Chapter 4: Analysis and Interpretation

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the analysis and interpretation of the dedicated OER policy corpus through cycles of distant and close readings towards new understanding and insights. The dedicated OER policy corpus was composed of 28 documents published on the Internet from post-secondary institutions across the world. Interpretations were developed from the cyclic process of close and distant readings, resulting in the emergence of patterns, contexts, and insights. Distant reading was conducted on the corpus using the Voyant Tools online application, which produced a persistent reference URL of the text analysis output that was compiled into a LibreOffice spreadsheet file (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022a). Afterwards, initial cycles of close reading were conducted on the PDF-based corpus using Skim PDF annotation software. Distant reading results were examined during each close reading for reflection and further understanding of the context and text (e.g., terms and phrases).

Initially, a close reading of the individual PDF files was conducted in no order of reading, followed by compiling the 28 PDF files into a single PDF for further cycles of reading from first to last page. The purpose of this workflow, from singular to multi-document corpus PDF, was to initiate the close reading of each policy document in isolation to focus on a single document. Furthermore, this single document reading approach was easier to control the annotation functions, such as copying and pasting boxes across pages without the possibility of disturbing other documents. However, single document corpus analysis and merging the PDF with annotations in the correct positions of the compilation was time consuming. The 28 PDF files with Skim notes were compiled into a single large PDF corpus file with further cycles of reading analysis from a unified file context followed by a review and modification of annotations to position each annotation with the corresponding texts and alignment with the legend (Appendix B). Inserting a document into a Skim PDF compilation and synchronizing the notes was problematic and time consuming. Thus, it was more efficient to modify text, such as language translations corrections in the individual policy documents and recompile the individual policy PDF’s into the Skim PDF corpus to resolve synchronization of annotations. Furthermore, any corrections in language translations impacted the continuity and consistency of the corpa in close and distant reading analysis such that text files needed to be reprocessed through Voyant Tools, and the Skim PDF file needed to be recompiled. Correcting language translations or adjustments to plain text file conversions were limiting factors in the process of maintaining consistency of the corpa for close and distant readings.

The cycles of close readings for 28 policies in the corpus were interpreted to have emerging patterns in the passages or sections of text. A pattern is denoted as “a regular and intelligible form or sequence discernible in the way in which something happens or is done” (“Pattern,” 2021). Toolan and McCarthy (1992), described textual patterns as:

“Certain patterns in text reoccur time and time again and become deeply ingrained as part of our cultural knowledge. These patterns are manifested in regularly occurring functional relationships between bits of the text. These bits may be phrases, clauses, sentences or groups of sentences” (p. 28).

Furthermore, Toolan and McCarthy (1992) noted that “larger patterns which may be found in texts (and indeed which may constitute the whole text) are the objects of interpretation by the reader” (pp. 30–31). In close readings, an annotation legend aid was developed for recognising emergent large textual patterns across the corpus (see Appendix B).

Corpus Analysis

Close and distant reading analysis are discussed together, as the hermeneutics of the corpus involved an intertwined examination of the text in the circular process of developing an understanding of context and text (i.e., hermeneutic circle). In the context of the dedicated OER policy corpus from post-secondary institutions, close reading revealed large textual patterns that formed the basis for the Skim annotations legend (Appendix B). Furthermore, large textual patterns were found embedded in other patterns that were differentiated in annotations by coloured boxes and highlighted text following the Appendix B legend. Questions, comments, and interpretations were noted within the respective passages and saved in the native Skim format. Additionally, Skim exports, such as Skim notes, and archive formats, were created for conversion to Zotero and open data sharing for future researchers.

Emergent Large Patterns

Large patterns emerged from the initial close reading cycle of the individual policy documents in a corpus folder collection of dedicated policy documents, informed by distant reading results. The Appendix B legend was created and refined over many cycles of close readings to aide in consistently identifying and describing the large emergent patterns, that formed the corpus PDF compilation. Thus, similar coherent areas of the text (i.e., text with similar meaning and context) across policy documents were interpreted as emerging patterns of the dedicated OER policy corpus.

Interpretations from close reading of the dedicated OER policy corpus revealed the following emergent large patterns in Table 2: branding (B), Creative Commons (CC), liability (Lia), licenses (Lic), metadata (M), OER definition (OER), preamble (P), and roles (R). See Appendix B for descriptions of the emergent large patterns.

Table 2

Emerging Large Patterns in the Institutional Dedicated OER Policy Corpus

Note. Legend: B = Branding, CC = Creative Commons, Lia = Liability, Lic = Licenses, M = Metadata, OER = OER definition, P = Preamble, and R = Roles; 0= not indicated, 1 = indicated.

^a Procedures separated from OER policy statement(s).

^b Anomaly – Titled OER policy expanded upon the text referenced from an OER policy statement document with a focus on procedures and a copy of original policy statement (i.e., fragmentation of dedicated OER policy between policy and procedure headings with same institutional OER policy title).

The emergent patterns indicated a recurrence of texts with similar meaning and context in the corpus. The following is an example of each pattern from Table 2:

• Branding, such as “hhu.” used in the header and title page (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 2021).
• Creative Commons, such as an appendix listing all license options (Africa Nazarene University, 2015, pp. 9–10).
• Liability, such as in the heading and section from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) (2010, p. 9).
• Licenses, such as text from Reutlingen University (2019) stating:
  

  Reutlingen University recommends its members to publish OER with a CC-BY licence or a CC-BY-SA licence. Other Creative Commons licences (e.g. restricting commercial use) or other open licences may be used if necessary or appropriate in that case. This particularly applies if the license terms (of the third party content used in the materials) so require. (p. 1)

• Metadata, such as the area at the beginning of the policy by Northern Virginia Community College (2018, p. 1) stating: policy number, category, responsible office, subject, related policies, procedures, additional information, effective date, and last reviewed date.
• OER definition, such as the text from Northern Virginia Community College (2018) stating that “OER include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge” (p. 2). A variation in OER definition from Odisha State Open University (2016) stated that “Open Educational Resources are defined as teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions” (p. 2).
• Preamble, such as the introductory area by Odisha State Open University (2016, p. 2) stating preamble, vision, and mission.
• Roles, such as the text in the Open University of Tanzania (2016) document stating that “the Directorate for Publications and Research together with the Directorate for Library Services to oversee all University OER publications” (p. 15).

The emergent large patterns from close readings of the dedicated OER policy corpus were documented in a file named CLOSE-READ_DEDICATED_OER_POLICY_CORPUS.zip and made freely available under Creative Commons licence for researchers to download from the research website (on-linelearning.ca/oerpolicy).

Table 2 large emergent patterns indicated that preambles (P), including but not limited to, institutional background information such as open and distant learning context for OER and rationale for OER, were present in 27 of 28 policy documents. Metadata (M) was found in 26 of 28 policy documents indicating, but not limited to, institutional provenance such as dates, versions, and sources (e.g., authors, positions, and references). OER definition passages (OER), including but not limited to descriptions of materials and uses, were present in 25 of 28 policy documents. Roles (R) accounted for 25 of 28 documents that indicated, but not limited to, organisational designates for OER, such as institutional units, positions, and people. Licenses (Lic) including, but not limited to, directive(s) on institutional OER licence(s), such as Creative Commons copyright designations, were found in 23 of 28 documents. However, as per Table 11 in Appendix A, in 9 of the 28 policy documents there was no direct indication of Creative Commons copyright for the institutional dedicated OER policy document (e.g., in header, footer, or title page). Branding (B), in area(s) of the document including, but not limited to, identification of the institution, such as name, logo, and photos, were found in 19 of 28 documents. Creative Commons (CC) content of all possible licences was evident in 8 of 28 documents. Lastly and arguably an important large emergent pattern from a legal perspective for dedicated OER policy were the liability (Lia) texts, such as sections with liability as the heading and disclaimers that were explicitly present in 8 documents. Furthermore, two documents (Open University of Tanzania, 2016; University of Kelaniya, 2020) included disclaimers, for a total of 10 of 28 corpus documents.

Liability is denoted as, “a comprehensive legal term that describes the condition of being actually or potentially subject to a legal obligation” (“Liability,” 2008). Another denotation of liability is described as:

One of the most significant words in the field of law, liability means legal responsibility for one’s acts or omissions. Failure of a person or entity to meet that responsibility leaves him/her/it open to a lawsuit for any resulting damages or a court order to perform (as in a breach of contract or violation of statute). (Hill & Hill, 1981a)

The term liability that was directly stated in the corpus policy documents bears consideration from a legal perspective of related terms found in the institutional dedicated OER policy documents such as, license, copyright, and intellectual property rights (“Copyright,” 2008; “Intellectual Property,” 2008; “License,” 2008). Therefore, the notion of liability in the context of the definition of OER, presumes legal responsibility between a selected copyright, the holder of the copyright, and the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) holder; just as end users of copyrighted materials have a legal responsibility towards the materials licencing designation, and use conditions as per the term definition. Dedicated OER policy documents such as the Open Educational Resources (OER) Policy, The Open University of Sri Lanka (Open University of Sri Lanka, 2020) stated that “OUSL is the absolute owner of the copyrights of any content published as OUSL OER” (p. 3) and included a disclaimer “that the OUSL absolves itself” (p. 4).

A future investigation could be to understand the impact of institutional claims of copyright and acquisition of intellectual property rights over OER. What could be the implications for OER creators having to forfeit their IPR, such as motivation and sustainability? Hence, there are many questions and research opportunities to explore intellectual property rights (IPR), institutional acquisition, and related liability considerations with respect to OER and a dedicated OER policy.

Although further discussion on the liability of copyright ownership and infringement is beyond the scope of this exploratory research, the United States Digital Millennium Copyright Act shields Internet intermediaries, such as web hosting providers, from the liability of copyright infringement (Office of the Federal Register, 1998; Unni, 2001; Van der Sloot, 2015). This act of limiting liability for Internet intermediaries may have applications for institutions focused on acquiring OER copyright from intellectual property creators and hosting digital OER in an online repository. Thus, liability of copyright infringement for institutional OER repositories, and copyright holders, may be consideration towards limiting an institution’s liability and inclusion in a dedicated OER policy. Furthermore, the choice of Creative Commons copyright licence has implications on potential future remuneration for institutions and authors, such as United States The Drauglis v. Kappa Map Grp., LLC, case (Butler, 2015) that demonstrated that Creative Commons licensed material was lawfully exploited for commercial purposes counter to the intentions of the intellectual property owner due to misunderstandings in the creator’s choice of Creative Commons licence. Hence, consideration for copyright and liability in OER policies may impact OER for licensing, adoption, and engagement.

Close readings were conducted on two institutional OER policy template PDF files, after close reading cycles of the dedicated OER policy corpus, to investigate whether the found emergent patterns from the corpus were evident in the templates. The emergent large patterns of branding (B), Creative Commons (CC), liability (Lia), licenses (Lic), metadata (M), OER definition (OER), preamble (P), and roles (R) were applied to the two institutional OER policy templates found on the Internet, as per Table 3. The OER policy templates were referenced in the Open Educational Resources (OER) Policy, The Open University of Sri Lanka (Open University of Sri Lanka, 2020) and the OUT Policy on Open Educational Resources (OER) (Open University of Tanzania, 2016) with the filename DRAFT OER POLICY template_revised.odt (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013).

Table 3
Emergent Large Patterns in The Institutional OER Policy Templates (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013; Commonwealth of Learning, 2021a)

Note. Legend: B = Branding, CC = Creative Commons, Lia = Liability, Lic = Licenses, M = Metadata, OER = OER definition, P = Preamble, and R = Roles; 0 = not indicated, 1 = indicated.

The following is an example of each indicated emergent large patterns from Table 3:

• Branding, such as the Commonwealth of Learning logo (Commonwealth of Learning, 2021a).
• Creative Commons licenses listed with URL to official Creative Commons site (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013, pp. 2–3).
• Liability, as section heading and statements such as:

Although the author and publisher have made every effort to ensure that the information in this publication was correct at press time, the author and publisher do not assume and hereby disclaim any liability to any party for any loss, damage, or disruption caused by errors or omissions, whether such errors or omissions result from negligence, accident, or any other cause. Commonwealth of Learning (2021a, p. 6)

• Licenses were in section 7.2 of Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) (2013, p. 3) and section 7 of Commonwealth of Learning (2021a, p. 5).
• Metadata area on the second page of Commonwealth of Learning (2021a) discussed origin of template.
• OER definition in the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) (2013) template stated:

Open Educational Resources are defined as teaching, learning and research materials in any medium, digital or otherwise, that reside in the public domain or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. (p. 1)

• The OER definition was further elaborated text with an international tone in the Commonwealth of Learning (2021a) template:

Open Educational Resources (OER): Based on the 2012 Paris OER Declaration1 and 2019 Recommendation on OER2, the [Institution] interprets OER as teaching, learning and research materials in any medium – digital or otherwise – that reside in the public domain3 or have been released under an open license that permits no-cost access, retention, use, adaptation and redistribution by others with no or limited restrictions. Open licensing is built within the existing framework of intellectual property rights as defined by relevant international conventions and respects the authorship of the work. (p. 3)

• Preamble was the section heading and large part of text on the first page from the Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA) (2013).
• Roles was indicative of such text as, “all content developers within the university and those engaged by the university for writing materials on short-term basis as subject matter experts for payment of certain fees or for free” (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013, p. 2).

Table 3 indicated that the emergent large patterns found in close readings of the dedicated OER policy were evident in the institutional OER policy templates. This research explored an institutional dedicated OER policy corpus to understand the meaning of the texts, rather than having the researcher’s interpretation influenced by the structure and content of the institutional OER policy templates. However, examination of the influence of institutional OER policy templates on the dedicated OER policy corpus is beyond the scope of this exploratory research, as internal institutional policy developments could be important to a comprehensive understanding of the context and formation of the policy documents.

Emergent Control Patterns

The OER definition (UNESCO, 2022) had an academic context inferring teachers and students were part of the learning, teaching, and research materials considered OER. My inquiry assumed that anyone could be a consumer of OER, and that the academic community could be producers of OER, as exemplified by the Athabasca University OOETP website (Athabasca University, 2015; Swettenham, 2017). The close readings indicating guidance for academic areas and individuals, were condensed to institutional entities and students to delineate service providers (i.e., institutions) and clients (i.e., students). Large emergent patterns, such as roles and OER definition, informed the components of the institution that were designated to produce OER. Close readings of the corpus revealed institutional patterns of control for OER, including but not limited to, designated producers, assigned support, and conditions for engagement (i.e., collaboration and voluntary). The delineations in the corpus between designated OER producers and consumers revealed OER control. Institutional OER producers, such as departments, staff, and educators, would provision OER for consumers (i.e., students).

The corpus texts on institutional entities and students’ roles revealed patterns of control in production and consumption of OER (Schneider & Schmalfuß, 2022; Strickland, 1973). These control patterns are important as to how OER is understood through policy by the institution and academic community. Strickland (1973) asserted that “locus of control expectancies, appear to be of significant impact in relation to perceived personal power” (p. 14). In the context of OER, Schneider and Schmalfuß (2022) developed a model and hypothesis of OER ownership asserting that psychological ownership could “play a significant role as a further factor influencing the intention to develop OER.” Terras et al. (2013) argued, “that if the benefits of Open Educational Resources are to be fully realised then users (both students and instructors) need to posses and know when to apply the appropriate media literacy skills” (p. 169). The Recommendation on Open Educational Resources (OER) (UNESCO, 2019b) stated that:

The judicious application of OER, in combination with appropriate pedagogical methodologies, well-designed learning objects and the diversity of learning activities, can provide a broader range of innovative pedagogical options to engage both educators and learners to become more active participants in educational processes and creators of content as members of diverse and inclusive knowledge societies. (sec. II. Aims and Objectives, no.7)

Thus, the UNESCO declaration recommended engaging both educators and learners as OER creators. Hence, the control patterns for OER could have implications for developing dedicated OER policy statements towards institutional teaching and learning paradigms that focus on inclusivity for the academic community.

The delineation of the parts in the corpus was from the context that institutional entities were the educational providers and students were the educational clients. The educational providers and clients are assumed to be potentially engaged as producers of OER based on the literature valuing stakeholder engagement. Table 4 denotes the emergent control patterns for OER in the dedicated OER policy corpus from a simplified chart, with values of 1 for indicated or 0 for not indicated in texts, for the following parts:

• PIE = Producers (Institutional entities)
• PS = Producers (Students)
• SIE = Support (Institutional Entities)
• SS = Support (Students)
• CIES = Collaboration (Institutional Entities, Students)
• V = Voluntary

Table 4
Emergent Control Patterns for OER in the Dedicated OER Policy Corpus

Note. Legend: PIE = Producers (Institutional Entities); PS = Producers (Students); SIE = Support (Institutional Entities); SS = Support (Students); CIES = Collaboration (Institutional Entities and Students); V = Voluntary.
^a Procedures separated from OER policy statement(s).

^b Anomaly – Titled OER policy expanded upon the text referenced from an OER policy statement document with a focus on procedures and a copy of original policy statement (i.e., fragmentation of dedicated OER policy between policy and procedure headings with same institutional OER policy title).

The following is an example of each emergent control pattern from Table 4:

• Institutional entities as producers, such as the statement, “faculty who originate material reserve the right to decide the conditions under which the material will be shared” (Africa Nazarene University, 2015, p. 5).
• Students are indicated as producers, such as the statement, “this policy applies to all TU Delft students who use, create or publish Educational Resources as part of their programme of study or within a staff-directed project” (Delft University of Technology, 2021, p. 4). It is noteworthy that students were declared as not producers in the statement, “this policy presumes that students will not be independent creators of OER material” (Africa Nazarene University, 2015, p. 6).
• Institutional entities support and student support, was indicated in text such as “in order to promote the competencies of university staff (students, teachers and all employees) with regard to OER, HHU regularly offers information and training events” (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 2021, p. 6).
• Collaboration between institutional entities and students, was indicated in text such as “where students create OERs as part of their programme of study or within a staff-directed project, staff supervising the creation of such material must ensure compliance with these guidelines before external publication” (Glasgow Caledonian University, 2020, p. 3).
• Voluntary dedicated OER policy was indicated by texts such as “support voluntary participation of Faculty and others in developing OER content” (Netaji Subhas Open University, 2017/2018, p. 3), and “recommends staff and students publish OERs” (Glasgow Caledonian University, 2020, p. 3). It is noteworthy that none of the policies explicitly state that all educational resources be made open, compounded by caveats for commercial opportunities such as, “the University reserves the right not to share resources that may be commercially viable” (University of the South Pacific, 2017, p. 2).

Cycles of close readings of the dedicated OER policy corpus found that the control of OER for production were with institutional entities (see Table 4). Institutional entities as OER producers, accounted for 28 of 28 documents in the corpus, whereas students, indicated as OER producers, accounted for 10 of the 28 documents in the corpus. Additionally, students were less supported in OER development (6 of 28 documents) and collaboration (4 of 28 documents) respectively.

The dedicated OER policy corpus indicated inequalities within the academic community for the creation and use of OER. Furthermore, there were low indications students were OER producers with support and collaboration opportunities. The UNESCO declarations and description of OER as an opportunity to create and use in an open context for everyone have not been uniformly indicated across the dedicated OER policy corpus. OER control for students was explicit in the policy corpus, such as “this policy presumes that students will not be independent creators of OER material” (Africa Nazarene University, 2015, p. 6).

Furthermore, W. Mackintosh et al. (2011) argued for student inclusiveness in the OER realm. W. Mackintosh et al. (2011) stated that:

Individuals are free to learn from OER and other digital learning materials hosted on the Internet. The core problem is that learners who access these digital learning materials on the web and acquire knowledge and skills either formally or informally, alone or in groups, cannot readily have their learning assessed and subsequently receive appropriate academic recognition for their efforts. (p. 1)

Student engagement in the creation, collaboration, and institutional support of OER could benefit teaching and learning opportunities in education. Thus, inequalities in control of OER and potential engagement for the academic community are evident in dedicated OER policies and institutional OER policy templates. Future research could explore the benefits for students as OER producers and consumers within dedicated OER policy.

Since this research is interpretive of a collection of world-wide dedicated OER policies, the indication counts in Table 4 are specific to the corpus composed of a single dedicated OER policy document from each post-secondary institution. Thus, findings are not necessarily generalizable to OER policy (Labaree, 2020). It is noteworthy that related OER policies were linked together in certain institution’s policies, such as the Open Educational Resources Policy Number 212 (Northern Virginia Community College, 2018) that directly referred to the 212P Policy Procedure: Open Educational Resources document in the front matter metadata. Although, the 212P policy was outside the scope of this inquiry of the dedicated OER policy corpus, future research may consider expanding the range of related policy documents and criteria to include multiple related OER policies within an institutional corpus. Thus, a limitation of the study was using a singular dedicated OER policy document from each institution for a homogenous corpus and individual institutional OER policy templates.

Table 4 provided indications of OER involvement between the institutional entities and students. Table 5 provides further exploration of the Table 4 patterns towards the institutional OER policy templates referenced in the corpus.

Table 5
Control of OER in the Institutional OER Policy Templates (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013; Commonwealth of Learning, 2021a)

Note. Legend: PIE = Producers (Institutional Entities); PS = Producers (Students); SIE = Support (Institutional Entities); SS = Support (Students); CIES = Collaboration (Institutional Entities and Students); V = Voluntary; 1=indicated; 0=not indicated.

The following is an example of each emergent control pattern from Table 5:

• Institutional entities as producers, such as the statement, “the [Institution], as publisher and copyright owner, will decide on the content to be published as OER in consultation with the relevant [schools, directorates, and units]” (Commonwealth of Learning, 2021a, p. 4).
• Institutional entities support was indicated in text such as “faculty and staff members engaged in OER development shall be regularly provided with capacity building opportunity by the IT department to familiarize the stakeholders of the opportunities and technical feasible options of the platform” (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013, p. 4).
• Voluntary dedicated OER policy was indicated by text such as “support voluntary participation of Faculty and others in developing OER content” (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013, p. 2).

Table 5 highlights the absence of students from creating, collaborating, and having institutional support to produce OER. No indication was found in the institutional OER policy templates of students as producers, with support and collaboration opportunities. However, these templates are consistent with Table 4 in recognising institutional entities, and the voluntary nature of creating and adopting OER.

Terms and Phrase Patterns

The dedicated OER policy corpus indicated a pattern of voluntary engagement with OER. The corpus did not have mandatory statements for development and delivery of teaching, learning, and research materials to be OERs. The University of Edinburgh OER policy used the word mandatory in the context of policy, by stating “scope: mandatory policy” (University of Edinburgh, 2016, p. 1). However, this policy did not state that all institutional learning materials were to become mandatory as OER. Although close and distant readings did not find the term mandatory collocating with OER for all institutional teaching, learning, and research materials, the terms shall and will were found in corpus that are words of authority with different meanings towards intention, determination, and obligation to do something (Bryan A. Garner, 2001, p. xix; Schiess, 2005); however, these terms have “a highly complicated pattern of use in which the meanings of the forms change according to the person of the subject” (“Shall,” 2016). Bryan A. Garner (2001) defined shall as “has a duty to” (p. 942), and will as, “expresses a future contingency” (p. 942), as per the “American Rule” (p. 940). The term shall has many interpretations, such as an imperative command or “a direction that does not mean mandatory, depending on the context” (Hill & Hill, 1981b). Bryan A. Garner’s (2001, p. 940) discussion on the problem of shall recognised that the strict meaning of shall incurred application difficulties solved by the “ABC rule” (i.e., Australian, British, Canadian) of replacing the term shall with words such as, must, may, and is entitled to. The denotation of must is obligation and necessity (“Must,” 2021), whereas the term may conveys possibility, a wish or hope (“May,” 2021). The Government of Canada (1999) recommends use of the “ABC rule” where must or is to replaces, shall or will, to mean an obligation.

The terms shall and will vary in occurrence across the dedicated OER policy corpus, with shall in 15 documents and will in 20 documents. Furthermore, distant reading analysis reported a raw frequency count of 151 for shall and a raw frequency count of 298 for will. The trends of shall and will in Figure 4 illustrate the occurrences of these terms across the corpus.

Figure 4
Trend of the Relative Frequency of Shall and Will in the Dedicated OER Policy Corpus (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022z)

Note. Produced from custom stopwords (i.e., keywords-9d3b31b4c8b3b5fd81a83c5c98708c83) removal of the term will from the default stopwords list.

In the legal context of dedicated OER policy, the terms shall and will have relevance as authoritative terms (Bryan A. Garner, 2001, p. xix). Figure 4 indicated that when there was a high relative frequency for shall, the term will had a lower or zero frequency, and vice versa. Neither terms, shall and will, appeared at the same relative frequency across the corpus, which was expected since none of the documents in the corpus had the same total token size. However, the Open University of Tanzania and the University of South Pacific documents were trending closely between shall and will, at relative frequency differences of 0.0005438 and 0.0008281 respectively. The following five corpus documents had zero occurrences of shall and will:

• OER Policy of Reutlingen University (Reutlingen University, 2019)
• Policy on Use of Open Educational Resources (OER) (SRI Ramachandra Institute of higher education and research, 2019)
• Open Educational Resources Policy at the Technical University of Graz (Technical University of Graz, 2020)
• Open Educational Resources Policy University of Graz (University of Graz, 2020)
• ZHAW Open Educational Resources (OER) Policy (ZHAW University, 2020).

The term shall with 351 collocations, and its three highest corpus collocates (with count) were:

• oer (40)
• university (20)
• policy (15)

The term will with 551 collocations and its three highest corpus collocates (with count near keyword) were:

• oer (83)
• university (23)
• open (22)

An important operation in Voyant Tools was to remove the term will from the default stopwords list, thereby creating a custom stopwords list to generate the corpus collocates for the term will. A further custom stopwords list was created to remove the terms will, may, and must from the default stopwords list for text analysis. The term must with 138 collocations and its three highest corpus collocates (with count) were:

• oers (9)
• comply (9)
• university (8)

The term may with 216 collocations, and its three highest corpus collocates (with count) were:

• use (12)
• used (11)
• open (10)

The collocates of the terms shall and will were aligned with the most frequent terms in the corpus, whereas the terms must and may were partially aligned with the most frequent terms in the corpus (see Table 13).

The ABC rule suggested using the term entitled, but this term was not present in the corpus documents. Figure 5 is a collation of the terms will, shall, may, and must and their relative frequencies using the trends tool to gain a broad visualization of the terms across the corpus. A limitation of Figure 5 is that the terms occurrence does not necessarily infer an authoritative context in the corpus without knowing the terms context (see Table 6).

Figure 5
Relative Frequencies of the Authoritative Terms – Will, Shall, May, Must – in Corpus Documents

Figure 5 indicated that the highest peaks of words used in the corpus (i.e., per 28 documents) were: will (10), must (8), shall (7), and may (6). In four documents there were two terms with the same peak relative frequency. The Technical University of Graz OER Policy (Technical University of Graz, 2020) had zero relative frequencies, as none of the four terms were present in the document. The Technical University of Graz OER Policy (Technical University of Graz, 2020) was unique in the corpus for the absence of any of the four authoritative terms. However, the Technical University of Graz OER Policy used a single occurrence of the term should in the text to indicate an obligation to follow Creative Commons licensing (Technical University of Graz, 2020, p. 4).

The Central Virginia Community College OER policy (Central Virginia Community College, 2019) and University of Kelaniya OER policy (University of Kelaniya, 2020) contained one frequency term of shall and may respectively (i.e., three of the four terms were not present). Nine of the corpus documents contained all four terms, whereas the remaining sixteen corpus documents had two to three terms present. Although the term shall had seven peaks in Figure 5, this term had the lowest presence (i.e., found) in fifteen of twenty-eight corpus documents; whereas the term may had only six peaks in Figure 5, yet the highest presence (i.e., found) in twenty-four of twenty-eight corpus documents.

Notably, eight of the corpus documents contained two terms with the same relative frequencies, such as the Heinrich Heine University OER Policy (Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, 2021) having relative frequency counts of 0.0007267 for the terms shall and may. The terms may and must have the same relative frequencies in four of the eight corpus documents containing these terms and the highest identical relative frequencies in the corpus. Thus, may and must terms have the highest relative frequency occurrences together than any other combinations of will, shall, may, and must.

Overall, one or more of the terms will, shall, may and must were present in twenty-seven of twenty-eight corpus documents, with the Open Educational Resources policy at the Technical University of Graz (OER Policy) (Technical University of Graz, 2020) void of the terms but used the word should which indicated obligation and duty (“Should,” 2021). Close readings of the anomalous dedicated OER policy document from the Technical University of Graz (2020) found that the policy was more about what is happening now with OER (i.e., OER is used); whereas other corpus policies strived to adopt OER with authority for a future with OER.

Further exploration was required to understand the presence of the terms from Figure 5 within the context of the corpus documents. Gijsbers (2017) asserted that meaning is determined from context. According to Gijsbers (2017) “a word only has a determinate specific meaning in the sentence, so a sentence only has a determinate specific meaning in a larger context” (5:41-5:52). Context of small units (e.g., terms) and the larger units (e.g., sentences) provided understanding of meaning of OER in the dedicated OER policy corpus. Table 6 is a sample of the Voyant Tools context tool output filtered on each of the four authoritative terms, will, shall, may, and must in the corpus documents. The context tool applied to each document within the corpus.

Table 6
Contexts Samples for the Terms Will, Shall, May, Must (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022h, 2022i, 2022j, 2022k)

Note. Sampled items from first, middle, and last entries in contexts lists are based on Voyant Tools spreadsheet results compilation (filename: Dedicated OER Policy Corpus.ods) within a downloadable package (filename: DISTANT-READ_DEDICATED_OER_POLICY_CORPUS.zip) from the research website (on-linelearning.ca/oerpolicy).

The context of the corpus terms, will, shall, may, and must indicated an authoritative direction to the dedicated OER policies without articulating the mandatory state of OER materials. Although the dedicated OER policy corpus focused on the OER with authoritative words, close readings found provisos across the corpus negating the OER. Provisos such as commercial potential, copyrighted logo, commissioned material, and conditions of collaboration, nullified educational materials from the OER designation. Furthermore, the dedicated OER policy could be impacted by existing statutes, such as was discussed in the Open Educational Resources Policy (Central Virginia Community College, 2019). Close readings of the dedicated OER policy corpus indicated that all documents were voluntary for adoption, as indicated in Table 4. Many close readings were required to discern the mandatory or voluntary nature of the policy documents as none of the documents clearly stated that the policy was voluntary for the development, delivery, and use of OER. The terms mandatory and obligatory, were rarely used in the dedicated OER policy corpus. The term mandatory was stated once within the corpus document from the Open Educational Resources Policy (University of Edinburgh, 2016) with respect to who was involved with the policy. However, the UofE policy did not articulate that OER was mandatory for all teaching and learning materials within the institution. The term obligatory was stated once in the dedicated OER policy corpus in the context of criteria for incentives and recognition.

The obligatory authority of dedicated OER policy was evident in the text with terms such as liability, shall, and will. Furthermore, the corpus included promotion and guidance of OER with boundaries of production (i.e., creation and distribution) and licencing. However, the corpus terms and emergent patterns of OER control indicated that adoption of OER policy was voluntary (e.g., Table 4). Additionally, the criteria that bounded OER production and Creative Commons licensing varied with each institution (see Table 2). Notably, the United States (US) based Creative Commons licencing was accepted in the corpus as the dominant copyright licensing (see Table 11). Further influence of US organisations and institutions was found in the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology OER policy (2010) that acknowledged support from the Hewlett and Gates Foundations, and University of Michigan. Hence, future research could investigate potential relationships regarding the internationalization of OER.

Although none of the dedicated OER policy corpus documents referenced an institutional dedicated OER policy standard, the OUT Policy on Open Educational Resources (OER) (Open University of Tanzania, 2016) and the Open Educational Resources (OER) Policy, the Open University of Sri Lanka (Revised 2020) (Open University of Sri Lanka, 2020) referred to an Institutional OER policy template (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013). Notably, the second published version of the OER policy template (Commonwealth of Learning, 2021a) was more recent than the corpus documents and could be referenced in future dedicated OER policies.

Corpus Characterization

A focus of the corpus texts was to investigate OER, whereby distant and close readings revealed patterns and terms. The corpus documents typically had titles with the terms OER and policy, whereas the structure and text content varied from a form layout to a long report across the corpus. However, documents such as C/7.2 Open Educational Resources (Queensland University of Technology, 2021) and University of Leeds Open Educational Resources (University of Leeds, 2017) placed the policy term either in the front matter metadata or the latter document was embedded in the “A-Z of policies and key documents” section of the institution website (Daniel, 2012; Open Educational Resources (Taught Students), 2022).

The AC.2.21 Open Educational Resources policy (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, 2018a) title page document primarily contained redirect information to SAIT AC.2.21.1 (Southern Alberta Institute of Technology, 2018b). Thus, for the purposes of consistent text analysis of a single document per institution, the AC.2.21.1 was selected rather than merging multiple SAIT policy documents into the corpus. Hence, future researchers may wish to consider combining SAIT AC.2.21 and AC.2.21.1 policy documents, thereby changing the current single document per institution context of the dedicated OER policy corpus. The consolidation of an institution’s OER policies and consistent titles could be a consideration for research on standardisation of dedicated OER policies. Furthermore, the content varied from a lengthy text of 5,517 words in a book style (Open University of Tanzania, 2016) to a short text of 98 words (Central Virginia Community College, 2019). Documents structures varied from passages such as Policy for development and use of Open Educational Resources (OER) (Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), 2010), whereas other documents had form presentations such as C/7.2 Open Educational Resources (Queensland University of Technology, 2021) and Open Educational Resources policy at the Technical University of Graz (Technical University of Graz, 2020).

Corpus Terms

The results from the initial distant reading were condensed in Appendix A from a larger set of data compiled into a Creative Commons-licensed spreadsheet file shared on the research website. The five most frequent terms in the corpus were: oer, open, university, resources, and policy. Although these five highest frequent terms aligned with the respective post-secondary institution policy titles, further text analysis provided a greater understanding of OER in dedicated OER policy. Visual corpus overview tools such as Cirrus displayed a default of 55 terms in a word cloud in various font sizes from greatest frequency terms with largest fonts (see Appendix A). Frequent terms after the 5 highest terms with large font sizes were: materials, educational, license, learning, and use. Further terms of lower font size included commons, teaching, and work, followed by terms such as staff, quality, access, content, development, creative, students, education, shall, and copyright.

The Terms tool provided a list of corpus terms and raw frequency (with count) in descending order with the following 8^th to ll^th frequent corpus terms materials (292), learning (286), license (279), and teaching (197); which are the same terms found in the emergent large pattern OER definition texts across the corpus. Corpus terms can be furthered with the Contexts tool to gain understanding the meaning of the terms within the texts, such as the term “materials” to describe educational matter (e.g., Table 14). The Collocates tool extended term contexts by providing an understanding of which corpus terms occurred together and at what frequency (with count), such as the term “materials”, which frequently collocated with teaching (44), university (41), oer (38), open (24), and learning (19). Thus, the terms university, oer, and open with the highest corpus frequencies were near the term materials, furthering the notion of a dedicated OER policy corpus.

Legal Context

Since copyright, linked to IPR, is a key determination of materials designated as OER, attention to the legal aspects is an important consideration for post-secondary institutions engaged with OER (McGill, 2013). The liability component in the dedicated OER policy corpus, previously discussed in the emerging large patterns, indicated the legal nature of OER. Related legal terms such as license, copyright, liability, and disclaimer were found in the corpus (Bryan A. Garner, 2001). According to McGill (2010a, 2010b), intellectual property rights and copyright are crucial to legal issues such as liability concerning OER.

Liability had a raw frequency of 13 (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022v) across 10 corpus documents (see Table 2). The term liability has 32 collocations, next to the following terms (with count): materials (5), oer (5), shared (5), disclaim (3), and party (3). Collocations such as liability and disclaim were found in the liability emergent large pattern texts (see Table 2).

Table 7 had 13 occurrences of contexts for liability. Table 7 results showed that the term liability included OER’s, faculty, staff, and institutional units. Although a pattern of liability was found in 10 of 28 corpus documents (see Table 2), the legal implications connected to aspects of dedicated OER policy such as IPR, roles for academia, and licencing, could be an area for further research.

Table 7
Contexts for Liability (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022d)

Note. Multiple punctuation marks have been deleted for legibility.

A treatise by Winn (2009) on The Student as Producer and Student IPR illuminated legal issues that could relate to OER copyright ownership for academic communities. Institutional claims to OER copyright and disclaimers of liability in the corpus, could be challenging for the academic community IPR. The IPR and copyright for students, and the potential role of students as OER producers, has implications for institutions engaged with OER. The previous discussion in Chapter 4 of the emergent control patterns considered the potential for students as producers of OER, that could benefit pedagogy, and further the OER paradigm. However, IPR, copyright, and liability may challenge the opportunities for the academic community, including students, to be engaged in the creation of OER. The emergent large patterns and control of OER in dedicated OER policy, and OER ownership, could be areas for further research and institutional reflection.

Material Context

The UNESCO denotation of OER includes both the legal copyright and the materials aspect. Furthermore, OER materials exist in any format or medium (UNESCO, 2022). The emergent large pattern in Table 2 indicated that 25 corpus documents contained an OER definition. However, the occurrences of formats and media varied across the corpus, such as inclusion in department titles and roles, and was not considered a large emergent pattern at this time for the study.

Table 8 provided context for the term media with a corpus term frequency of 27 and 87 collocates across 14 corpus documents. Table 8 indicates that the use of the term media was applied to a description of a department or role in the institution. Very few occurrences of the term media were associated with OER material.

Table 8
Context for Media (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022l)

Creating digital OER media involves media types, such as text, image, audio, and video content (MDN contributors, 2023; Wikipedia contributors, 2023b). Digital media types have file formats that encode information which is decoded by software applications, such as LibreOffice and Voyant Tools (MDN contributors, 2023; Recommended Formats Statement, 2022; Wikipedia contributors, 2023c). The use of terms media and format indicates the importance of OER materials in the dedicated OER policy corpus.

The format term had a frequency count of 55 and 166 collocates across 19 corpus documents (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022w, 2022r, 2022e). The highest collocates for the format term (with count) were physical (8), oer (6), released (6), including (5), and pdf (5) (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022e). The file format collocates for the term format, had low contextual frequencies. For example, the formats (contextual frequency count) in the corpus were: pdf (5), xml (2), html (2), csv (2), ppt (1), mpeg (1), and doc (1). Thus, the keyword format collocates more with terms other than file formats, such as OER, shall, open, and including.

The Contexts tool provided a sense of how the term format was used in different contexts across the corpus documents (see Table 9).

Table 9
Contexts for Format (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022m)

Note. Multiple punctuation marks have been deleted for legibility.

The corpus had five documents that specifically stated one or more kinds of file formats such as, “a selection of possible file formats supported include Postscript, MPEG Audio and Video, WAV, GIF, JPEG, SVG, PNG, TIFF, HTML, Plain Text, Rich Text Format, XML and CSV” (University of Passau, 2020, p. 3). OER file formats determine how the digital media can be used by a computer, author, and by extension the end user. How OER is addressed from an open digital material context within the dedicated OER policy has implications for the OER paradigm, institutional tools, and the academic community as producers and consumers of OER. OER that is produced by non-open licensed software (e.g., non-commercial, and proprietary) would blur and potentially disrupt the OER paradigm and undermine the open landscape. Although outside the scope of this research, disrupters of the OER paradigm, such as the use of commercial software for OER, could be an area for further study.

FOSS (free and open source software) applications to support the creation of OER and dedicated OER policy documents were not found in the corpus. In example, LibreOffice, a recognised FOSS office application, with file formats such as odt, ods, and odp, were not present in the corpus texts (The Document Foundation, n.d.). However, a copyrighted file format (e.g., doc) was found in the corpus text regarding academic content that could be regarded as not meeting the criteria of an OER, as the commercial application is not free and open (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022n). Thus, consideration for OER formats depends in part on the software that creates the OER, and by extension the dedicated OER policy document. It is noteworthy that the older Institutional OER Policy Template (Commonwealth Educational Media Centre for Asia (CEMCA), 2013) was in LibreOffice format (e.g., odt), whereas the more recent version of Institutional OER Policy: Template Ver 2 (Commonwealth of Learning, 2021a) was in a commercial format (e.g., docx). FOSS affords free and open media formats that are congruent with the OER paradigm and avoids potential dissonance in dedicated OER policy using commercialware.

FOSS versus Open Source

Conceptually FOSS and open source digital materials are different, such that open source learning materials that are not free of charge would not meet the criteria of OER (“Free and Open-Source Software,” 2022). Stallman (2019) asserted that “the philosophy of open source, with its purely practical values, impedes understanding of the deeper ideas of free software; it brings many people into our community, but does not teach them to defend it” (sec. Fear of Freedom). Furthermore, Stallman (2019) argued that “any activity that promotes the word “open” tends to extend the curtain that hides the ideas of the free software movement” (sec. Rivals for Mindshare).

A tenet of OER is no charge for the object and access to it (UNESCO, 2022). However, the terms open source applied to software tools for OER and the OER object can have different meanings, such that the absence of collocated terms expressing free from cost would negate an OER context. The terms open source had a frequency count of 12, across 9 corpus documents with the five highest collocates (with counts) of: software (10), new (6), compared (5), and works (4) (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022x, 2022s, 2022f). Table 10 provides the context towards understanding open source in the corpus.

Table 10
Context for Open Source (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022o)

Table 10 indicated that the terms open source were predominantly used in the context of software licenses, followed by application, programs, and software. The phrase free and open source occurs once in the corpus within the Creative Commons Licenses pattern in the Open Educational Resources Policy For The Open University of Tansania (Sinclair & Rockwell, 2022p). The “open source” terms appear in various locations across corpus documents, including but not limited to, emergent large patterns of roles, CC copy, and preamble.

The terms format, media, and open source were not considered emergent large corpus patterns, as the terms were found across many patterns, such as OER definition and CC copy. However, future research and advances in computing technologies may consider open source formats, applications, and kinds of media as an emergent pattern of the dedicated OER policy corpus.

Evaluation

Broadly, in revisiting the research question of how to understand OER in dedicated OER policy, a rich picture was developed from:

• Definition of OER as any kind of educational learning product under open licencing conditions (Open Educational Resources, n.d.).
• Denotation of dedicated OER policy (see Glossary).
• A world-wide collection of 28 institutional dedicated OER policy documents formed a corpus benchmark for institutional OER policy.
• Use of hermeneutic techniques involving intertwined cycles of close and distant readings of the corpus to develop interpretations.
• Delineation of emergent patterns and keywords from the dedicated OER policy corpus.
• Open research website to share data and interpretations.

According to Patterson et al. (1998), “hermeneutics represents an antifoundationalist epistemology that focuses more on evaluations of the research product itself rather than its adherence to antecedent methodological criteria” (p. 430). The criteria of persuasiveness, insightfulness, and practical utility were adapted from Patterson et al. (1998, pp. 430–431) for evaluation of my exploration in hermeneutics of dedicated OER policy toward greater understanding of OER in this form of institutional policy.

Persuasiveness

According to Patterson and Williams (2002), “persuasive refers to the notion of providing the reader enough access to the data to make an independent assessment of the warrants for a particular set of conclusions” (p. 33). This study provided the data from close and distant readings of a dedicated OER policy corpus, supported by an interpretivist paradigm, research question, exploratory design, relevant literature, hermeneutic techniques, interpretations, and open source tools to independently analyse the data (Giorgi, 1975; Patterson et al., 1998). It is noteworthy that the interpretivist ontology, epistemology, and methodology provided the foundation, alignment, and utility for this research (Lincoln et al., 2011). The research data was limited to a collection of OER policy documents prior to 2022. However, more recent data was found in 2023 that was presented in Appendix D, which also serves as an example of integrating new OER policy documents into this research OER policy corpus.

The free and open source CAQDAS tools and supporting FOSS tools are supported and can be accessed online. Voyant Tools was vetted by the researcher and related peer-reviewed literature, to provide cost-free access to online data via a stable URL. An open research website (on-linelearning.ca/oerpolicy) provides additional support to free and open sharing of data, in the same ethos as OER.

Insightfulness

Patterson and Williams (2002) asserted that the essence of the insightfulness criterion was “that the research should increase our understanding of a phenomenon” (p. 34), such that “the reader is guided through data in a way that produces understanding of the phenomenon reflecting greater insight than was held prior to reading the research” (p. 35). The research produced interpretations that contributed toward a rich picture of the dedicated OER policy corpus from “a set of qualitative data as a coherent pattern or gestalt” (Thompson, 1990, p. 28, as cited in Patterson, 1998). Interpretations developed from cyclic close readings intertwined with distant readings of international post-secondary institutional OER policy corpus documents. Broad understandings that emerged from investigation of a world-wide corpus of post-secondary institution OER policies included, but not limited to:

• Multiple versions of institutional OER policy templates demonstrated that dedicated OER policies are a living document that can change with time. Hence, such changes in post-secondary institutional OER policy may incorporate the understandings that developed from this dedicated OER policy corpus research.
• Digital technologies, such as FOSS applications for OER have been given little attention in the corpus, such that dedicated OER policy documents themselves were produced with commercial applications that could have been created with FOSS office applications; thereby providing a greater role between FOSS tools to create OER.
• There were distinctive characteristics of the dedicated OER policy corpus, with a specific focus on OER, that revealed large emergent patterns, emergent control patterns, and keywords such as liability that additionally was a large emergent pattern. The same emergent patterns were found in institutional OER policy templates. The prevalence of these large emergent patterns was found in a recent OER policy document, as an addendum to the study (Appendix D). The emergent patterns could provide greater understanding in areas in need of greater attention, such as digital technologies and student engagement.
• The emergent control patterns of the dedicated OER policy corpus revealed students as part of the academic community (Tables 4 and 5). However, the OER control patterns indicated that institutions dominated control of OER in policy. Student engagement with OER and dedicated OER policy could be a consideration for further development in post-secondary institutional dedicated OER policy.

The comprehensiveness, commitment, and consistency of the dedicated OER policies varied across the corpus, such that standardisation of institutional dedicated OER policies could be a future area of research towards furthering the OER paradigm for institutions and the academic community.

Practical Utility

According to Patterson and Williams (2002), practical utility recognizes the research motivation and productive interpretations toward addressing the inquiry. The research was motivated by the gap between Canadian post-secondary institutions engaged with open e-textbook publishing and a corresponding supportive dedicated OER policy. In addition, the research examined how OER was understood in a dedicated OER policy corpus that could have implications for post-secondary institutions engaged in, or considering adoption of OER (Patterson et al., 1998, p. 431; Patterson & Williams, 2002, p. 35). The research was contingent on the ontological, epistemological, and methodological commitments toward a hermeneutic inquiry outlined in the preceding discussion of the persuasiveness criterion.

Broadly, OER can be understood in the dedicated OER policy corpus as a paradigm. The dedicated OER policy corpus was largely about institutional organization of OER, with few texts about the material itself (i.e., digital, or analog object). The corpus revealed large emergent patterns, emergent control patterns, and keywords indicating a more institutional top-down approach within the dedicated OER policies as distinguished by Marín et al. (2022, p. 315). The institutional focus within the dedicated OER policy corpus revealed that student engagement could be an opportunity for OER development and use. In addition, the keyword and large emergent pattern of liability could be an important legal consideration in adoption of a dedicated OER policy to support Canadian post-secondary institutions engaged in open e-textbook publishing.

The alignment of the OER object with an OER ethos in an OER paradigm for policy and the educational environment involves digital technologies. The use of open and free technologies to create and support OER, from the application to the source file, could improve the comprehensiveness and consistent organisation of dedicated OER policy documents, such as publishing texts in LibreOffice format.

Furthermore, this study had practical utility in demonstrating relevant FOSS research tools, open research, and data that reflected an OER ethos, and hermeneutically provided understandings of dedicated OER policies towards promoting, supporting, and sustaining OER in post-secondary education (Patterson, 1993, p. 177). My research aimed to provide post-secondary institutions with a greater understanding, and opportunity for change, toward adoption or improvement of dedicated OER policy.

Boundaries and Limits

The dedicated OER policy corpus research was bounded by an interpretivist paradigm, a subjectivist position, a hermeneutics methodology, and an exploratory design guided by the research question. According to Patterson (1993), a limit imposed by hermeneutic methodology is the “concept of self as an instrument” (p. 179). Furthermore, Patterson (1993) asserted, “when the researcher is the instrument, extensive training and experience is required to develop the requisite skills (pretest and refine the instrument)” (p. 179). Hermeneutic cycles of understanding involved the prejudices of the researcher and a fusion of horizons, such that “the horizon of the present is being continually formed, in that we have continually to test all our prejudices” (Gadamer, 1975, p. 273). Thus, interpretations of the dedicated OER policy corpus were formed from, but not limited to, the researcher, study paradigms, and methodology (Patterson, 1993, p. 180).

According to Patterson et al. (1998), “evaluation of the interpretation arising from hermeneutic analysis requires a greater commitment on the part of the reader … to carefully evaluate the degree to which the researcher supported a specific interpretation on the basis of the available evidence” (p. 172). My interpretation and insights were specific to the dedicated OER policy corpus in understanding OER from the whole in terms of the parts and parts in terms of the whole (Gadamer, 1975, p. 258). Interpretation and insights were limited to the text artefacts, whereas future research could investigate the human and institutional entities involved with the dedicated OER policies.