Open Educational Resources as a Tool for Educational Equity: Evidence From an Introductory Psychology Class

Abstract

A college education is becoming increasingly expensive, and the burden of this cost is often felt disproportionately by marginalized students. One aspect of rising college costs are textbook prices, which have increased at a rate that far surpasses inflation. Open educational resources (OER; free, openly-licensed course materials) are often proposed as a solution to this problem. It is not clear, however, whether these materials are equivalent in quality to standard commercial textbooks. During one semester, half of the Introductory Psychology sections at a large, public university were assigned to use OER while the other half were assigned to use the incumbent commercial textbook. Participants were asked to self-report the behaviors they engage in as a result of high textbook costs. We also examined student performance in the courses and students' perceptions and use of the two books. We found no significant differences between textbook groups on course performance or perceptions of the book, but marginalized students (first-generation students and/or ethnic minority students) reported engaging in negative behaviors (i.e., dropping a class) more often than their peers as a result of textbook costs. These findings suggest that textbook costs disproportionately affect our most vulnerable students and the use of OER may be one solution to this problem, particularly given the equivalent performance across textbook groups.

Open Educational Resources as tools to foster equity

“…Latinx and first-generation students also were more likely to report that they failed a course because of the high cost of the textbook (Jenkins et al, 2019). In addition, students who identified as both first generation college students and of Black or Latinx background were more likely than their white peers to report that high textbook costs led to lower grades (Nusbaum et al, 2019).…”

“…When students withdraw from courses after the drop deadline, they are still responsible for the tuition for that course. The issue of commercial material costs contributing to course withdrawals appears to be particularly problematic for first-generation college students (Nusbaum et al, 2019).…”

Opening up Educational Practices through Faculty, Librarian, and Student Collaboration in OER Creation: Moving from Labor-intensive to Supervisory Involvement

“…Wiley (2014) elaborates that OER must provide users with the permissions to reuse, revise, remix, redistribute, and retain those resources. Several studies have suggested that the use of OER is associated with similar or better student outcomes as compared to the use of commercial course materials (Clinton & Khan, 2019;Colvard et al, 2018;Delgado et al, 2019;Jhangiani et al, 2018;Lin & Wang, 2018;Nusbaum et al, 2020;Shaw et al, 2019). OER are often framed in the context of educational affordability but using an OER textbook as a direct replacement for a commercial textbook, while beneficial to students in terms of cost savings, fails to take full advantage of the entire range of permissions described by Wiley and others.…”

EcoEvoApps: Interactive Apps for Theoretical Models in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

“…on RStudio's shinyapps.io platform), which dramatically reduces the need for computational power on students' personal computers or mobile devices. Unlike some other proprietary simulation platforms that charge substantial fees, shiny apps can be made freely available to students, making them more equitable classroom materials (Colvard et al 2018, Nusbaum et al 2020. Further, shiny apps are straightforward to build for users with some R proficiency, which makes it easy for instructors to develop new apps or to customize existing resources to suit their classroom needs.…”