Virginia Rodés is a Research Professor at the Institute for the Future of Education in Europe. She has a PhD in Equity and Innovation in Education from the University of Santiago de Compostela. Her research focuses on open and digital education, higher education, and lifelong learning in global contexts.

 Regina Motz is a full professor at the School of Engineering at the Universidad de la República in Uruguay. She has a PhD in Computer Science from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. She is the UNESCO Chair in Open Education and is part of the global UNITWIN network in Open Education.

-“OERs work because they are open.”
-“Yes… but openness alone does not guarantee good use.”

The conversation arose in a staff room at the end of the day, when two teachers who had been working for years with open educational resources (OERs) were exchanging views on their day-to-day experience. Both fully agreed that OER had broadened access to knowledge and enabled more flexible and adaptable forms of teaching, but they disagreed on a more subtle point: whether openness, understood as availability and freedom of use, was sufficient in itself to ensure quality educational practices or whether, on the contrary, it needed to be accompanied by reflective forms of use that developed within teaching practice and educational communities.

This conversation, which might seem anecdotal, actually reflects a tension that runs through many debates in open education today, not as an irreconcilable opposition between visions, but as a sign of the maturing of a field which, after decades focused on expanding access, is also beginning to ask about the pedagogical and social conditions in which that access becomes meaningful learning. In this sense, the question is not whether OERs are valuable — something that has been amply demonstrated — but how they are integrated into real, diverse and often complex educational contexts.

Openness as a shared starting point

At the start of the dialogue, one of the lecturers insisted that openness in itself constitutes a profoundly ethical act because it removes economic barriers and allows knowledge to circulate freely between teachers and students in different regions of the world, whilst the other emphasised that this freedom only leads to educational transformation when resources are critically integrated into specific teaching contexts. Although they started from different perspectives, both agreed on one fundamental point: OERs have transformed access to knowledge and remain essential in a world where millions of students still lack affordable and reliable educational materials.

In fact, in many regions, OERs remain the only way to access up-to-date, contextualised and pedagogically relevant content; therefore, openness—even when imperfect—remains preferable to scarcity or dependence on inaccessible resources. Therefore, any reflection on their use must begin with a recognition of this historic advance, which has expanded educational opportunities on a global scale and enabled teachers and students to participate more actively in the production and adaptation of educational knowledge.

When flexibility does not always translate into adaptation

However, the other voice in the dialogue pointed out that openness alone does not guarantee pedagogical quality, cultural sensitivity or alignment with learning outcomes, as these aspects depend on processes of design, review and contextualisation that are not covered by the licence. Research supports this concern by showing that both open and closed materials can present similar limitations in the representation of certain groups or contexts, particularly in fields such as health education, where the diversity of patients and clinical situations requires careful pedagogical attention (Gromer et al., 2025).

Here, the disagreement in the dialogue becomes particularly illuminating: whilst one teacher was confident that the ability to adapt OERs allows any limitations to be corrected, the other pointed out that such flexibility requires time, pedagogical training and institutional support—resources that are not always available in everyday practice. Consequently, the actual capacity for adaptation can vary significantly across educational contexts. Consequently, the use of OERs depends not only on their technical properties, but also on the structural conditions in which teachers work, such as workload, access to training and institutional culture.

From this perspective, the fact that a resource is open does not automatically guarantee that it will be adapted, revised or contextualised, just as the existence of pedagogical tools does not ensure their full use, suggesting that openness creates educational possibilities that require favourable conditions to be fully realised.

Openness and responsibility as complementary dimensions

At another point in the dialogue, a common concern in open education was raised: the possibility that the introduction of quality criteria, guidelines for responsible use or review processes might reintroduce forms of control that openness sought precisely to overcome by shifting from trust in communities to institutional regulatory mechanisms. The response suggested that responsibility need not be understood as external control, but rather as a shared pedagogical commitment that emerges from the reflective use of resources in educational contexts.

This distinction is key, as it allows us to understand that openness and responsibility are not opposing dimensions, but complementary ones: openness defines legal freedoms of reuse, adaptation and redistribution, whilst responsibility refers to the way in which those freedoms are exercised in concrete pedagogical practices that seek relevance, equity and quality. In other words, openness enables action and responsibility guides its educational purpose.

Indeed, many communities of practice in open education operate precisely on this basis, where resources circulate freely and their quality is gradually strengthened through use, review and collaboration among teachers, without the need for rigid external controls. This suggests that accountability can emerge from collective practice without contradicting the principles of openness.

An open ecosystem that is now more complex

In the current context, where OER circulate among teachers, are integrated into digital platforms, combined with AI-generated content and reused on a global scale in diverse educational settings, the balance between openness and reflective use takes on greater relevance, as new questions arise regarding the traceability, authorship and verification of educational knowledge.

Recent research shows that teachers and students are still learning to distinguish between open educational resources, freely accessible digital materials and content generated by artificial intelligence, which introduces uncertainties regarding the reliability and traceability of the educational materials used (Khalil et al., 2024; Alm, 2024). Thus, the concern regarding the reflective use of OERs is not due to mistrust of openness, but to the growing complexity of the information ecosystem in which they now operate.

Final reflection

OERs do not need less openness or more formal regulation, but rather reflective use that recognises both their potential and the real-world conditions in which they are employed—something that is already happening in numerous educational communities where teachers adapt materials with care, collaborative networks collectively review resources, and institutions support open practices through training and support.

As they left the staff room, the two teachers resumed their conversation whilst walking towards their classrooms.

—So, is openness enough? —asked one, with a smile.
—It’s enough to start with —replied the other—. But it’s the use that turns it into learning.

They exchanged a knowing glance.

—Perhaps that’s the good thing about OERs —added the first—: that they leave room for both.
—For freedom… said the second.
—…and for responsibility concluded the other.

Both nodded, because deep down they knew that open education thrives precisely on that balance.

——–

References

Alm, A., & Ohashi, L. (2024). A worldwide study on language educators’ initial response to ChatGPT. Technology in Language Teaching and Learning, 6(1), 1–31. https://doi.org/10.29140/tltl.v6n1.1141

Gromer, A. L., Chesnut, S. R., & Patel, S. E. (2025). Curricular resources used in nursing education to teach diverse patient care: A discursive paper. Journal of Professional Nursing, 61, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2025.08.011  

Khalil, M., Er, E., & Gunes, N. (2024). Generative AI in higher education: Seeing ChatGPT through universities’ policies, resources, and guidelines. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 5, 100178. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2024.100178  

About the featured image of the article

The original artistic intention remains that of the artist and can be different from the editorial intention of our remix. We thank Edgar Ludert for sharing his work under an open licence CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.