The Studio coordinates with the UB’s Open Education Research Lab on the development of relevant and useful research as it pertains to the activities of the OER Studio. Initially, the OER librarians are focused on investigating questions around the following themes:

• What type of professional development can be delivered by an OER studio model for enabling faculty to engage in sustainable OER practices?
• What factors influence faculty who participate in an OER studio to consume versus create or share OER materials?
• What are core features and supports necessary to create a sustainable OER studio model?
• What are differences in successful OER studio programming as they pertain to the different professional development needs of pre-tenure, tenured, clinical, or adjunct faculty?

The purpose of advancing OER research is to inform the ongoing development of the Studio and to contribute to the professional discourse and scholarly literature on the use of OER in higher education. The OER librarians contend that at present there is not a significant enough body of empirical research concerning the use of OER, and those who use or espouse the use of OER-based teaching need reproducible findings for any related claims of success or failure.

University at Buffalo faculty produced the OER-related research listed below. 

• Abramovich, S., & McBride, M. (2018). Open education resources and perceptions of financial value. The Internet and Higher Education, 39, 33-38. doi: 10.1016/j.iheduc.2018.06.002
• Hollister, C., & Patton, J. (2021). Faculty perceptions of an OER stipend program. New Review of Academic Librarianship [volume/issue pending]. doi: 10.1080/13614533.2021.2000452.
• Hollister, C. (2020). Using open pedagogy to engage LIS students: A case study. Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication, 8, eP2357. doi: 10.7710/2162-3309.2357
• Hollister, C. (2020). Collaborating with an international partner institution to mitigate the cost of course textbooks. Journal of Web Librarianship, 14. doi: 10.1080/19322909.2020.1781019
• Kruger, J., & Abramovich, S. (2019). Open educational resources: The new frontier. Pedagogy in Health Promotion, 5(2), 155-158. doi: 10.1177/2373379918799767
• Kruger, J., & Hollister, C. (2020). Engaging undergraduate public health students through a textbook creation project. Pedagogy in Health Promotion, 6. doi: 10.1177/2373379920962416

The Guidebook to Open Educational Resources Adoption was produced by the Open Education Group for the Open Textbook Network. The purpose of this guidebook is to provide ideas for how individual faculty members and those who support them (e.g., librarians, instructional designers, etc.) can research the effect of their adoption of OER.