Open educational resources (OER) are growing over the past decade. While OER can make educational resources widely available to all students and educators for free, OER are still untried by the majority of instructors, and have not significantly affected on higher education. This paper reports an action research project of OER adoption. It discusses the importance and challenges of OER in higher education, develops a theoretical framework of the action research project based on literature review, and explains the three levels of OER participation: partial adoption of OER for a course, full-scale adoption of OER for a course, and involvement in communities of practice of OER for a course. The paper describes the processes of OER adoption at each of the levels, presents the findings based on information collected and analysed through the action research project, and discusses further reflection. It presents interlocking perspectives on beliefs, ethics, and motivations in OER for sustainable higher education.

Keywords

open educational resources · OER · OER adoption · sustainability of OER · action research · communities of practice · CoP · case study · sustainable higher education