Why am I comfortable sharing research, but more hesitant about sharing my teaching? I keep coming back to this question. Publishing findings is an expected part of academic life. Putting my slides or assignments online feels different—perhaps because they reveal the unfinished side of teaching. An explanation that works well in one classroom may look incomplete outside it. Materials are shaped by the students, the discussion and the questions that arise, none of which necessarily travels with a downloaded file. There is a wider issue here, too. Access to information is not the same as learning from it. Rather than struggling to find information, students may now struggle to decide what deserves their attention and what they can trust. Yet it would be misleading to describe this abundance as something everyone enjoys equally. Financial constraints, access to technology and accessibility barriers still affect who can use educational resources and how.
What does “open” actually offer?
Before deciding what I might share, I need to distinguish between materials that are free to view and those that are genuinely open. UNESCO’s definition of open educational resources includes materials in the public domain or released under a licence that allows access, reuse, adaptation and redistribution. Finding something online does not necessarily give me permission to change it or use it in my own teaching. That permission is where I see much of the value. Students can access materials without having to buy them, while teachers can adapt a resource instead of asking a class to work around its limitations. In my own teaching, this might mean replacing an unfamiliar example, unpacking difficult terminology or making an explanation available for students to revisit after a session.
None of this means that open materials automatically lead to better learning. Clinton and Khan’s meta-analysis found no meaningful overall difference in learning performance between open and commercial textbooks, although withdrawal odds were lower in courses using open textbooks. The finding matters to me because it suggests that reducing costs need not come at the expense of learning quality. It does not make an open licence a teaching method. I find the distinction between open resources and open educational practices helpful here. Sharing my slides changes who can access them. Asking students to question an explanation, compare evidence and work together to improve it changes what they do with the material. Both may be worthwhile, but they are not the same intervention.
When more becomes too much
My main concern is the pressure students may feel to read, watch and understand everything we make available. What I intend as helpful choice could easily look like an expanding list of obligations. The phrase “panic mode” captures that concern, although I would not use it as a clinical label or assume that all students respond in the same way. Research with university students has linked perceived information overload with poorer wellbeing. The study discussed here did not establish a significant relationship with academic attainment, however, and could not show causation. I take this as a reason to be cautious, rather than as proof that abundant resources harm learning. In practice, I would make the status of each resource explicit: this is essential; this offers another explanation if you need it; this is for further exploration. I would also explain why I had included it and, importantly, when students had done enough. Providing access is only part of the job. I also need to help students find a manageable route through what is available. That route should include practice in judging sources. Lateral reading offers one approach: instead of relying on what a website says about itself, students leave the page and investigate what independent sources say about its author, organisation or claims. I could build this into a task by asking students who produced a resource, what evidence it uses, whether it is current and whether its conclusions hold up elsewhere.
This raises an uncomfortable question about my own expectations. If I want students to pause, verify and reflect, do my teaching activities actually give them practice in doing so? It would be too easy to describe quick answers or superficial engagement as a generational problem without examining what my course rewards.
Choosing resources, not collecting them
The question of platforms becomes easier when I start with the learning task rather than the technology. OpenStax offers peer-reviewed open textbooks; OER Commons supports finding and creating resources; and OpenLearn provides openly licensed learning content, with stated exceptions. They are useful starting points, but I would still need to check the accuracy, accessibility, relevance and licence of anything I selected. The format would depend on what students needed to do. A demanding reading might work best as a downloadable text that they could annotate or print. A short narrated animation might help explain a process that unfolds over time. An interview could work well as audio, provided a transcript was also available. I see little value in putting every topic into every format simply because the tools allow it.
Guidance on educational video stresses focused content, manageable cognitive demands and questions or activities that require students to engage. Universal Design for Learning also encourages different ways of representing material and participating in learning. For me, the challenge is to offer useful alternatives without creating a disconnected collection that students must sort out for themselves.
Paper or screen?
The example of Finland returning to pencil and paper initially seemed to support concerns about excessive digitalisation. Looking more closely changed what I took from it. The verified example was narrower than a national return to paper for the first nine years of schooling. In August 2024, Riihimäki announced greater use of printed materials in its local lower-secondary education, including mathematics and several languages, while retaining purposeful uses of educational technology. This was a local adjustment, sensitive to the subject being taught—not evidence that Finland had abandoned digital learning.
It also reminded me that open does not mean digital. An openly licensed textbook can be printed. A student can read it on paper and make handwritten notes without rejecting anything about openness. The more useful question is which medium supports the task, not whether screens or paper are inherently preferable.
Sharing without pretending the work is finished
I still worry about sharing something that contains a mistake. But keeping a resource within my own classroom does not make it correct; it just limits who might notice the problem. I would feel more comfortable releasing materials after a colleague had reviewed them. I would also want the intended audience, learning objectives, references and revision date to be clear. An institutional affiliation can provide context, but a logo alone would not reassure me as much as knowing how the material had been checked.
Licensing requires a similar adjustment in expectations. Creative Commons licences allow creators to retain copyright while granting particular permissions. CC BY-SA, for example, allows adaptation but requires attribution, identification of changes and ShareAlike licensing. It does not allow someone to imply that the original creator endorses their use.
I therefore cannot expect openness to give me complete control over what happens next. What I can aim for is clear authorship, understandable conditions and an identifiable original version. I also need to make a considered decision about what I am ready—and authorised—to release.
A small trial in my own teaching
Rather than opening an entire course, I would begin with one teaching unit. First, I would check institutional ownership rules, third-party content and privacy issues. I cannot apply an open licence to material simply because it appears in my slides; I need to own it or have the authority to license it. After peer feedback, I would publish a dated version, state the licence clearly and provide a way to report errors. For students, I would build a small inquiry around that unit. They would examine a core open resource, check one of its claims against an independent source and explain any differences in evidence or interpretation. They could then suggest a clearer explanation, a revised diagram or a short commentary, recording what they changed and why. The point would be the reasoning behind the revision, not adding another item to the internet. Public sharing would remain optional. Students could complete the assessed work within the course, with any later publication treated as a separate, informed decision. I would not want participation in an open activity to depend on accepting public exposure. To evaluate the trial, I would look at students’ explanations and source-evaluation work, alongside their feedback on workload, accessibility and confidence. Downloads and viewing figures might tell me whether a resource was being accessed, but not whether it helped anyone learn. I would also need to be honest about the work involved in keeping it accurate and useful.
What I would bring back to the ONL group, then, is a different question from the one I started with. “How can I share my teaching without losing control?” still reflects a real concern, but it no longer seems the most productive starting point. I would rather ask: “Which forms of openness help students learn, and what responsibilities come with them?” That gives me a clearer basis for deciding what to open, what to keep within the classroom and where students need less material rather than more.