Description

Overview:

The high cost of textbooks is of concern not only to college students but also to society as a whole. Open textbooks promise the same educational benefits as traditional textbooks; however, their efficacy remains largely untested. We report on one community college’s adoption of a collection of open resources across five different mathematics classes. During the 2012 fall semester, 2,043 students in five different courses used these open access resources. We present a comparison between the previous two years in terms of the number of students who withdrew from the courses and the number that completed the courses with a C grade or better. Our analysis suggests that while there was likely no change in these educational outcomes, students who have access to open access materials collectively saved a significant amount of money. Students and faculty were surveyed as to their perceptions of these materials and the results were generally favorable.

Subject:

Career and Technical Education

Level:

Graduate / Professional

Material Type:

Reading

Author:

Donna Gaudet, Jared Robinson, John Levi Hilton III, Phil Clark

Provider:

Athabasca University

Provider Set:

The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning

Date Added:

09/01/2013