Identifying Socio-Cultural Factors That Impact the Use of Open Educational Resources in Local Public Administrations

The goal of this paper is to define relevant barriers to the exchange of Open Educational Resources in local public administrations. Building upon a cultural model, eleven experts were interviewed and asked to evaluate several factors, such as openness in discourse, learning at the workplace, and superior support, among others. The result is a set of socio-cultural factors that shape the use of Open Educational Resources in public administrations. Significant factors are, in this respect, the independent choice of learning resources, the spirit of the platform, the range of available formats and access to technologies. Practitioners use these factors to elaborate on the readiness of public administrations towards the use of open e-Learning systems. To academic debates on culture in e-Learning, the results provide an alternative model that is contextualized to meet the demands of public sector contexts. Overall, the paper contributes to the lack of research about open e-Learning systems in the public sector, as well as regarding culture in the management of learning and knowledge exchange