As Good or Better than Commercial Textbooks: Students’ Perceptions and Outcomes from Using Open Digital and Open Print Textbooks

Abstract

The increase in the cost of college textbooks together with the proliferation of digital content and devices has inspired the development of open textbooks, open educational resources that are free, openly licensed, and often peer-reviewed. Although several published studies have investigated the impact of open textbook adoption on educational outcomes, none have separated the effects of textbook openness and format and only two have taken place in Canada (Hendricks, Reinsberg, & Rieger, 2017; Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017). This study investigates the perceptions, use, and course performance of Canadian post-secondary students assigned a commercial or open textbook in either print or digital format. Results show that students using the print format of the open textbook perceive its quality to be superior to the commercial textbook. Moreover, students assigned an open textbook in either format perform either no differently from or better than those assigned a commercial textbook. These results are consistent with the existing literature and support the conclusion that the cost savings to students associated with the adoption of open textbooks do not come at the expense of resource quality or student performance. L’augmentation du coût des manuels universitaires ainsi que la prolifération du contenu numérique et des appareils électroniques ont inspiré le développement de manuels ouverts, des ressources éducationnelles qui sont gratuites, dont les licences d’exploitation sont ouvertes et qui sont souvent évalués par les pairs. Bien que plusieurs études publiées aient étudié l’impact de l’adoption de manuels ouverts sur les résultats éducationnels, aucune n’a séparé les effets du caractère ouvert des manuels et du format et seulement deux études ont été menées au Canada (Hendricks, Reinsberg & Rieger, 2017; Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017). Cette étude examine les perceptions, l’emploi et les résultats des étudiants dans des établissements d’enseignement supérieur canadiens à qui on avait assigné un manuel commercial ou un manuel ouvert en format imprimé ou numérique. Les résultats ont montré que les étudiants qui avaient utilisé le format imprimé du manuel ouvert avaient perçu que sa qualité était supérieure à celle du manuel commercial. De plus, les étudiants à qui on avait assigné un manuel ouvert dans l’un ou l’autre des formats avaient obtenu des résultats semblables à ceux des étudiants à qui on avait assigné un manuel commercial. Ces résultats concordent avec les publications existantes et confirment la conclusion que les économies de coûts pour les étudiants liées à l’adoption de manuels ouverts n’entraînent pas une dégradation de la qualité des ressources ni des résultats des étudiants.

Comparing Student Learning From and Perceptions of Open and Commercial Textbook Excerpts: A Randomized Experiment

“…However, there were no statistically significant differences between textbooks in student perceptions of items relating to everyday life examples and difficulty. The lack of difference in learning performance by textbook type is consistent with previous quasi-experimental research comparing open textbooks with commercial textbooks (e.g., Hendricks et al, 2017;Clinton, 2018;Jhangiani et al, 2018;Lawrence and Lester, 2018;see Hilton, 2016, for a systematic review; see Clinton and Khan, 2019, for a meta-analysis). However, a key difference is that in this experiment, it was certain that everyone had access to the excerpt of the textbook.…”

“…For example, after high school grade point averages are considered, course grades for students in introduction to psychology courses with commercial or open textbooks were similar (Clinton, 2018). Consistent findings were observed in another study examining introduction to psychology courses in which students in courses with open or commercial textbooks, who had comparable levels of prior psychology knowledge based on pretest findings, had similar exam grades (Jhangiani et al, 2018). In physics, students earned similar grades and experienced similar changes in attitudes toward science in courses with commercial and open textbooks (Hendricks et al, 2017).…”

“…Given these differences, it is logical that the writing would be rated as more understandable for the commercial textbook excerpt than the open textbook excerpt. These issues of readability may be important to examine given that previous work has noted that the writing in an open textbook was more difficult than that of a commercial textbook for the same course (Jhangiani et al, 2018). In addition, the commercial textbook had more use of pronouns, especially second-person pronoun use (e.g., "you").…”

Eight Patterns of Open Textbook Adoption in British Columbia

“…these textbooks have been adopted by over 400 faculty across 42 BC institutions in more than 1650 course sections, with an estimated total savings to students of over $5.5 million (BCcampus, 2017). In addition to these significant cost savings, BC students assigned OER have been shown to perform the same as or better than those assigned commercial textbooks (Hendricks et al, 2017;Jhangiani, Dastur, LeGrand, & Penner, in press), a consistent finding in the research literature (Hilton, 2016).…”

Open to Open? An Exploration of Textbook Preferences and Strategies to Offset Textbook Costs for Online Versus On-Campus Students

“…Jhangiani and Jhangiani (2017) similarly found that 44% of students at post-secondary institutions in British Columbia preferred to use print material exclusively in class, while 16% preferred digital only. Jhangiani, Dastur, Le Grand, and Penner (2018) also focused on the print versus digital question in their recent study and found that students rated print OER more highly than digital OER or traditional course materials. These findings substantiated other studies that have not focused on OER exclusively but showed a preference among students for reading print as opposed to digital texts, although course outcomes did not differ markedly between the formats.…”