Based on the idea of broadening access to learning opportunities for all by means of new Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the Open Educational Resources (OER) movement has gained ground during the first years of the 21st Century while capturing the imagination of educators, university leaders, policy-makers and opinion leaders all over the globe. Drawing on socio-technical theories and adopting a case study research design, which involved the analysis of both qualitative and quantitative data, this thesis addresses the manifold tensions and paradoxes that may emerge out of the interplay between a highly predefined model of OER provision and the everyday realities and institutional contexts of different higher education settings. In particular, it focuses on the process of implementation by Spanish universities of OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiatives, a widely adopted model of OER provision that was originally devised at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. By exami

Keywords

e-learning · higher education · Internet and science and learning · Internet research · Open Educational Resources · OpenCourseWare · social informatics