Open Educational Resources: OER Impact

During March and April 2018, more than 21,000 students participated in a Student Textbook and Course
Materials Survey conducted by the Florida Virtual Campus’s (FLVC) Office of Distance Learning and Student
Services. The survey examined textbook affordability and acquisition at Florida’s public higher education
institutions.

The results of the first cross-campus survey of student opinions on Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses are in: City University of New York (CUNY) students like their ZTC courses, primarily for the cost savings and ease of access. The survey results yield rich data about how positively students feel about their Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) courses as well as ways to improve the design and delivery of Zero Textbook Cost courses to make them more beneficial for student learning.

A large-scale study at the University of Georgia has found that college students provided with free course materials at the beginning of a class get significantly better academic results than those that do not.

This present study synthesizes results from sixteen efficacy and twenty perceptions studies involving 121,168 students or faculty that examine either (1) OER and student efficacy in higher education settings or (2) the perceptions of college students and/or instructors who have used OER. Results across these studies suggest students achieve the same or better learning outcomes when using OER while saving significant amounts of money. The results also indicate that the majority of faculty and students who have used OER had a positive experience and would do so again.

This review provides a summary of all known empirical research on the impacts of OER adoption (including our own).

There are multiple indicators which suggest that completion, quality, and affordability are the three greatest challenges for higher education today in terms of students, student learning, and student success. Many colleges, universities, and state systems are seeking to adopt a portfolio of solutions that address these challenges. This article reports the results of a large-scale study (21,822 students) regarding the impact of course-level faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Results indicate that OER adoption does much more than simply save students money and address student debt concerns. OER improve end-of-course grades and decrease DFW (D, F, and Withdrawal letter grades) rates for all students. They also improve course grades at greater rates and decrease DFW rates at greater rates for Pell recipient students, part-time students, and populations historically underserved by higher education. OER address affordability, completion, attainment gap concerns, and learning. These findings contribute to a broadening perception of the value of OERs and their relevance to the great challenges facing higher education today.

Textbooks are a vital component in many higher education contexts. Increasing textbook prices, coupled with general rising costs of higher education have led some instructors to experiment with substituting open educational resources (OER) for commercial textbooks as their primary class curriculum. This article synthesizes the results of 16 studies that examine either (1) the influence of OER on student learning outcomes in higher education settings or (2) the perceptions of college students and instructors of OER. Results across multiple studies indicate that students generally achieve the same learning outcomes when OER are utilized and simultaneously save significant amounts of money. Studies across a variety of settings indicate that both students and faculty are generally positive regarding OER.

Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) is Utah’s largest open enrollment college, and as an institution, is
concerned about the expense associated with attaining a degree. All students face challenges in paying for
their education, but SLCC students tend to have fewer resources to dedicate to school than students at other
institutions in the state. While faculty and administrators have little control over the rising cost of tuition,
they are able to offer students open educational resources (OER) to cut down on textbook costs. Salt Lake
Community College’s OER initiative was implemented in Summer 2014, and has since expanded to include
125 sections in Spring 2016. We examine OER’s impact on three measures of student success: course grade,
likelihood of passing, and likelihood of withdrawing.

Open Educational Resources (OER) have been lauded for their ability to reduce student costs and improve equity in higher education. Research examining whether OER provides learning benefits have produced mixed results, with most studies showing null effects. We argue that the common methods used to examine OER efficacy are unlikely to detect positive effects based on predictions of the access hypothesis. The access hypothesis states that OER benefits learning by providing access to critical course materials, and therefore predicts that OER should only benefit students who would not otherwise have access to the materials. Through the use of simulation analysis, we demonstrate that even if there is a learning benefit of OER, standard research methods are unlikely to detect it.

Open educational resources (OER), which are free and openly licensed educational materials, have been a widely discussed topic in response to high textbook costs, the need for more pedagogical flexibility, and inequality in access to educational materials. In this study we examine the efficacy of OER through a quantitative analysis of the impact of OER on student final exam performance in a large calculus course. Our dataset affords us a relatively large sample size, allows us to classify students in both treatment and control groups, and includes a variety of covariates that allow us to control for multiple correlated factors. We estimate causal treatment effects using several econometric approaches. Our study adds the following insights into the research on OER efficacy: (i) OER materials do not, in general, lead to any significant change in student final exam performance; and (ii) OER materials have a significantly positive impact on both international students and Pell Grant eligible students.

from EdScoop
August 2018

from Inside Higher Ed
February 2020

From Sparc
March 2019

Chippewa Valley Technical College in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, will lead an effort to create OER for its nursing program in partnership with nearby Gateway, Northeast and Madison Area Technical Colleges.