As explained in UNESCO’s 2019 Recommendation on Open Educational Resources, OER are learning, teaching, and research materials in any format and medium that reside in the public domain or are under copyright and have been released under an open license, permitting no-cost access, re-use, re-purpose, adaptation, and redistribution by others.

Linguistic and cultural barriers contribute to information privilege

Currently, a majority of OER are published in English, while other languages lag behind. Even when OER are available in a given language, they may represent only the dominant variety of that language (e.g. French from France, rather than French from Canada or Cameroon). University students might be grateful to have access to learning materials that don’t break the bank, but how engaged will they be if they don’t see themselves or their culture reflected in their textbooks? As for instructors, how effectively can they teach using material that is disconnected from their local reality? Even when OER are free or low cost, neither instructors nor students are likely to feel very motivated by teaching and learning resources that have been designed for other users. In such cases, the intended (original) audience benefits from information privilege since the content and examples are geared towards their needs. Meanwhile, secondary users reap fewer benefits, which can exacerbate inequities. Free is great, but it’s not sufficient!

From translation to localization

Happily, another inherent characteristic of OER provides a path forward. OER can be adapted. In the first instance, adaptation often means translation, where the content is presented in another language or language variety. Again, this is an excellent step, but it may not fully meet the needs of the new community of users. To be truly useful to a new audience, an OER may need to be localized. While translation focuses on language transfer, localization includes other types of adaptation, which are often cultural and contextual in nature. For example, it could involve adapting date formats, units of measure, currency, colors or images. It could also include identifying content, cases or examples that are linked to the culture and region of the original audience and substituting them with content that is more relevant to the new audience. Localization of OER is one of the key ideas in open sharing: adaptations are made so that open content meets the needs of local students.

AI can help, but it can’t do everything

Creating a new OER from scratch may be intimidating for some instructors, and it may not be necessary if an existing OER can be localized instead. Nevertheless, localization still requires effort and both disciplinary and linguistic expertise. With artificial intelligence (AI) gaining more attention, instructors may be curious about whether AI tools can help with OER localization. The 2024 Dubai Declaration on OER focuses on digital public goods and emerging technologies for equitable and inclusive access to knowledge. One of the recommendations contained in the Dubai declaration is to use AI tools when appropriate in order to help localize OER; however, it is essential to pay attention to the linguistic quality and cultural relevance of the tool output. AI-based localizations should not be viewed as a final product. Users should also be cognisant of the license implications of content generated from AI platforms, as the content may not necessarily truly be an OER. Furthermore, consultation with the community of intended users – both instructors and students – is essential for preparing localized OER that are relevant and high-quality.

“Support the translation and contextualization of OER into multiple languages, using AI-related technologies when appropriate, with due attention paid to the quality of the output of translations and its cultural relevance in collaboration with users’ communities.”

(Dubai Declaration on Open Educational Resources, 2024)

Community counts, so count your community in!

There are many ways of involving community members, including instructors, students, and the wider population, in the localization of OER through collaborative OER development. A new edited collection entitled Localisation of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education is currently in production to be published by the Commonwealth of Learning later in 2026. The collection, co-edited by Jako Olivier and Lynne Bowker, contains contributions from over 20 educators from around the world who share their experiences, methods, and best practices for working with their communities to localize OER in a wide range of disciplines. As these examples show, community-led localization of OER is an important activity for reducing information privilege in higher education.