Open Educational Resources (OER):
Publications on OER

The OER Adoption Impact Explorer helps users understand some of the impacts of adopting OER instead of commercial textbooks. Change the values below to match data from your institution to see how OER adoption can benefit your students and institution. Charts, graphs, and language will update in real time as you make changes.

The Open Education Group has created a summary of all known empirical research on the impacts of OER adoption.

Abstract: There are multiple indicators which suggest that completion, quality, and affordability are the three greatest challenges for higher education today in terms of students, student learning, and student success. Many colleges, universities, and state systems are seeking to adopt a portfolio of solutions that address these challenges. This article reports the results of a large-scale study (21,822 students) regarding the impact of course-level faculty adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER). Results indicate that OER adoption does much more than simply save students money and address student debt concerns. OER improve end-of-course grades and decrease DFW (D, F, and Withdrawal letter grades) rates for all students. They also improve course grades at greater rates and decrease DFW rates at greater rates for Pell recipient students, part-time students, and populations historically underserved by higher education. OER address affordability, completion, attainment gap concerns, and learning. These findings contribute to a broadening perception of the value of OERs and their relevance to the great challenges facing higher education today.

Abstract: Last year during Open Access Week, Georgia State University Library asked its students, "What should professors know about expensive textbooks?" and "What have you done when a textbook was too expensive?" Applying open pedagogical approaches, these questions were displayed on white boards at library service desks on each campus. Students were encouraged to respond to the first question in their own words, and they were asked to respond to the second question by selecting one of five responses. Responses were analyzed and anonymized, and they were then used in faculty professional development to demonstrate the local impact of expensive textbooks. Attend this lightning talk to learn what we discovered about our students and their perspectives on textbook affordability and access.

This special issue of Journal of Multicultural Education seeks to demonstrate how equity pedagogy and OEP intersect in practice. The focus of this issue is not on redistributive justice, or reducing cost barriers and access issues. Instead, it focuses on recognitive and representational forms of social justice, those which prioritize recognition and respect for cultural and gender differences and equitable representation and political voice (Lambert, 2018).

Abstract: Online textbooks or Open Educational Resources (OER) have become more popular in recent years due to the rising costs of textbooks. Unfortunately, few OER currently exist that address topics in recreation, sport, tourism, or leisure management. Most OER are written by faculty, but DeRosa argued that it could benefit students to write their own OER. When students write their own textbook, this has the potential to increase students’ understanding of course content and to improve their writing skills. This article provides a blueprint for pursuing this project with undergraduate students, while highlighting both the benefits and the pitfalls.

Abstract: General chemistry is a gateway course for most STEM majors, so student success is a priority for chemistry faculty. Providing quality information resources for students, including textbooks, is one way that instructors can support student learning. However, these resources can be prohibitively expensive for some students, causing them to opt out of purchasing a textbook or incur stress from the costs of time and money to obtain a textbook. Open educational resources (OERs) are no-cost materials, available in the public domain, that students and instructors can use to reduce the financial burden of college coursework. However, as chemistry instructors consider adopting OERs, they may be concerned about the time cost to reframe their courses around different materials, the risk of negatively impacting student learning, and whether the benefits to students outweigh those costs and risks. Although the financial benefits to students have been established, and the evidence suggests minimal risk of poor academic outcomes, the cost to instructors continues to be prohibitively high. In this study, the instructor used a commercial text as the official resource for the course and offered students a choice to use either the commercial textbook or an OER textbook. This soft adoption of OERs dramatically reduced the time cost associated with using the OER for the instructor, while providing financial benefits to students who chose the OER. To address the risk that using an OER might negatively impact student performance, we investigated the impact of student textbook choice on student performance in general chemistry, controlling for relevant academic and affective variables. We found that students using OER performed as well as students using the commercial textbook. With minimal effort, chemistry instructors can provide a no-cost alternative for students, with confidence that it will not detrimentally affect their learning.

Abstract: Although textbooks are a traditional component in many higher education contexts, their increasing price have led many students to forgo purchasing them and some faculty to seek substitutes. One such alternative is open educational resources (OER). This present study synthesizes results from sixteen efficacy and twenty perceptions studies involving 121,168 students or faculty that examine either (1) OER and student efficacy in higher education settings or (2) the perceptions of college students and/or instructors who have used OER. Results across these studies suggest students achieve the same or better learning outcomes when using OER while saving significant amounts of money. The results also indicate that the majority of faculty and students who have used OER had a positive experience and would do so again.

Abstract: This paper is intended to contextualize the major themes of the special issue, “The Intersections of Open Education and Equity Pedagogy” in the Journal for Multicultural Education, by providing a brief history of open educational resources (OER) and open educational practices (OEP) and highlighting the growing focus on social justice within the field. The purpose of this paper is to generate discussions around the potential of OER and OEP to increase equity within education.

Abstract: Open Educational Resources (OER) are becoming a significant, mission-driven trend within educational literature. To help address rising costs, instructors and designers are looking to OER to effectively replace traditional instructional content, which requires more than just identify and replace. Drawing from 51 OER studies conducted in countries across the five continents, this systematic literature review explored the empirical themes evident in the current research on a global scale. This review found (1) discoverability, sustainability, and remixing are significant barriers that stand in the way of OER disrupting traditional textbook models; (2) there is no significant difference in learning outcomes when instructors incorporate OER; and (3) implementation of OER as instructional strategies is challenging but can be effective in supporting positive learning outcomes when properly designed. The paper concludes with a discussion of gaps in the literature, considerations for implementation and further directions for future research.