Providing academic research to back up claims about cost savings attributed to open educational resources, this study documents the textbook cost to students before and after OER adoption at eight institutions in a variety of college subjects.
RESEARCH STUDY:
Cost-Savings Achieved in Two Semesters Through the Adoption of Open Educational Resources
Published in: The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning (IRRODL)
Authors: John Levi Hilton III, T. Jared Robinson, David Wiley, and J. Dale Ackerman
Publication Date: April 2014
Abstract: Textbooks represent a significant portion of the overall cost of higher education in the United States. The burden of these costs is typically shouldered by students, those who support them, and the taxpayers who fund the grants and student loans which pay for textbooks. Open educational resources (OER) provide students a way to receive high-quality learning materials at little or no cost to students. We report on the cost savings achieved by students at eight colleges when these colleges began utilizing OER in place of traditional commercial textbooks.