Abstract
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.
Highlights
Open Educational Resources (OER) are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others” (Hewlett, 2017, para. 7), and recent years have seen a surge in interest in open education and the use of OER
If, as Florida Virtual Campus (2016) indicates, the cost of textbooks leads students to withdraw from courses, we might expect to see fewer withdrawals if costly learning materials are substituted with OER
When looking at an overall, average effect, we find that students using OER materials performed about 2% worse in the course compared to students who used commercial materials
Summary
Open Educational Resources (OER) are “teaching, learning, and research resources that reside in the public domain or have been released under an intellectual property license that permits their free use and repurposing by others” (Hewlett, 2017, para. 7), and recent years have seen a surge in interest in open education and the use of OER. A survey of 22,906 post-secondary students in Florida found that 67% of students reported that they did not purchase a required textbook because of its high cost. As well, this same survey found that because of the lack of access to learning materials, 37.6% had earned a poor grade and 19.8% had failed a course. If, as Florida Virtual Campus (2016) indicates, the cost of textbooks leads students to withdraw from courses, we might expect to see fewer withdrawals if costly learning materials are substituted with OER
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