Uncovering the black box effect of Open Educational Resources (OER) and practices (OEP): a meta-analysis and meta-synthesis from the perspective of activity theory

Ahmed Tlili, Xiangling Zhang, Georgios Lampropoulos, Soheil Salha (), Juan Garzón, Aras Bozkurt, Ronghuai Huang and Daniel Burgos
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Ahmed Tlili: Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University
Xiangling Zhang: Beijing Institute of Education
Georgios Lampropoulos: University of Macedonia
Soheil Salha: An-Najah National University
Juan Garzón: Universidad Católica de Oriente
Aras Bozkurt: Anadolu University
Ronghuai Huang: Smart Learning Institute of Beijing Normal University
Daniel Burgos: Universidad Internacional de La Rioja (UNIR)

Palgrave Communications, 2025, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-13

Abstract: Abstract Conflicting results exist in the literature on whether Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Educational Practices (OEP) can improve learning performance. Additionally, limited studies, in this context, have attempted to systematically measure and understand this phenomenon. To address this research gap, this study conducts a two-level analysis based on a systematic review of the OER and OEP literature. It first conducts a meta-analysis to measure the effect of OER and OEP on learning performance. It then conducts a meta-synthesis based on the activity theory to understand what led to this effect (measured in the first phase). Specifically, 32 studies (N = 134905 participants) were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed. The obtained results revealed that OER and OEP have significant negligible effect (g = 0.10; p

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1057/s41599-025-04644-y

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