Academic Librarians Examination of University Students’ and Faculty’s Perceptions of Open Educational Resources

Abstract

A survey of 2,574 students and 1,157 faculty members across ten institutions of postsecondary education in the state of Utah was conducted by the Utah Academic Libraries Consortium. Survey items were created to understand the influence of textbook costs on student academic behavior and the viability of faculty adopting open educational resources (OER) as a solution to the cost of textbooks and the possible need for librarian support of OER. Two-year and four-year institutions were compared to identify differences that might exist between them. Most students felt that their academic success was negatively impacted by textbook cost, particularly at two-year institutions where students registered for fewer courses because of associated textbook costs. Faculty survey findings showed that adjunct professors were more likely to require a traditionally copyright-restricted textbook. Approximately 90% of participants indicated they would be willing to use suitable OER for their course, and almost half of survey participants expressed a desire for help finding these resources.

Open Pedagogy: A Systematic Review of Empirical Findings

“…This is the case even when examining educators adopt OER (Cronin, 2017;Nascimbeni & Burgos, 2019;Tillinghast et al, 2020). One reason for this may be that faculty are focused on the cost savings advantages of OER and simply not aware of the pedagogical opportunities afforded by OER (Fischer et al, 2020). Other barriers include concerns about student privacy, uncertainty about the benefits of open pedagogy for student learning, skepticism about the potential quality of student-created resources, and lack of institutional support for open pedagogy (Cronin, 2017;Masterman, 2016).…”

“…Their open licensing allows them to be accessible online without fees, which benefits students and institutions by reducing the financial costs of education (Ikahihifo et al, 2017). Indeed, the cost savings are the most popular motivator for faculty to adopt OER (Fischer et al, 2020). However, the cost savings OER affords are not their only potential benefit: the open licensing allows for pedagogical techniques that are not possible with traditional copyrighted materials (DeRosa & Robison, 2017), namely student creation or editing of artefacts that are then available for others to use (Wiley & Hilton, 2018).…”

Research on Grid Monitoring Algorithm of Educational Resources Based on Economic Structure Transformation

“…It includes teaching plans mainly based on electronic documents, teaching courseware mainly based on demonstration documents, and high-quality course presentations mainly based on video and audio [1]. After years of accumulation, these resources have become a considerable amount and become a valuable treasure in the development of China's education [2]. However, due to the various forms of resources in educational institutions, the management methods of educational resources in different institutions are different, and the construction of educational resources has its own characteristics, which makes educational resources present heterogeneity [3].…”

Redesigning a Research Methods Course with Personalized, Interactive OER: A Case Study of Student Perceptions and Performance

“…It is well established in the literature that one of the primary benefits of OER is cost savings for students (e.g., Bliss, Hilton, Wiley, & Thanos, 2013;de los Arcos, Farrow, Perryman, Pitt, & Weller, 2014;Farrow et al, 2015;Fischer et al, 2015;Watson, Domizi, & Clouser, 2017). Studies show that the cost of course materials can have a negative effect on student retention, and that even a few hundred dollars spent on textbooks can mean the difference between a student dropping out or staying in college (de los Acros et al, 2014;Fischer, Belikov, Ikahihifo, Hilton, Wiley, & Martin, 2020;Senack, 2014). Each academic year, students may spend as much as $1300 on textbooks alone (College Board, n.d.).…”

“…Moreover, college textbook prices have risen 1,041% since 1977, which greatly surpasses the rate of inflation during the same period (Popken, 2015). With textbooks expenses on the continued rise, it is no surprise that many students (65%) have reported going without their required college textbook simply because of cost, even though the majority of students believe it will negatively affect their grade (Fischer et al, 2020;Senack, 2014).…”