Abstract
Open educational resources (OER), including open textbooks, are free, adaptable learning resources. The integration of these materials in place of commercial textbooks allows for considerable financial savings for students and creates opportunities for more active and engaged learning. The growing interest in the use of OER at a Western Canadian university led to the chance to survey students for their feedback on using OER instead of traditional commercial textbooks. This paper focuses on the views of students in an introductory sociology course for which an instructor adopted an open textbook and otherwise left the course unchanged from when it was taught with a traditional textbook. In addition, completion rates for the offerings with the open textbook are compared to previous offerings with a commercial textbook.
Highlights
The cost of textbooks for post-secondary education in the United States rose more than 1,000% between 1977 and 2015, a rate three times that of inflation (Popken, 2015)
Students gave the open textbook high marks, with 72.8% rating it as excellent or above average compared to traditional textbooks they had used in other courses (Table 1)
The $100 figure, which is used by BCcampus, the U of S, and other institutions and organizations working with open textbooks is an estimated average that each student in a class saves when open educational resources (OER) is adopted in place of a commercial textbook
Summary
The cost of textbooks for post-secondary education in the United States rose more than 1,000% between 1977 and 2015, a rate three times that of inflation (Popken, 2015). In an effort to deal with this problem, and improve learning outcomes, post-secondary institutions throughout North America are exploring the use of open educational resources (OER) in place of commercial textbooks. The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) defines OER as “any type of educational materials that are in the public domain or introduced with an open license. The nature of these open materials means that anyone can legally and freely copy, use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes, assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and animation” (UNESCO, n.d.)
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