Impact of OER

The high cost of textbooks is a ongoing concern for educators and students. Surveys of students find that 65% of students do not purchase a required textbook because of the cost. Students make these decisions understanding that not purchasing materials will negatively impact their grade. 

Educators eliminate one barrier to higher education by adopting low and no-cost learning materials such as OERs. With the removal of the cost barrier, OERs ensure that course materials are readily accessible to more students. However, affordability and accessibility are just some of the possible benefits.

The opportunities that OERs and Open Education practices offer extend beyond textbook affordability through the affordances provided with open licensing. While authors of OERs retain the copyright to their works, open licenses like Creative Commons, give other educators and users worldwide a set of permissions that allow for the sharing of knowledge and the ability to customize and localize it.

By being more accessible and adaptable than traditional learning materials, OERs enable the creation of inclusive educational environments for students. The opportunities for increased visibility and representation in learning materials creates a sense of belonging in the classroom. Open educational practices like Open Pedagogy invite students to become co-creators of knowledge. Through student-centered teaching methods like Open Pedagogy, students can have a greater agency in their learning.

• Fixing the Broken Textbook Market, Third Edition 

• Teaching and Learning with Open Educational Resources (2022)

Recent studies have begun to produce data showing OER adoptions can also have a positive impact on student success metrics such as increases in grade point averages, reduction in Drop, Fail, Withdrawal rates, and a reduction in time to completion. 

• A multi-institutional study of the impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary students (2015)

• Open educational resources, student efficacy, and user perceptions: a synthesis of research published between 2015 and 2018 (2019)

• The Impact of Open Educational Resources on Various Student Success Metrics (2018)

• OER at scale: The academic and economic outcomes of the OER Degree Initiative (2020)

• More resources at the Achieving the Dream website.