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

Introduction

The cost of textbooks is a contributor to the rising cost of higher education (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016; Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2023). Tuition increases over the last three decades have been accompanied by the crippling growth of student debt (Congressional Research Service, 2022; Hanson, 2024a; United States (U.S.) Department of Education, 2015). The cost of college has more than doubled in the 21st century and continues to increase while students face rising interest rates (Hanson, 2024a; Hanson, 2024b). These challenges are compounded for students of low socioeconomic status and minority students, as they are disproportionately impacted by the price of education, hindering their chances of succeeding in college and later finding a job (Hardin et al., 2019; Jenkins et al., 2020; Levine, & Ritter, 2023; Mustaffa & Dawson, 2021; Nusbaum et al., 2020; Sanchez et al., 2024; Spica & Biddix, 2021). As a percentage of tuition, the cost of textbooks is much higher at community colleges than at four-year institutions (College Board, 2023). Indeed, students at two-year public institutions are twice as likely to be “extremely worried” about course materials costs and to select their institution based upon these costs than are students at 4-year institutions (Bay View Analytics, 2023).

According to a survey from Florida Virtual Campus (2022), the high cost of textbooks negatively affects student access, success, and completion. Students reported not purchasing the required textbook (53.5%), earning a poor grade (32.4%), and failing a course (19.2%) due to the cost. They also occasionally or frequently took fewer courses (43.7%), did not register for a course (38.5%), dropped a course (24.2%), or withdrew from courses (20.7%) due to the cost (Florida Virtual Campus, 2022). This is echoed in the Bay View Analytics (2023) finding that 71% of students reported being worried about course materials costs. Students reported that the cost of course materials caused them to take fewer courses (57%), not register for a specific course (53%), earn a poor grade (41%), drop a course (35%), withdraw from a course (34%), fail a course (31%), or go without course materials (14%), with 83% of students reporting at least one of these negative impacts (Bay View Analytics, 2023). Studies measuring the impact of textbook costs on marginalized populations reflect even higher rates of stress and educational burden on historically underserved students (Jenkins et al., 2020; Lo et al., 2023).

Open Educational Resources (OER), “teaching, learning, and research materials that are either (a) in the public domain or (b) licensed in a manner that provides everyone with free and perpetual permission to engage in the 5R activities (retain, reuse, revise, remix, redistribute),” offer an alternative to commercial course materials (Creative Commons, n.d.; Wiley & Hilton, 2018). Pedagogically, OER provides faculty with unique and highly adaptable options for student learning and engagement that come with using course content licensed with Creative Commons licenses (Biddle & Clinton-Lisell, 2023). Faculty are able to have greater control over their course material and customize it specifically for their classes. Faculty can revise and remix their course material to keep it updated and incorporate relevant content that would be specifically useful for diverse learners. Seaman and Seaman (2018) found that faculty already revise and remix content in their traditional textbooks, making the “5R” activities of open content useful for their current practices. Using open content allows faculty to personalize and contextualize the content to make it more relevant to their students’ lives and experiences and to support students during challenging aspects of their courses (Van Allen & Katz, 2020).

Levy and Tila (2022) describe how student perceptions that faculty care for them can profoundly affect their learning. Utilizing OER along with effective frameworks, such as Culturally Responsive Teaching, and curating course content to help students connect what they are learning with their lives and experiences can demonstrate to students that faculty care. By explaining to students what OER is, the effort that faculty put into curating the course resources, how faculty expect these resources to benefit the students, and, especially, that faculty did this because they care about the students and their learning, faculty can foster a strong connection with students and caring learning environment (Levy & Tila, 2022). Finally, they suggest asking for feedback to see if students perceive the same benefits intended by the faculty member in order to inform future course revisions (Levy & Tila, 2022). This not only supports continuous improvement, but further demonstrates to students that faculty value their input and experiences. This echoes Hegarty’s (2015) attributes of successful open pedagogy such as creating a community where people trust each other, feel willing to share their work, and give and receive feedback for continual improvement and development.

Open Educational Resources also offer students a variety of formats for access, including digital and print. For example, students could read the digital version on their computer or phone when they do not wish to carry around the print version. Digital versions often include added features to aid learning, such as keyword searching, the option to annotate text, multimedia, and interactive components. Print options allow students to read the text when they do not have internet or computer access, while holding and notating a tangible learning object. While many students prefer print to digital for learning purposes (Baron et al., 2017; Gleeson et al., 2021; Mizrachi, 2015; Mizrachi & Salaz, 2022; Spica & Biddix, 2021), student learning and grades are not necessarily affected with the use of digital textbooks (Fischer et al., 2015; Rockinson-Szapkiw, Courduff, et al., 2013; Rockinson-Szapkiw, Wendt, & Lunde, 2013). Flexibility in format allows students to choose when and how they access the text.

Community colleges are particularly important places to implement OER textbooks, as course materials represent a high percentage of tuition costs at these institutions, which disproportionately impacts students’ ability to afford college attendance (College Board, 2023). Community colleges offer many introductory courses with stable content, which lends well to the OER format (Hilton et al., 2013). They also serve as an entry point to higher education for first generation students and students from underserved populations or low socioeconomic status who would benefit greatly from reduced costs of higher education (Community College Research Center, 2021; Student PIRGs, 2016).

In recent years, over half of all U.S. states have considered or implemented OER legislation (SPARC, n.d.). The impact of statewide OER policies on reducing the cost of course materials can be seen in annual reports from organizations such as Open Oregon Educational Resources. According to data gathered by Open Oregon Educational Resources over a six year period, the average cost of course materials required to complete the two year Associate of Arts Oregon Transfer (AAOT) degree at Oregon community colleges in 2015 was equivalent to 231.66 hours of work at minimum wage, and course materials represented 25.27% of tuition costs per credit hour. By 2021, course materials represented only 11.18% of tuition per credit hour, and the minimum wage work equivalent had reduced to 89.70 hours. Overall, the data indicates a 47% drop in the cost of an AAOT degree since implementation, proving that free and low-cost course material requirements can make a difference in college affordability (Open Oregon Educational Resources, 2022).

While OER promotes equity by offering increased access to higher education for students and the ability for faculty to customize course content, faculty want to be sure that OER are also high quality and help their students succeed by meeting learning outcomes. This study provides a unique contribution to the body of OER literature on student outcomes and perceptions when OER are used by comparing two sections of the same course at a community college, one using a faculty-created OER textbook customized for the course and one using a commercial textbook. It controls for both course-level variables including instructor, term, course delivery method, textbook format, syllabus, sequencing of materials, in-class instructional material, writing assignments, and material covered in quizzes and exams (although not the questions on the quizzes and exams), and student level variables including previous academic experience, prior GPA, and enrollment intensity at the beginning of the term. It compares differences in the OER and commercial textbook sections including course grades, withdrawals, enrollment intensity the following term, and student perceptions of textbook quality and usefulness.

This study is guided by two research questions. The first question is about student perceptions: (1.) Was there a significant difference in how students rated the quality and usefulness of the commercial text and the OER text? The second question is about student outcomes: (2.) Was there a significant difference in student final course grades, the withdrawal rate, or enrollment intensity the following term between students enrolled in the OER section and the commercial textbook section when controlling for student-level variables including previous academic experience, prior GPA, and enrollment intensity at the beginning of the term?

Methods

Results

Discussion

This small study utilizes the COUP Framework developed by the Open Education Group (2023) that suggests examining different aspects of cost, outcomes, usage and perceptions when studying the impact of OER and open pedagogy in higher education. Specifically, this study utilizes a quasi-experimental design that explores student course outcomes and student perceptions of their textbook in two sections of the same course – one using a new faculty-created OER and one using the previously assigned commercial textbook. In terms of student perceptions, students rated the quality of the OER to be significantly higher than the commercial textbook, but there was no significant difference in how they rated the usefulness of the two textbooks. In terms of student outcomes, there was no significant difference in student final grades, withdrawal rates or the number of credits they enrolled in the following term.

In examining student outcomes, the use of the new faculty-created OER did not lead to significant differences in student grades, the withdrawal rate, or the number of credits enrolled in the following term. This is consistent with the literature showing same or better student grades with the use of OER (Allen et al., 2015; Cho & Permzadian, 2024; Clinton, 2018; Colvard et al., 2018; Dempsey, 2021; Medley-Rath, 2018; Tlili et al., 2023; Winitzky-Stephens & Pickavance, 2017) and the same or lower withdrawal rates with the use of OER (Clinton, 2018; Colvard et al., 2018; Delgado et al., 2019; Winitzky-Stephens & Pickavance, 2017). Unlike the literature which shows a positive effect on enrollment intensity the following term (Fisher et al., 2015) or the same term (Clinton-Lisell, 2023) when students use OER, this study found no significant difference in enrollment intensity the following term with the use of OER.

In examining student perceptions of textbook quality, students in the OER section rated their textbook as significantly higher in quality than other textbooks compared to how students in the commercial textbook section rated the quality of their textbook. However, it is unclear how students may have interpreted the concept of quality. There was no significant difference in how students in the two sections rated the usefulness of their respective textbooks for helping them learn the course content and complete the coursework. This was consistent with literature showing that students perceived the quality and usefulness of OER to be the same or above that of commercial textbooks (Hilton, 2020; Kelly et al., 2024; Mullens & Hoffman, 2023; Ryan & Nawalaniec, 2021; Squibb et al., 2023; Wynants & Dennis, 2022).

Student comments about their textbook preferences showed that students in the OER section appreciated that the OER was accessible digitally, directly matched the course content, used simple, clear and direct language, included good examples, was well designed, and that it was free. They also reported disliking the flow of the content, errors, difficult vocabulary and that the textbook was in grayscale rather than color.

Students in the commercial section also reported both benefits and drawbacks to their textbook. They expressed that the textbook was helpful for the course content, used clear and direct language, contained good examples, and they appreciated the use of color and definitions of vocabulary. They disliked the flow of the content, that it was outdated, that it wasn’t bound, and that it did not include multimedia.

Areas of overlap for both textbooks included that students in both sections liked clear, direct language and good examples, and disliked the flow of the content. These findings are consistent with the literature showing that students liked the digital features of the OER allowing for increased access, that their OER contained relevant, updated content, was customized for the course, explained topics clearly, and that it was free (Hendricks et al., 2017; Jhangiani et al., 2018; Ryan & Nawalaniec, 2021; Squibb et al., 2023; Wynants & Dennis, 2022). Negative comments were also consistent with the literature showing that students generally disliked low quality visuals, lack of visuals, formatting issues, and errors in their OER (Hendricks et al., 2017; Wynants & Dennis, 2022).

The student population at this community college was composed of slightly less than 25% students of color, around 17% first generation college students, 43% part-time undergraduate students, and slightly less than 35% who were unable to meet college expenses with their expected resources (Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission, n.d.). Thus, textbook costs were likely important to this student population (Hardin et al, 2019; Jenkins et al., 2020). While there were not significant differences in student outcomes related to the use of OER or the commercial textbook, this may be, in part, due to the work that the library and bookstore had previously done to mitigate the high cost of the print commercial textbook by providing a reserve copy in the library and by offering a low cost ebook alternative.

The faculty’s motivations for creating this textbook were to reduce the cost barrier for their students and to design a textbook that was customized to their specific course and the needs of their students. They designed it specifically to be understandable for their students, to include updated examples and case studies, and to support the learning outcomes of the course. While this did not result in a difference in student outcomes or in how students rated the usefulness of the textbook, it may be related to the reason students rated the OER as significantly higher quality than the commercial textbook. Since we did not utilize a framework or specific definition of quality in the survey for students, we can only hypothesize from their open-ended responses why they selected this rating. Two of the three most common open-ended responses about what students liked about the OER textbook were that it directly matched the course content and used simple, clear and direct language, while a smaller number of responses stated that the OER had good examples. It seems likely that the faculty’s efforts to create their textbook to match their course, using updated examples, and with language that was easier for their students to understand, attributed to students’ perceptions of the OER’s quality as suggested by Levy and Tila (2022). The students knew that the faculty member had designed the textbook specifically for them to save them money and to better support their learning. This may have contributed to their sense of connection with the faculty because they could see that the faculty cared about them as learners. While this connection could have biased student perceptions of the quality of the OER, it may have also created a positive learning environment for students since trust, care and emotional connection are important for effective learning (Hegarty, 2015; Levy & Tila, 2022). For underserved student populations, trust, emotional connection and care are especially important (Lin & Kennette, 2021). Not only did students see that the faculty cared about them by creating this textbook for them, but the faculty also invited their feedback during the term to improve it, and students did report many suggestions for improvement to the faculty and librarian. This likely gave students a sense of ownership or sense of community, and at the very least demonstrated that the faculty valued their ideas and input (Hegarty, 2015; Levy & Tila, 2022).

One finding was that negative comments about the OER did not include issues with its digital nature, while the positive comments highlighted that they liked that it was accessible digitally. The digital aspects of OER may pose issues for underserved students affected by the digital divide, specifically with limited access to reliable internet and technology, and low comfortability with the use of technology (Dempsey, 2021). However, the faculty, librarian, and bookstore were very aware that digital access to the OER would likely pose challenges for their student population, and so worked to mitigate those issues ahead of time. They provided affordable print versions of the OER in the bookstore for sale, which sold out, and provided a print copy of the OER on reserve at the library, which was checked out by students six times that semester. The librarian reported that other students chose to print the textbook themselves. From this, we can see that these students really did find a print version to be important even when the digital version was available to them. In addition, the librarian came to the class at the beginning of the term to teach students how to access and navigate the OER textbook and was available during the term to support students with additional questions. All of these efforts likely contributed to both the student comments that they liked the digital accessibility of the textbook and the lack of negative comments related to aspects of the digital version.

Faculty creation, remixing and use of OER benefits from community and institutional support (Farrow et al., 2024, Van Allen & Katz, 2020). In this case, institutional support came from the library, which provided grants for the faculty to create the OER and revise it the following summer based upon student input. The accessibility department supported the faculty during the OER creation process to ensure that the textbook met accessibility standards. The OER librarian supported the faculty with project guidelines, campus OER textbook adoption procedures, editing, copyright, format and access options, archiving the textbook in an institutional repository, and adding it to OER Commons. The bookstore was instrumental in providing print versions of the OER for sale to students. The larger OER community in Oregon, fostered in large part by Open Oregon Educational Resources, as well as the international OER community, also indirectly provided support for this project through education and best practices available to the library and faculty who worked on this project.

This open textbook is also an example of how an OER can be created and shared in a sustainable manner to support future updates and contextualization for local contexts (Pitt, 2023). It was uploaded to an institutional repository and added to OER Commons in both Word and PDF formats for easy access and availability for future editors. Additionally, the case studies were included as an appendix to the textbook so that they could be quickly and easily updated.

Limitations

The results of this study may not be generalizable in other settings because it was limited to two sections of a single course with a small sample size. While the findings demonstrate correlation, they cannot demonstrate causality between the use of the OER or commercial textbook and student outcomes or perceptions. The faculty was asked to randomly assign each section either the OER or the commercial textbook, but to fully reduce bias, the textbooks could have instead been assigned randomly by the investigators. Additionally, students self-selected into each of the two course sections upon enrollment, so there may have been differences in the groups of students who self-selected for the different times that the courses were offered. Though the study controlled for many student and course-level variables, it did not control for student-level variables such as socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, and first language, nor did it investigate how these variables intersect. While larger studies are able to disaggregate data (e.g., Colvard et al., 2018 and Dempsey, 2021), that was not possible in this case due to small sample sizes resulting from the unique study design. The writing assignments were the same in each section, but the questions on the quizzes and exams were different in order to accommodate for differences in the commercial and OER textbooks, which may have affected the results. Because the survey relies on students’ self-reported perceptions of the quality and usefulness of their textbooks, and their open-ended comments about their likes and dislikes of their respective textbooks, the survey results may include bias. A definition of textbook quality was not provided to the students nor was a framework for defining textbook quality used in the survey instrument, so it is unclear how to interpret the findings related to the global question of textbook quality.

Directions for Future Research

Further studies that build upon Colvard et al.’s (2018) study, which looked at how the use of OER specifically affected students with varied socioeconomic status, race, and ethnicity, and part-time or full time status, would be useful in working toward equity in higher education. Lambert’s (2018) proposed definition of open education would be a valuable tool for studies that intentionally center how OER affects students in terms of redistributive justice, recognitive justice, and representational justice. Studies on how faculty change their teaching approach when going through the OER design and creation process would be useful for other faculty and staff who provide OER support services, and administrators looking to implement processes to support OER adoption. Finally, studies measuring holistic course redesign, including employing quality OER, meaningful Open Educational Practices (OEP), and a tailored instructional approach with consideration of learners’ individual factors as described by Tlili et al. (2023) would be helpful to measure and work toward increases in learning achievement.

Conclusion

This business law OER textbook was designed and created by the faculty to match their course outcomes, be understandable to their students, include updated examples, include an appendix of case studies which could be easily updated in the future, and offer multiple formats for access. This enabled students to save money on course materials without negatively affecting their course outcomes. Students in the OER section perceived the quality of their textbook to be significantly higher than students in the commercial section, and found it to be just as useful as a traditional textbook.

Creating OER is an ongoing process which requires collaboration and support – from utilizing open licenses, ensuring content is accessible, making multiple formats available to students, and teaching students how to use the textbook, to receiving feedback and making revisions. This example shows how OER creation and adoption can be done successfully in a way that saves students money, allows them to succeed, and provides them with quality, relevant course material customized for their course outcomes. It also highlights how the use of OER can provide opportunities for faculty to engage in open pedagogy by working together with their students to improve learning materials and encourage participation in knowledge creation.

Data Accessibility Statement

The datasets generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available in Pacific University’s institutional repository, CommonKnowledge, at https://commons.pacificu.edu/work/ns/829a2ba9-3dc9-481c-abc9-41d363b0be09.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

This study is linked to the following SDG(s): Quality education (SDG 4) and Reduced inequalities (SDG 10).

Ethics and Consent

The proposal for this project and all materials including the student survey and informed consent form were reviewed and approved by the college’s office of institutional research and administration before the study began since the college did not have an institutional review board (IRB). After the study took place but before submission of this manuscript for publication, this study was also filed with Pacific University’s IRB since the authors had become affiliated with Pacific University during that time period.

Competing Interests

The authors have no competing interests to declare.

Author Contributions (CRediT)

Jennifer Lantrip: Conceptualization, data curation, formal analysis, funding acquisition, investigation, methodology, project administration, resources, validation, visualization, writing – original draft, writing – review & editing; Meagan Button: writing – original draft, writing – review & editing. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.