Rethinking the Creation of Open Educational Resources: A Model for Virtual Learning Platforms in Higher Education

Abstract

The evolution and transformation from traditional to digital education have highlighted the need to produce open-access content. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are materials shared in freely accessible repositories for using by professors, students, and researchers in educational contexts. The low production of OERs has led to research efforts to understand the causes and propose alternatives to foster the creation of OERs published on freely accessible platforms. This article presents a model where several aspects, principles, and components are reenvisioned to create and produce OERs from virtual platforms. The model was validated on the Uvirtual-Abierta platform of the University of Medellín in Colombi, as an Open Access virtual platform, a based on the results obtained from such research. The research was conducted from a qualitative perspective with a hermeneutic methodological approach, allowing the identification of four principles for the model: interaction, mediation, autonomy, and flexibility, as well as three components: pedagogical, production, and technological. We highlighted that to implement a model for the creation of OERs on virtual platforms, the following elements are necessary: institutional policies for open access to content, pedagogical and didactic guidelines to produce open content, training processes for professors to create resources and procedures for implementing OERs on freely accessible platforms.