Open Educational Resources (OER) are teaching, learning, and research materials that are either in the public domain, or are openly licensed so everyone has free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities:
Textbook Costs Impact Student Retention
The cost of course materials impacts whether students drop, fail, or withdraw from a course. In 2018, Florida students reported that the cost of textbooks has led them to:1
| 64.2% | Do not purchase the required textbook |
| 42.8% | Take fewer courses |
| 40.5% | Do not register for a specific course |
| 35.6% | Earn a poor grade |
| 22.9% | Drop a course |
| 18.1% | Withdraw from a course |
| 17.2% | Fail a course |
OER Can Help
A study shows that when courses adopt Open Educational Resources (OER) to replace commercial course materials, the drop/fail/withdrawal rate for those courses decreases by an average of 29%.2,
Another experiment found that students in courses with OER were retained and persisted at higher levels than those without OER.3
One study found that with the same instructor, modality, and semester, one section of students with a digital OER textbook performed the same or better than students with a traditionally published textbook.4
1. Florida Virtual Campus Office of Distance Learning & Student Services. (2019). 2018 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey.
2. Clinton, V., & Khan, S. (2019). Efficacy of open textbook adoption on learning performance and course withdrawal rates: A meta-analysis. AERA Open, 5(3), 2332858419872212. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332858419872212
3. Bol, L., Esqueda, M. C., Ryan, D., & Kimmel, S. C. (2022). A comparison of academic outcomes in courses taught with open educational resources and publisher content. Educational Researcher, 51(1), 17–26. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189X211052563
4. Clobes, T. A., Jenkins, J. J., Haid, H., & Allen, R. (2022). Comparison of academic performance with a traditional textbook versus a digital openly-licensed textbook. HETS Online Journal, 13(1), 52–74. https://doi.org/10.55420/2693.9193.v13.n1.63
5. Definition from Creative Commons, https://creativecommons.org/about/program-areas/education-oer/
This page of this LibGuide was created by Kristin Whitman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Note that other pages may have different attributions.
OER Graphic Image source: Markus Büsges (leomaria design) für Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. / CC BY-SA 4.0
The 5 Rs of OER was created by Ontario Tech University and is a derivative of the 5 R Permissions of OER by Lumen Learning, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
As the price of college textbooks continues to increase, more students are opting to skip the books even if their grades suffer, a survey conducted by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group has found. In a report, the group said open textbooks—written by faculty members, peer-reviewed, and available free online—could help make textbooks affordable again.
The Cost and Quality of Open Textbooks: Perceptions of community college faculty and students. by TJ Bliss, John Hilton, David Wiley and Kim Thanos.
This PDF comes from EDUCAUSE
Blogpost by David Wiley
As publishers keep costs high by pumping out new editions and selling books bundled with software, students are forced to forgo book purchases or otherwise undermine their academic progress.
Curious about OER? Watch this brief introductory video from Iowa State University librarian and OER expert Abbey Elder.