Abstract
<p class="3">The high cost of tuition and textbooks can have a negative impact on potential students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Open Educational Resources (OER) offers students a way to save educational costs while utilizing high-quality open textbooks. Up until now, there have been few studies focused on a specific provider of open textbooks. This study investigates open textbooks provided by OpenStax. Specifically, this study uses the COUP framework to examine: (1) cost reduction, (2) outcomes, (3) uses, and (4) the faculty perceptions of the quality of OpenStax textbooks. Additionally, we expanded the framework to address (5) the relationship between the perceived quality of the OpenStax textbook and the faculty perception of student performance, (6) the faculty’s intention to continue to adopt OpenStax textbooks, and (7) the perceived importance of accessibility to faculty who use OpenStax textbooks. Overall, the findings suggest that a significant amount of financial savings and a number of pedagogical shifts can be supported by the use of OpenStax textbooks.</p>
Highlights
Textbooks are an important part of the post-secondary college instructional model and can be expensive (Bok, 2009)
The current study focuses a specific population of faculty using open textbooks from OpenStax teaching at various higher education institutions around the globe, and contains survey questions related to faculty perceptions about the importance of accessibility features when adopting open textbooks and the impact of open textbooks on student achievement
Similar to the results reported by Bliss et al (2013), 68% of the faculty members perceived their students as prepared for their course using open textbooks compared to using traditional textbooks
Summary
Textbooks are an important part of the post-secondary college instructional model and can be expensive (Bok, 2009). One study found that the average textbook price was $90.00 at seven different colleges across multiple general education courses that included science, mathematics, humanities, and business disciplines (Hilton, Robinson, Wiley, & Ackerman, 2014). The high cost of tuition and textbooks can have a negative impact on potential students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Paulsen & St. John, 2002). Provasnik and Plenty (2008) found that high educational costs cause these individuals to be more prone to delay college enrollment than wealthier students. High textbook costs can encourage students to take fewer classes per term, extending their
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