Enthusiasts and evangelists of open educational resources (OER) see these resources as a panacea for all of the problems of education. However, despite its promises, their adoption in educational institutions is slow. There are many barriers to the adoption of OER, and many are from within the community of OER advocates. This commentary calls for a wider discussion to remove these barriers to mainstreaming OER in teaching and learning and argues for a rethinking of the idea of ‘open’ to make it more inclusive by redefining the concept. It reminds us of the original thinking behind OER – which was to create universally available educational resources that can improve the quality of teaching and learning. This commentary posits arguments against conflating OER and open education, questions the narrow definitions of OER, and raises issues around how to be more flexible and open to mainstreaming OER and removing barriers from within the OER movement.

Online distance learning emerged as a solution to continue with teaching and learning during the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to more scholarly publications in the field. The current study critically analyzed the publications using a range of scientometric techniques. The journal article was the predominant form of publication, and collaborative research work was preferred by scholars in this domain. The most-cited articles were published primarily in interdisciplinary journals. Most of the papers (43.64%) used quantitative methods, followed by qualitative methods (13.33%), and mixed methods (9.09%). A large proportion of publications (33%) did not indicate a research methodology. Visualizations of research show that the field has focused largely on remote teaching as a new term to depict online distance learning but has also covered a wider spectrum of issues in relation to teaching and learning, with an emphasis on technologies for teaching and learning, assessment, teacher capacities, and institutional preparedness.

Although several studies have been conducted to summarize the progress of open educational resources (OER) in specific regions, only a limited number of studies summarize OER in Africa. Therefore, this paper presents a systematic literature review to explore trends, themes, and patterns in this emerging area of study, using content and bibliometric analysis. Findings indicated three major strands of OER research in Africa: (1) OER adoption is only limited to specific African countries, calling for more research and collaboration between African countries in this field to ensure educational equity; (2) most of the OER initiatives in Africa have focused on the creation process and neglected other important perspectives, such as dissemination and open educational practices (OEP) using OER; and (3) on top of the typical challenges for OER adoption (e.g., infrastructure), other personal challenges were identified within the African context, including culture, language, and personality. The findings of this study suggest that more initiatives and cross-collaborations with African and non-African countries in the field of OER are needed to facilitate OER adoption in the region. Additionally, it is suggested that researchers and practitioners should consider individual differences, such as language, personality and culture, when promoting and designing OER for different African countries. Finally, the findings can promote social justice by providing insights and future research paths that different stakeholders (e.g., policy makers, educators, practitioners, etc.) should focus on to promote OER in Africa.

It is widely acknowledged that the relationship between education, security, and stability is bidirectional. In times of war, access to quality education becomes compromised, and conversely, the absence of proper education constrains individuals to a life under constant threat, disrupting education provision. War, viewed as a “lifetime and life-wide status,” evolves into a self-fulfilling prophecy, both at an individual and collective level, making it challenging to break free from, particularly within the broader context of education provision. Although, scant information exists about how education is maintained during wars, hindering the right to education in such contexts. This study therefore addresses this gap by synthesizing the literature to identify and present 14 educational scenarios and teaching strategies on how education was maintained from different war contexts over time. The findings reveal that education during wars can be digital-based (i.e., facilitated by technology) and non-digital based (without technology). Additionally, various teaching strategies are applied during wars, including inspirational, hands-on and practical, fun-based, among others. Finally, teaching during wars is not limited to teachers only, but it could also involve parents, neighbors, etc. The findings of the literature can help to ensure the right to education in crises like wars and reveal the importance of open education in such crises. They can also contribute to enriching the ongoing theoretical and practical debate on how to maintain education in crises like wars. This can help to better be prepared for future education in crises, which is the focus of several international organizations.

The aim of this study was to analyze public opinion about online learning during the COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 2019) pandemic. A total of 154 articles from online news and blogging websites related to online learning were extracted from Google and DuckDuckGo. The articles were extracted for 45 days, starting from the day the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a worldwide pandemic, 11 March 2020. For this research, we applied the dictionary-based approach of the lexicon-based method to perform sentiment analysis on the articles extracted through web scraping. We calculated the polarity and subjectivity scores of the extracted article using the TextBlob library. The results showed that over 90% of the articles are positive, and the remaining were mildly negative. In general, the blogs were more positive than the newspaper articles; however, the blogs were more opinionated compared to the news articles.

Why is Openness in Education important, and why is it critically needed at this moment? As manifested in our guiding question, the significance of Openness in Education and its immediate necessity form the heart of this collaborative editorial piece. This rather straightforward, yet nuanced query has sparked this collective endeavour by using individual testimonies, which may also be taken as living narratives, to reveal the value of Openness in Education as a praxis. Such testimonies serve as rich, personal narratives, critical introspections, and experience-based accounts that function as sources of data. The data gleaned from these narratives points to the understanding of Openness in Education as a complex, multilayered concept intricately woven into an array of values. These range from aspects such as sharing, access, flexibility, affordability, enlightenment, barrier-removal, empowerment, care, individual agency, trust, innovation, sustainability, collaboration, co-creation, social justice, equity, transparency, inclusivity, decolonization, democratisation, participation, liberty, and respect for diversity. This editorial, as a product of collective endeavour, invites its readers to independently engage with individual narratives, fostering the creation of unique interpretations. This call stems from the distinctive character of each narrative as they voice individual researchers’ perspectives from around the globe, articulating their insights within their unique situational contexts.