Largest-ever study of impact of Open Educational Resources in college reveals benefits of introducing OER courses on a broad ...
20 February 2020 - 6:01AM
A comprehensive study examining the impact of Achieving the Dream’s
Open Educational Resources (OER) Degree Initiative reveals that
community colleges that introduced OER courses across degree
programs saw an explosion of OER courses on campus. The three-year
initiative enabled 38 colleges in 13 states to offer 6,600 OER
course sections over two and a half years, reaching nearly 160,000
students, the study said. Approximately 2,000 instructors
participated in the development and delivery of these courses,
substantially expanding the number of faculty with OER experience
at participating colleges. Nearly 600 courses were redesigned,
contributing to the availability of OER content. The
study—conducted by SRI Education and rpk GROUP and released at
Achieving the Dream’s 2020 DREAM conference here today—found that
students enrolled in OER courses earned more credits than
non-participating peers and that the effort was cost-effective not
just for students but for institutions. Students at the
participating colleges saved $10.7 million on the cost of learning
materials. As courses became established, institutions were in
position to recover their costs or even, in some instances,
generate income from the effort as more students signed up for the
OER courses. “The Initiative aimed to increase college
affordability and student success by catalyzing an institutional
commitment to OER,” said Dr. Karen A. Stout, president and CEO of
Achieving the Dream. “The effort made OER not the responsibility of
individual faculty but a campus-wide responsibility. The research
shows that OER can be a key factor in student success, a crucial
element in teaching and learning that can encourage more students
to make more progress toward degrees and graduate. What’s
particularly exciting is that now we know for sure that colleges
can gain academic and financial benefits for students and recoup
their initial investments over a relatively short time.” “While
education research yields mixed or negative results, this study saw
mostly positive effects,” said Rebecca Griffiths, principal
education researcher at SRI education and the lead investigator on
this study. “What was most striking was that students gained
significant benefit from cumulative exposure to multiple OER
courses than one-off OER courses. The study also provides a more
exact picture of the cost-benefit trade-off for institutions. We
have a much higher level of confidence that the savings are real
and that OER is financially a good investment for institutions.”
Funding for the initiative was provided by support from the William
& Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, the Ascendium Education Group, and the Speedwell and
Shelter Hill Foundations. Academic Benefits The academic impact
analysis, conducted by SRI, was based on results from 11
institutions that were selected as “research partners” at the start
of the initiative in 2016. The analysis found that students who
took multiple OER courses on average earned more college credits
over time than otherwise similar students who took no OER courses.
Overall, credit accumulation did not vary significantly for
underserved students versus other students. Students who took OER
courses had similar cumulative GPAs as other students, on average,
according to the report. ”Increasing course accumulation is
crucially important at community colleges, as studies reveal that
students who have earned credit for more than 15 courses are more
likely to persist in academic programs and graduate,” notes SRI’s
Rebecca Griffiths. She stressed, however, that the study was not
designed to determine whether increases in course attainment was
caused by participation in the OER courses and this will need to be
a topic for further study. SRI also surveyed 300 instructors in
2016 and 900 instructors in 2018 to understand their background and
experiences with OER and 2,400 students in 2017 to gain their
perspectives and experiences in OER courses. Researchers conducted
site visits at ten colleges to gain further insight from both
groups. In both surveys and focus groups, students mostly reported
positive experiences in OER courses, the study said. Most students
found OER materials accessible and well-aligned to learning
objectives. Meanwhile, instructors reported that OER affected the
way they presented and used materials in class, increased the
relevance of those materials, and influenced their pedagogical
beliefs overall. Instructors were more likely to report that OER
influenced the relevance and use of instructional materials in
their courses than their pedagogical strategies. Instructors were
cautious in their assessments about the extent to which use of OER
increased student engagement, preparation, and achievement in their
courses. Forty-three percent of instructors thought their OER
programs would “definitely” be sustained, and another 48 percent
thought these programs may be sustained. Eighty-three percent said
they would not return to using traditional materials in their
courses. Will OER Degree Programs Take Hold? The OER courses that
were created across institutions were fairly evenly divided among a
broad range of degrees, including: Business and Administration;
Computer and Information Systems; Health and STEM systems; Liberal
Arts, General Studies, Humanities and History; Language and
Literature; Social Sciences and Psychology, and other fields. OER
course development was primarily focused on converting introductory
or gateway courses to OER, with 91 percent of instructors
indicating they were teaching introductory and/or gateway level
courses in the 2018 instructor survey. The report does not state
definitively whether completely aligning OER courses along a degree
pathway will take hold. “The courses were still being implemented
through the life of the grant,” said Richard Sebastian, director of
Open and Digital Learning at Achieving the Dream. “Students could
not take enough courses in the programs at the time of the research
to be able to determine the likely success of the OER degree
pathways on the campuses,” But the report noted the importance of
establishing broad-scale efforts to enable students to earn degrees
in OER courses. “The concept of an OER degree pathway sends a clear
signal that cross-unit coordination is needed across academic
departments, advising, the registrar, IT, instructional design, the
library, and the bookstore,” the report said. “Elevating OER into a
pathway raises the likelihood of a coherent student experience
supported by a coordinated and sustainable set of activities.” Cost
Savings and the Cost-Benefit Tradeoff Research conducted by rpk
GROUP indicated that the initiative saved students, on average, $65
per course on instructional materials, factoring in actual student
purchasing patterns. Student savings totaled about $10.7 million
across all participating colleges, money that students said they
would use to cover other educational or personal expenses. In
surveys, 41 percent of respondents said OER courses would have a
significant positive impact on their ability to afford college.
More than half (53 percent) of students said they had not purchased
required materials for a course at least once, and the most common
reason was cost. The share of students reporting financial strain
due to textbook costs was higher for Pell students and
underrepresented minorities. On the other hand, relatively few
students reported that they had withdrawn from a class or stopped
taking courses for a semester or more due to costs (12% and 16%,
respectively), the report said. Researchers also conducted a
cost-benefit analysis of OER implementation at five “cost partner”
institutions and estimated that the institutions would recover
their investments in OER or even generate income from the effort.
While implementation costs at institutions ranged from $300,000 to
$1 million, colleges spent on average $576,000, two-thirds of which
was used to pay faculty to develop courses and one-third of which
was used for general program support. The research reveals that the
average cost of providing OER degree courses ($70 per student)
declined rapidly as enrollment in redesigned OER courses increased.
“When the impacts across all five cost partner colleges are taken
into account, estimates suggest an average of $1.03 in gross
revenue was generated for every dollar spent (program and
additional delivery costs)—a modest 3 percent institutional return
on investment that reflects an average net financial benefit of
$38,000,” the study says. Courses developed and certified as OER
are able to be freely shared with other institutions. Many of these
courses will be added to Achieving the Dream’s OER course library
and made available to the public. Moving forward “To move OER
forward, institutions need to intentionally integrate this OER
degree work into their institutional improvement efforts and
organizational strategies,” said Achieving the Dream’s Dr. Karen A.
Stout. “To make this happen, Achieving the Dream is supporting
expanding OER within institutions as part of its institutional
improvement model and offering additional services to help
institutions bolster sustainability of OER course development and
faculty support.” Based on instructor surveys and focus groups, the
report recommends that institutions: • Make OER adoption a
strategic institutional initiative and connect OER degrees with
strategic goals with high level administrative support. • Ensure
faculty receive learning opportunities and supports, including OER
training and course development supports to enhance the instructor
experience and improve course quality, and opportunities for
collaboration with colleagues can also build morale. • Address
logistical and cultural barriers to course sharing across colleges.
• Communicate OER options strategically to increase student
awareness of OER course options and degrees to students they most
wish to reach. Additionally, Achieving the Dream will announce a
new grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to
investigate whether participation in OER courses led to an increase
in course attainment at OER Degree Initiative colleges. Copies of
the report are available at
https://www.achievingthedream.org/resource/17993/oer-at-scale-the-academic-and-economic-outcomes-of-achieving-the-dream-s-oer-degree-initiative
Participating colleges Colleges involved in the academic or cost
impact studies included Alamo Community College, Austin Community
College, Borough of Manhattan Community College, Bunker Hill
Community College, Central Virginia Community College, Forsyth Tech
Community College, Herkimer Community College, Monroe Community
College, Montgomery College, Pierce College, and Santa Ana
Community College. #### ABOUT ACHIEVING THE DREAM Achieving the
Dream (ATD) leads a growing network of 277 community colleges
committed to helping their students, particularly low-income
students and students of color, achieve their goals for academic
success, personal growth, and economic opportunity. ATD is making
progress in closing academic achievement gaps and accelerating
student success through a unique change process that builds each
college’s institutional capacities in seven essential areas. ATD,
along with 75 experienced coaches and advisors, works closely with
Network colleges in 44 states and the District of Columbia. SRI
Education, a division of SRI International, is tackling the most
complex issues in education to identify trends, understand
outcomes, ad guide policy and practice. We work with federal and
state agencies, school districts, foundations, nonprofit
organizations, and businesses to provide research-based solutions
to challenges posed by rapid social, technological and economic
change. SRI International is a nonprofit research institute whose
innovations have created new industries, extraordinary marketplace
value, and lasting benefits to society.
- OER Degree Initiative Final Report_final.20200117
Glenn Fee
Achieving the Dream
gfee@achievingthedream.org