Case Study: Use of Open Education Resources in Business Capstone

Lorena D Mathien

doi:10.4995/head18.2018.7914

Abstract

Recent studies on textbook costs in the United States have indicated that there is a direct relationship between textbook costs and student success. With textbook costs increasing at a rate higher than the cost of living, many students have cited the textbook cost as an extremely important factor when obtaining (or not obtaining) a textbook. Open educational resources (OER) are tools that educators can use to supplement or build a course. OER are free for anyone to reuse, revise, remix, and redistribute and are a low-cost, tailored solution for faculty and students. There have been calls for research that demonstrates how OER are being put into practice. This case study examines the responses of users to a voluntary survey in a capstone business course that implemented OER in lieu of traditional textbooks. The study suggests that, for teachers and students, as well as self-directed learners, OER provide a valuable resource to eliminate the pay wall, improve learning design, and support the power of the community through sharing and collaboration.

Highlights

The growth of the open education resources (OER) movement has steadily gained global momentum since 2000 (Wiley & Gurrell, 2009)
This study investigated the impact of OER on students in various sections of a capstone course at State University of New York (SUNY) Buffalo State
The business discipline is in constant change, and OER

Summary

Introduction

The growth of the open education resources (OER) movement has steadily gained global momentum since 2000 (Wiley & Gurrell, 2009). OER offer opportunities to students who may be economically, or otherwise, excluded from formal education due the increasing cost of traditional learning materials. OER adoption may lead to the inclusion of excluded groups of students via access to a wider range of little or no cost learning content (Lane, 2008). OER are teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under a Creative Commons license that permit reuse or repurposing. These resources may include textbooks, course materials, modules, podcasts, experiments, demonstrations, teacher guides, lesson plans, videos, tests, images, supporting materials and resources, government documents, open datasets, programs, or full courses (Atkins, et al, 2007). OER are free to use and remix, enabling instructors to customize and differentiate materials for students (Ash, 2012)

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Conclusion