On the Efficacy of Open Educational Resources

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.

Textbook Broke: Textbook Affordability as a Social Justice Issue

“…Research topics include OER's impact on student enrollment (Grewe & Davis 2017), faculty perceptions (Jung, Bauer, & Heaps 2017), teaching practices (Lane & McAndrew 2010), public engagement (Scanlon 2014), funding policies (Stacey 2013), classroom ecology (Blyth 2014), institutional culture (Cox & Trotter 2016), multicultural competence (Lin & Wang 2018), and digital proficiency (Ramirez-Montoya, Mena, & Rodriguez-Arroyo 2017), to name but a few. Although a limited number of these studies negatively correlate OER with student performance (Gurung 2017; Robinson 2015), while others yield mixed results (Delgado et al 2019) or inconclusive findings (Griggs & Jackson 2017), the overwhelming consensus of OER research reveals consistently high levels of academic quality and efficacy.…”

“…Despite OER's ability to reduce current price barriers to higher education (Hodgkinson-Williams & Arinto 2017), very little research to date has explored OER's specific impact among those who are presumed to benefit most from that potential: historically underserved student populations (see Arbor 2011;Jenkins et al 2018;Clinton & Khan 2019;Colvard, Watson, & Park 2018;Delgado, Delgado, & Hilton 2019). This is because OER and textbook affordability studies typically control for issues of difference, or else fail to disaggregate their final data altogether.…”

OER Initiatives at Liberal Arts Colleges: Building Support at Three Small, Private Institutions

“…588-89). While much of the OER research published since 2016 has continued to focus on these topics and perspectives (Hilton, 2017;Ikahihifo, Spring, Rosecrans & Watson, 2017;Brandle, 2018;Colvard, Watson, & Park, 2018;Delgado, Delgado, & Hilton, 2019), in the last 5-to-10 years there has also been a noticeable increase in publications by academic librarians about their OER support and leadership.…”

Integration of Open Educational Resources in Higher and General Education Institutions: from the Perspectives of Specialized and Concerned Bodies in E-Learning

“…Many studies on OER reported their significant impact on education, improving its quality and efficiency in providing the educational resources to students, and economy that makes OER the preferable option for many educational institutions (Delgado, Delgado, Hilton, 2019;Vojtech and Grissett, 2017;Mosharraf and Taghiyareh, 2016). Globally, Baas, Admiraal, and van den Berg (2019) argued that OER have full capacity to cause positive change to higher education.…”