Comparing a Faculty-Created OER and Commercial Textbook: Student Outcomes and Perceptions

This research study compares student outcomes and perceptions in two in-person sections of the same community college business law course: one with the previously used commercial textbook and the other with an open textbook created by the faculty specifically for the course outcomes. The faculty was motivated to create the open textbook to make the course more accessible to students by reducing the course materials cost, by creating the textbook with understandable content for the students, updated examples, and case studies that could be easily updated in the future, and by providing the textbook in multiple formats, including both digital and print, to meet their students’ diverse learning and access needs. Students from both sections were surveyed at the end of the term to learn of their perceptions of the textbooks. Withdrawal rates, course grades, and enrollment intensity the following term were compared for the two sections while accounting for student-level variables including prior GPA, prior college experience, and enrollment intensity that term. There was no significant difference between the two sections in terms of final grades, withdrawals, or enrollment intensity the following term. Neither was there a significant difference in how students rated the usefulness of their textbook, but students in the open textbook section rated their textbook significantly higher in quality than students in the commercial textbook section.