Table 1 Review of OEP definitions in the literature and the extracted keywords

The Open eLearning Content Observatory Services (OLCOS) project defined OEP as ‘practices that involve students in active, constructive engagement with content, tools, and services in the learning process and promote learners’ self-management, creativity, and working in teams’ (Geser, 2007).

tools and services, working in teams

Conole and Ehlers (2010) defined OEP as ‘the use of OER with the aim to improve [the] quality of educational processes and innovate educational environments’ (p. 3).

OER, educational environment

Ehlers (2011) considered OEP as a ‘collaborative practice in which resources are shared by making them openly available and pedagogical practices are employed which rely on social interaction, knowledge creation, [peer learning], and shared learning practices’ (p. 6).

collaborative practice, social interaction, knowledge creation, peer learning

International Council for Open and Distance Education (ICDE, 2012) defined OEP as “practices which support the production, use and reuse of high quality open educational resources (OER)”

Practices, (re) use of OER

UK OER support and evaluation team (2012) defined OEP as “all activities that open up access to educational opportunity, in a context where freely available online content and services (whether ‘open’, ‘educational’ or not) are taken as the norm”

open services, open content

Other researchers (DeRosa & Robison, 2015; Hegarty 2015; Rosen & Smale, 2015; Weller, 2014) considered OEP as an open pedagogy where students contribute to the teaching process using OER.

open pedagogy

Cronin (2017) defined OEP as ‘collaborative practices that include the creation, use, and reuse of OER as well as pedagogical practices employing participatory technologies and social networks for [the] interaction, [peer learning], knowledge creation, and empowerment of learners’.

collaborative practices, OER, participatory technologies, social networks, peer learning, knowledge creation

The Ljubljana Action Plan from the Second World OER Congress (UNESCO, 2017) stated, ‘If used effectively and supported by sound pedagogical practices, OER allow for the possibility to dramatically increase access to education through ICT, opening up opportunities to create and share a wider array of educational resources to accommodate a greater diversity of educator and learner needs. Increased online access to OER further promotes individualised study, which, when coupled with social networking and collaborative learning, fosters opportunities for pedagogical innovation and knowledge creation.’

ICT, social networking, collaborative learning, knowledge creation

Institute for the Study of Knowledge Management in Education (2017) defined OEP as “comprising a set of skills in collaboration, curation, curricular design, and leadership around the use of Open Educational Resources. OEP build educator capacity for using OER to improve curriculum, instruction, and pedagogy, and to gain skills in digital resource curation and curriculum creation, and to actively collaborate around and advocate for innovative approaches to open education and OER”

OER use (skills), collaboration, resource and curriculum creation

Chiappe and Adame (2018) stated that OEP can cover several dimensions, including assessment, teaching, and educational planning.

assessment, teaching, educational planning

Wiley and Hilton III (2018) considered OEP as an OER-enabled pedagogy and defined it as a ‘set of teaching and learning practices that are only possible or practical in the context of the 5R permissions that are characteristic of OER’.

teaching and learning practices, OER