AI and OER: Potential for Higher Education

What role can AI appli­ca­tions play in the future for OER and open edu­ca­tional prac­tices at uni­ver­si­ties? A multi-per­spec­tive sur­vey con­ducted by twillo addressed this ques­tion. From Feb­ru­ary through Octo­ber 2025, the HIS Insti­tute for Higher Edu­ca­tion Devel­op­ment (HIS-HE) —a coop­er­a­tion part­ner in the twillo network—conducted sur­veys among OER lead users, vice pres­i­dents for aca­d­e­mic affairs or deans of stud­ies, and twillo users using online ques­tion­naires and sup­ple­men­tary qual­i­ta­tive inter­views. Pre­lim­i­nary interim find­ings from the study on usage pat­terns and chal­lenges have already been pub­lished in this twillo blog post, “AI and OER: Insights into Cur­rent Usage and Chal­lenges.”

The com­plete sur­vey results show that, in the OER con­text, AI appli­ca­tions have so far been used pri­mar­ily for text edit­ing, trans­la­tion, image gen­er­a­tion, or the prepa­ra­tion of teach­ing mate­ri­als. At the same time, respon­dents attribute sig­nif­i­cant poten­tial to AI for the cre­ation, adap­ta­tion, and fur­ther devel­op­ment of open edu­ca­tional resources. Across all respon­dent groups, AI is pre­dom­i­nantly per­ceived as an oppor­tu­nity for the fur­ther devel­op­ment of OER and higher edu­ca­tion teach­ing ( see fig­ure). AI is not viewed as a panacea, but rather as a tool that unlocks poten­tial while also bring­ing new chal­lenges.

Reducing the Workload Involved in Creating and Maintaining OER

The inter­vie­wees see a key oppor­tu­nity in improv­ing effi­ciency when cre­at­ing and updat­ing open edu­ca­tional resources. AI can sup­port the devel­op­ment and revi­sion of OER, for exam­ple, by cre­at­ing exer­cises, gen­er­at­ing meta­data, or extract­ing com­pe­ten­cies from course descrip­tions. This can reduce time-con­sum­ing rou­tine tasks and free up resources for core ped­a­gog­i­cal tasks such as qual­ity con­trol or stu­dent sup­port.

Personalization and Inclusive Teaching

Another area of poten­tial high­lighted is the abil­ity to adapt OER to dif­fer­ent tar­get audi­ences and learn­ing needs. Using AI, for exam­ple, mate­ri­als can be var­ied in terms of their level of com­plex­ity, dif­fer­ent pre­sen­ta­tion for­mats can be gen­er­ated, or indi­vid­u­al­ized learn­ing paths can be sup­ported. In addi­tion, AI is seen as hav­ing par­tic­u­lar poten­tial for more inclu­sive higher edu­ca­tion, for instance through the acces­si­ble design of mate­ri­als or their adap­ta­tion to spe­cific learn­ing needs.

Improve Quality and Discoverability

The inter­views also show that AI can do more than just assist in the cre­ation of new mate­ri­als. Pos­si­ble appli­ca­tions for qual­ity assur­ance of exist­ing OER are also men­tioned, such as review­ing mul­ti­ple-choice ques­tions or improv­ing course descrip­tions with regard to learn­ing objec­tives.

In addi­tion, AI sys­tems are believed to have the poten­tial to auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­ate and assign meta­data. This could improve the dis­cov­er­abil­ity and reusabil­ity of OER on plat­forms.

Strategic Development of Open Education

Sev­eral inter­vie­wees attest that the com­bi­na­tion of AI and OER offers long-term devel­op­ment prospects. OER are also viewed as the foun­da­tion for the devel­op­ment of insti­tu­tional AI sys­tems, since openly licensed mate­ri­als can be used with­out legal issues for train­ing large lan­guage models—a cen­tral com­po­nent of gen­er­a­tive AI mod­els. At the same time, greater col­lab­o­ra­tion among higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions is seen as an opportunity—for exam­ple, through the exchange of OER as well as proven prompts and work­flows.

Potential and Opportunities

• Increased Effi­ciency and Reduced Work­load
• Per­son­al­iza­tion and Inclu­sion
• Qual­ity assur­ance and infra­struc­ture
• Strate­gic inte­gra­tion
• Ped­a­gog­i­cal Sup­port and Inno­va­tion
• Edu­ca­tional Equity and Skill Devel­op­ment

Conclusion

Over­all, the qual­i­ta­tive find­ings paint a con­sis­tent pic­ture: AI is pre­dom­i­nantly per­ceived as a pro­duc­tive exten­sion of the didac­tic and orga­ni­za­tional reper­toire in the OER sec­tor. Par­tic­u­lar empha­sis is placed on its poten­tial for increas­ing effi­ciency, per­son­al­iza­tion, qual­ity assur­ance, and the strate­gic advance­ment of open edu­ca­tion. At the same time, the results make it clear that this poten­tial can only be real­ized if appro­pri­ate struc­tural con­di­tions are cre­ated and if higher edu­ca­tion insti­tu­tions sys­tem­at­i­cally test and fur­ther develop the pos­si­bil­i­ties of AI-sup­ported open edu­ca­tion prac­tices.

The com­plete find­ings of the study and the result­ing con­clu­sions are avail­able in the HIS-HE Media Cen­ter.