Opening the horizons for education: reflections on repositories of open educational resources in higher education

Abstract

The repositories of open educational resources have been expanding in various regions of the world, which leads to the need to reflect on the role of these repositories and their implications for teaching and research in higher education, which is the objective of this study. The qualitative exploratory research was adopted as a methodological approach, to compose the literature review on the phenomenon under study, seeking to support the discussions around it. Bibliographic searches in the Scopus and Web of Science databases were used as search strategies for data collection and analysis. According to the results obtained, it became evident that open educational resources and repositories, as sources of management and dissemination of the resources, brought a new perspective to education, in the sense of openness to access, reuse, and sharing and to encourage collaborative work to adapt, transform and create new content. However, there is a need to broaden the understanding of the limitations and barriers to the sustainability and utilization of open education resource repositories and how they can contribute to innovative practices in teaching and learning, from the perspective of the users of these systems, which requires further studies with this objective.