The Interaction of OER Use and Course Difficulty on Student Course Grades in a Community College
would be advantageous to learning outcomes ; however , the number of students who would not have access to commercial resources but whose learning would benefit from access is relatively small (
Grimaldi et al ., 2019 ). Therefore , the effect of OER adoption on learning outcomes averaged across all students in all courses is likely to be null , as was found in the meta-analysis by Clinton and Kahn (
2019 ). However , Grimaldi and colleagues (
2019 ) commented that it is important to consider how different contexts may vary the outcomes of OER adoption , which is also evident by the large variability in effect sizes in Clinton and Kahn (
2019 ).
One area in which the context interacted with OER adoption on learning outcomes was with student socioeconomic status . Two studies on OER adoption found that students who were eligible for a certain type of financial aid based on low-income status ( Pell grants ) benefited from OER adoption more than their peers (
Colvard et al ., 2018 ;
Delgado et al ., 2019 ). This is consistent with the articulation of the access hypothesis by Grimaldi et al . (
2019 ) because students who had less income likely had fewer financial resources for course materials than their peers and may have been less likely to access pricey commercial resources , but could access the OER available without fees . Their peers may have been able to afford the commercial materials and received less benefit from OER adoption because they were able to access both commercial resources and OER .
Florida Virtual Campus , 2018 ). Perhaps the use of OER in more “ difficult ” courses has a differential effect on outcomes because the potential effects of not having a textbook would be greater with more challenging courses . Granted , what is difficult for one student might be quite easy for another . Rather than stereotype departments and courses as difficult or easy , we acknowledge the fit between student interest and talents and the courses they complete . Nevertheless , some reasonable estimate of course difficulty might be important to consider in estimating the outcomes associated with the presence of OER .
Researchers have tried various approaches to estimate course difficulty but have mostly relied on perceptions of students or researchers . Ridley et al . (
2003 ) used the perceived severity of grading standards to estimate intellectual challenge and course difficulty . Similarly , Bassiri et al . (
2003 ) used grading policy in syllabi to estimate course difficulty . Babad et al . (
2008 ) estimated course difficulty by analyzing perceived workload from course syllabi . Interestingly , Ansburg (
2001 ) used student expectations of grade distributions to estimate course difficulty , where the logic was that a course that was of appropriate difficulty would have a negatively skewed distribution of grades . They expected that grades would generally be
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