Secondary Students’ Perceptions of Open Science Textbooks

Rebecca Morales,Alesha Baker

doi:10.5334/jime.455

Abstract

In an attempt to align instructional resources with new state standards and to increase teacher awareness of these standards, one large suburban public school district piloted the development and adoption of open secondary science textbooks. Open textbooks created by teachers in grades six through nine replaced conventional science textbooks provided by mainstream publishing companies. Therefore, grade nine students were not included in this study. At the end of the first quarter, middle school students (grades six through eight) who used the open textbooks were surveyed. Survey responses required respondents to consider their learning before and during the use of the open textbook. The survey included quality and presentation of content questions, as well as an opportunity for students to explain their responses. There were qualitative and quantitative indications that students’ perceptions of an open textbook in place of a standard textbook are improving students’ attitudes and behaviors toward learning.

Highlights

From the launch of the World Wide Web to the everyday use of smartphones, technology has become an integral component of the lives of our nation’s citizens
Students’ responses to this survey are indicative that the flexibility of open textbooks is more appealing than the more rigid, copyright-restricted textbooks typically used in the classroom
When considering the history of textbook use, one could say that the earliest handwritten versions were technically open, but their limited production resulted in limited availability

Summary

Introduction

From the launch of the World Wide Web to the everyday use of smartphones, technology has become an integral component of the lives of our nation’s citizens. It is only practical that technology continues to become a fundamental part of public education. Open Education Resources (OER) refers to a variety of resources, distributed for free under an open license that grants comprehensive consent for full reuse rights to the public that include copying, printing, and modifying. In 2013, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation defined OER as “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 re-purposing by others” (Hewlett, 2013). Users are able to retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute the content in an OER. By adding the 5th R, retain, in his 2014 blog post, Wiley attempts to clarify confusion concerning ownership, reinforcing the importance of openly licensing content

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