The Impact of Free and Open Educational Resource Adoption on Community College Student Achievement and Course Withdrawal Rates
these results fail to support the findings of
Colvard , Watson and Park ( 2018 ), they suggest that student performance across these demographics is essentially unchanged when a faculty member switches to using free and open educational resources .
There was , however , a statistically significant difference in student performance based on the interaction of OER status and ethnicity , F ( 1,111 ) = 2.546 , p = . 038 . This difference is attributable more to ethnicity than to OER status , particularly the differences in mean grades across all sections between white and black / African American students , between white and Hispanic students , and between Hispanic and black / African American students . Regardless of OER status , the average final grade for white students ( M = 2.939 ) is . 84 greater than for black / African American students ( M = 2.099 ), the largest difference in the study ( p = . 014 ) and indicative of the known gap in grade-based academic performance between these two groups . The average final grade for black / African American students decreased in OER courses , from 2.35 in non-OER courses to 1.85 in OER courses . The average final grade for Hispanic students increased from 2.381 in non-OER courses to 2.845 in OER courses , but white students overall still received average final grades that were . 319 higher than those of all Hispanic students ( M = 2.613 , p = . 014 ). The average final grade for white students also increased slightly from 2.917 in non-OER courses to 2.960 in OER courses ( see Figure 1 below ).
Figure 1 . Change in average final grade between Non-OER and OER as a function of ethnicity
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