Pixel International Conferences

Open Educational Resources (OER) have become indispensable in higher education as mechanisms for improving access, availability concerns, rising costs, inequities embedded in commercial textbooks. While significant literature has documented OER adoption/adaptation as cost saving, less attention has been given to faculty‑driven knowledge creation, underlying open textbook development. This case study documented the collaborative process of five faculty engaged in developing an OER textbook for graduate‑level educational research students. Based on Nonaka and Takeuchi’s SECI model of knowledge creation, the process involved faculty moving from shared tacit knowledge to explicit knowledge, creating an openly licensed textbook, through socialization, externalization, combination, and internalization. Multiple data sources included shared planning documents, draft chapters, and reflective notes generated throughout the process, and prolonged engagement. The initial data analysis yielded four interrelated themes: 1) shared dissatisfaction with commercial textbooks as an agent for collaboration; 2) negotiation of disciplinary and pedagogical assumptions; 3) emergence of collective pedagogical ownership; and 4) conceptualization of the open textbook as a living, revisable product of knowledge. The subsequent data analysis revealed the alignment of four themes with the SECI model of knowledge creation, demonstrating how faculty engaged in a sustained sense‑making process and professional learning rather than discrete content production. To conclude, apart from providing students with a freely accessible open textbook, the study was consistent with the OER literature in that the process promoted curricular coherence, strengthened collective pedagogical ownership, and supported sustainable engagement with open pedagogy. The study suggests that OER development provides a scalable, low‑risk entry point for faculty participation in open knowledge practices while cultivating institutional cultures of collaboration and equity.