; Cooney 2017), including all the studies included in often-cited meta-reviews (Hilton 2016, 2020; Clinton and Khan 2019; Grimaldi et al. 2019; Tlili et al. 2025; Wiley 2021). Those studies that have looked at OER in the Australian context have largely focused on policy, adoption, and production (e.g., Bossu 2016; Stagg et al. 2018). Other Australian work has explored the intersection of Open Educational Practices (OEP) and professional learning in the context of early childhood education (Tualaulelei and Green 2022). There remains a gap in OER impact research in Australia, particularly in the higher education context. Meanwhile, there is an increasing call for research into OER in Australia (Stagg et al. 2018). We take particular note of Bossu’s (2016) call to action, which argues that "the Australian tertiary sector needs to do more than simply replicate trends elsewhere in the world … it should seek to contribute to the open movement in new and innovative ways" (23). Other calls for further research into OER recommend focusing on localization (Wiley et al. 2014; Tillinghast 2020), faculty perspectives (Hutton 2024), and translational research (Bossu and Stagg 2018) to translate research findings into evidence-based practice and to foster engagement between researchers and practitioners (Mitchell 2016).
Overall, research about OER is already well established and benefits have been well documented, but there is some debate about the best approach to OER impact research. As is common in social science research, the majority of the OER research literature is based on quantitative approaches that seek to objectively establish the variables associated with impact. There is a growing body of qualitative OER research that complements the quantitative tradition by providing rich descriptions of the complex, contextual, and relational dimensions of OER. Our review also highlights an absence of Australian research and calls for research that centers faculty perspectives, employs innovative methods, and takes a translational approach to ensure that findings reach and benefit those directly involved in educational practice.
Epistemological Framework
We approached our study design from a subjective orientation, in that we seek to understand the way the world appears to the individuals who are situated within it (Bourdieu and Thompson 1991), and a framework that draws from three intersecting traditions: constructivist, narrative, and testimonial epistemologies.
Constructivist epistemologies hold that reality is constructed by the individuals experiencing it (Cain et al. 2018; Cresswell 2014; Costantino, Thompson, and Bales 2008). This is especially important in research about learning because of “the impossibility of exhaustively understanding, evaluating, and predicting learning through quantitative measurement" (Jackson 1968, cited in Sullivan and Hansen 2025). In other words, learning always happens in relation to others and is therefore too complex to measure with numbers alone. Narrative epistemologies view stories as an essential part of human existence because it is through narratives that we know, understand, and make sense of the world (Somers 1994, cited in Robert and Shenhav 2014). This lens draws from narrative inquiry, a well-established approach to education research based on the premise that “stories embody knowledge accumulated and experience gained over time” (Clarke 2023, 232). Within this view, "complex human concerns cannot be understood by testable observation, general principles, and standardized knowledge" (Kim 2016, 4). In other words, complex social phenomena like learning and teaching are best understood by telling and sharing stories (Dunne 2005, cited by Kim 2016). Testimonial epistemologies value the credibility of first-person accounts as legitimate forms of knowledge (Margitay 2021). This epistemology is evident in Gioia’s (2021) argument that “people at work are knowledgeable. They know not only what they are doing, how they are doing it and why they are doing it, but they can tell us researchers all these things in clear terms” (22). Related concepts are that of professional judgment, the “core professional practice in which teachers demonstrate and share expertise in assessment and make decisions to monitor student learning and support progression” (Allal 2013; Biesta 2015) and bearing witness, which is to “render testimony that strives to make visible to others the truth of teaching that they have been privileged to see" (133).
These three epistemologies shape the following core assumptions in our research design:
- Learning and teaching are too complex to measure with numbers alone (Constructivist epistemologies)
- Stories are essential to knowing, understanding, and making sense of the world (Narrative epistemologies)
- OER creators are credible witnesses, and their testimony is trustworthy evidence (Testimonial epistemologies)
These epistemologically-grounded assumptions intersect into an integrated framework: constructivism establishes that learning is too complex for quantitative measurement alone; narrative epistemology provides the methodological logic for privileging stories as data; and testimonial epistemology legitimizes the first-person accounts of OER creators as credible and trustworthy evidence.
Research Aims, Questions, and Outcomes
The primary aim of our study is to explore the impact that library-funded OER are having on learning and teaching at Deakin from the perspectives of OER creators and to understand how OER shape learning and teaching. Our research questions are:
- What stories do participants tell about creating an OER?
- What stories do participants tell about the impact of their OER?
- What do these stories suggest about the impacts of OER on learning and teaching?
Methodology and Design
Qualitative Case Study Methodology
Our overarching research methodology is a qualitative case study methodology, which emphasizes the study of one or more “instances, examples, or settings where the problem or phenomenon can be examined” (Salmons 2021, para. 2). We chose a qualitative case study methodology because this approach creates the conditions to address the narrative and storytelling basis of our research questions and aligns with our epistemological framework: with constructivist epistemologies because case studies seek to understand how individuals make sense of phenomena in real-world contexts; with narrative epistemologies because case study research often involves hearing in-depth stories of participants who have experienced a phenomenon; and with testimonial epistemologies through the prioritization of participant testimony and the sharing of stories of lived experience.
Podcasting as Research Method
Case study methodology often uses data collection techniques that emphasize collaboration and the agency of participants (Cohen et al. 2005). With this in mind, we chose podcasting as a research method, an emerging and innovative storytelling-based method of data collection (Kinkaid et al. 2019; Meriçliler 2024; Jati 2022). It is worth noting that podcasting as a research method is distinct from podcasting as a research communication tool (e.g., Persohn and Branson 2025; Cox et al. 2023), which uses podcasts to disseminate and discuss research, and podcasts as sources of research data (e.g., Kulkov et al. 2024), which use existing podcasts as data for analysis. Podcasting as a method encompasses both applications but also generates the data itself.
Podcasting as a research method flips the traditional closed-room interview into an openly shareable artifact that amplifies participants’ stories and still generates rich qualitative data for analysis. In choosing podcasting, we were also informed by our axiological positioning, the “philosophical approach to making decisions of value or the right decisions” (Finnis 1980, cited by Kivunja and Kuyini 2017, 27). We believe that being ethical researchers means behaving in ways that are collaborative and transparent, and sharing findings and learnings openly. Podcasting aligns closely with this stance because it enables:
- collaborative knowledge-making through conversation
- transparency through the authentic and audible representation of participants’ voices
- sharing through open dissemination of insights in accessible formats
Podcasting as a method also supports reciprocity in the researcher-participant relationship. Our participants are academics who have authored or coauthored an OER, and a publicly shareable artifact such as a podcast may raise the profile and discoverability of their OER. In this way, podcasting functions as both a method of inquiry and an ethical practice that embodies our axiological stance.
Participants and Data Collection
We plan to recruit 8–10 individuals or coauthoring teams from a publicly available list of Deakin OER grant recipients, with no restrictions based on faculty, discipline, or demographic characteristics. We will use selective sampling (Duff 2008) to generate cases from a range of academic disciplines and project types. We plan to record one one-hour podcast interview with each individual or coauthoring team, either as an in-person interview in a recording studio or a Zoom-based interview. The choice of venue is to give participants some agency and help them feel at ease with the podcast interview format. A list of interview questions and discussion topics are included in both the Plain Language Statement and Consent form and in a preparatory email that includes a draft of their introduction, so participants are fully informed about the topics to be discussed. While semistructured in nature, we expect each interview to unfold uniquely, so the exact wording and sequence of questions will vary. Our goal is to surface the stories of OER creation and impact in participants’ own words, rather than strictly stick to an interview script.
Analysis
The analyzable data will be the published podcast and transcript, which participants will review and approve. This ensures that none of the published research outputs include anything the participants aren’t comfortable sharing, since they will be identifiable in the podcast episodes and all research outputs. We will analyze the data using the Immersion/Crystallization (I/C) approach, an intentionally organic and interpretive approach that uses repeated cycles of immersion in and reflection on the data (Borkan 1999, 2022). While this analytic approach is most often used in qualitative healthcare research, one of our team has previous experience using the I/C approach for an education-focused qualitative case study project (Godfrey-Smith 2017). Podcasting as a method lends itself particularly well to the I/C approach because podcasting creation involves a lot of immersion in and reflection on the content. Each interview represents an initial immersion in the data; reviewing and editing the recording and the transcript are further cycles of immersion and reflection; discussions with the research team throughout this process help emerging themes to crystallize. We will further immerse ourselves in the data through close reading of the interview transcript, followed by collective discussion of themes for crystallization. The drafting of the interpretive case study and sharing it with the participant for corroboration is itself an additional cycle of the I/C approach. A final cross-case cycle of immersion and reflection will draw together insights across all participants.
Ethical Considerations
The process of designing a podcast-based study revealed a tension between openness and participant privacy and ethics. We chose podcasting because it offered a mechanism for open data sharing and reciprocal benefit to participants. We grappled with questions about how to balance participant privacy with the practicalities of a podcast interview where they will be identified by name and professional role. We landed on an approach that puts the welfare of participants first, balancing openness with privacy. We developed a research data management plan that treats all data generated through this study as sensitive, and all our data storage and handling protocols emphasize participant privacy. We chose the open-source tool Audacity for podcast editing because it will allow us to create and edit interview recordings on a local encrypted drive, rather than cloud-based storage. When we aren’t using research data files, such as audio recordings, transcripts, and administrative data, we will store them securely on the university-managed Research Data Store (RDS), accessible only to the research team and individual participants, and handled in accordance with Deakin’s data management policies. The only data that we will share publicly is the participant-approved podcast episode and transcript. Participants will also review and corroborate our interpretations of the data. This ensures that anything that participants aren’t comfortable with sharing is never released in a podcast or other research outputs.
A second ethical tension that emerged in designing this study related to the risk of perceived bias for both researchers and participants. As researchers, we recognize our closeness to the research topic as members of the institution. Recalling our epistemological framework, we have knowingly approached this project from an explicitly subjective orientation rather than claiming critical distance. For participants, we recognize the potential for perceived risk that they may share overly positive accounts of their experiences. Indeed, this concern was raised by our institutional ethics and integrity team. We addressed it procedurally by explicitly stating to participants at recruitment, in preparatory meetings, and immediately prior to interview, and in the wording of interview questions, that sharing positive, neutral, and negative accounts was encouraged. We are also satisfied that the risk of biased reporting from participants is low because they are experienced academics with extensive scholarly training who understand that no discipline is served by sanitizing results. Moreover, as experienced OER authors, there is reasonable grounds for expecting candid accounts because honest stories of challenges as well as successes will serve the colleagues who come after them. We also want to be clear that this study is not about determining whether OER have a positive or negative impact on learning and teaching. Quantitative evidence already supports positive impact. This study seeks to complement the existing body of research by providing rich qualitative description of what that impact looks like from the perspective of academics working on the ground with OER.
Expected Contributions and Benefits
Our study has the potential to make several contributions to an established area of research. First, we will explore the impact of OER from a holistic and qualitative perspective, which is limited in the current research literature. By exploring the impact of OER in the Australian context and from the perspective of OER creators, our research will also address calls for localized OER research (Wiley et al. 2014; Tillinghast 2020) and faculty perspectives (Hutton 2024). Our project will not simply replicate how things have been done elsewhere but will instead use podcasting as a research method, an innovative approach which addresses calls for translational research (Bossu and Stagg 2018) and aligns with the principles of open education.
In addition to disciplinary contributions, there is potential for benefits to participants and the community that OER serve. Being on a podcast may raise the professional profile of participants and the visibility of their published OER. Our institution may benefit because of the innovative nature of this research project and the OER we will feature, reinforcing Deakin’s position as an open education leader in the Australian higher education sector. Our research could inform Deakin’s curriculum resource policy and strengthen library service offerings by bolstering requests for funding for further service development. This could have knock-on benefits to the broader academic community by strengthening support for OER search and discovery, evaluation, adoption, adaptation, and creation.
Future Work and Conclusion
In this article, we have outlined the rationale for and the conceptual design of a forthcoming research project through which we plan to explore the impact that OER are having on learning and teaching at our institution. We hope to collaborate with academics who have published an OER, using podcasting as a research method to surface their stories of OER creation and impact. We plan to release each interview as an episode of a limited series podcast, and we will analyze the podcast transcript using the Immersion/Crystallization approach (Borkan 1999, 2022). We hope that the stories will reach as wide an audience as possible, support policy and service development, and give something back to the academics who have generously created an OER and shared their stories as participants.
At the time of publication, the study was in its early stages, with six interviews completed and further interviews scheduled. While lessons learned will be shared in future publications, we note that a project of this kind requires flexibility, as data collection is dependent on the availability of busy academics. We expect to complete the study within twenty-four months of starting.
Stage | Timeframe |
Recruitment & initial meetings | Months 1–2 |
Data collection | Months 2–4 |
Post-interview processing | Months 3–5 |
Individual I/C cycles | Months 4–6 |
Cross-case I/C cycle | Months 7–8 |
Exhibition | Month 18 |
Report writing & research outputs | Months 18–24 |
Our plans for dissemination of our findings emphasize translational research, the aim of which is to translate research findings into evidence-based practice and to foster engagement and conversation between researchers and practitioners (Mitchell 2016). Our key research output will be a curated experiential exhibition of the project artifacts. We hope that the exhibition will help translate the research outcomes for teachers, students, and the broader community and encourage dialogue and practical uptake of our project’s findings. In addition to the nontraditional research output (NTRO) of a public exhibition, we also plan to disseminate our findings through traditional research outputs such as conference presentations, publication in diamond (free to read, free to publish) open access (OA) scholarly journals, and sharing via our institutional repository.
Our goal in sharing our conceptual design in this article was to experiment with different ways of practicing openly beyond teaching and academic librarianship and to be creative in exploring what the principles of open education look like in the context of a research project. We are guided by our open education axiology, in that we aim to demonstrate the principles of collaboration, transparency, and openness by sharing our conceptual design. This article is a manifestation of these principles in practice because we are openly sharing the generative stages of our research project in hopes of cultivating a transparent, relational, and creative scholarly practice. We hope that this article demonstrates the value of bringing research design into the sphere of scholarly communication, specifically in the context of OER and open education research.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the contributions that several colleagues made to this work, foremost Lisa Grbin, whose original idea to explore podcasting as a research method inspired the direction of this study. We also acknowledge Eddie Pavuna as a contributor to this research project in his role as Research and Production Assistant. Thanks also to Christine Gibb (University of Ottawa) for advice and insights about podcasting as a research methodology; Olivia Millard and Cassandra Atheron (Deakin School of Communication and Creative Arts) for practical guidance on podcast recording equipment; and podcast creators/hosts Ash Barber and Mais Fatayer (Speaking of Open), Puva Arumugam (LI Innovation Chronicles), and Joan Sutherland (Tales 4 Teaching) for advice on podcast production and feedback on the feasibility of our idea.
Acknowledgement of AI use
In designing our study, we used generative AI tools (ChatGPT and Claude) as tools to: brainstorm, explore ideas, and extend thinking which we then developed independently through engagement with the established research literature; identify potential search terms and key concepts to inform formal research literature searching; light-touch editing to refine phrasing and expression where we already knew what we wanted to say; and work through practical or logistical ideas (e.g., software options or sequencing of processes). We treated all outputs with caution and used our own critical expertise to evaluate all generated material, cross-checking with the formal literature. All substantive decisions, analysis, and written content are our own and reflect our professional and scholarly judgment. To the best of our knowledge, our use of genAI tools complies with our institutional research conduct policy and the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.
