The Adoption of an Open Textbook in a Large Physics Course: An Analysis of Cost, Outcomes, Use, and Perceptions

Abstract

Assigning open textbooks in college and university courses can help students save money on increasingly expensive commercial textbooks, and recent research shows that this savings can often be achieved with little to no sacrifice in textbook quality or student learning outcomes. We add to this body of research by examining the use of an open textbook in an introductory physics course at a large research university in Canada that enrols approximately 800-900 students per year. In this course, the instructors revised an open textbook and combined it with other learning resources onto a single website, whereas more than one source of learning materials was used previously. We used the COUP framework to structure our analysis, focusing on cost, outcomes, use, and perceptions in relation to the open textbook assigned in the course. Through the use of a survey of students and data about student learning outcomes in the form of final exam and course grades, and shifts on the pre-/post-Colorado Learning Attitudes about Science Survey, we show that student savings by moving to an open textbook were accompanied by little change in learning outcomes. We also show that the vast majority of survey respondents perceived the open textbook to be of the same or better quality than commercial textbooks used in their other courses.Further, many of them appreciated the fact that the textbook was customized to this particular coursewhich is made possible by the use of a textbook with an open license.

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).…”

“…Columbia not purchasing at least one of their required textbooks due to cost (Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017;Hendricks, Reinsberg, & Rieger, 2017). Moreover, a significant minority of BC students are enrolling in fewer courses, not registering for specific courses, and even withdrawing from courses, once again citing high textbook costs (Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017).…”

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

“…The two published Canadian studies of student perceptions of OER echo the rest of the literature, with 93% of 143 physics students at UBC and 96% of 320 post-secondary students across BC rating their open textbooks as equal to or better than their commercial textbooks (Hendricks et al, 2017;Jhangiani & Jhangiani, 2017).…”

“…Finally, treatment students were found to have enrolled in significantly more classes than control students during the semester of OER implementation as well as the subsequent semester 2 . The sole published Canadian open textbook efficacy study investigated the use of OER among 143 students enrolled in a physics course at the University of British Columbia (UBC; Hendricks et al, 2017). Compared with students enrolled in the same course in previous semesters, the students assigned OER showed no significant differences in final exam grades or course grade distributions.…”

Helping Keep the Costs of Textbooks for Students Down: Two Approaches

“…There are some institution-specific studies on the effects of adopting OER, including the following three examinations of adoption in large survey courses. Hendricks, Reinsberg, and Rieger (2017) adapted the Cost, Outcomes, Use, and Perceptions (COUP) framework (Bliss, Robinson, Hilton, & Wiley, 2013) to analyze the effects on students whose physics class used an OpenStax Physics textbook. Watson, Domizi, and Clouser (2017) adopted a mixed methods approach to study the effects on 1,299 students in non-major biology classes at the University of Georgia.…”