The Impact of Free and Open Educational Resource Adoption on Community College Student Achievement and Course Withdrawal Rates
no significant difference in student achievement for students in OER courses compared to courses taught by the same instructor in a previous semester using traditional textbooks .
Regarding the second question , no significant difference in student academic achievement was found for Pell recipients , first-time students or part-time students . These findings contradict those of
Colvard , Watson and Park ( 2018 ) when applying a similar methodology to analysis of community college students . There are a number of differences between
Colvard , Watson and Park ( 2018 ) and the current study , including the number of student grades analyzed , the type of course materials chosen to replace the commercial textbook , and the control of semester and instructor in the current study . Only 1,209 grades were used for this study , compared to over 21,000 in the previous . The number of students in each of the demographic categories in this study ’ s sample is thus much smaller ( 305 Pell eligible ; 317 first-time students ; 381 part-time students ). It is reasonable to conclude that the results of the larger study are more reliable but worth commenting on the other differences in these two studies . All courses analyzed by
Colvard , Watson and Park ( 2018 ) used an OpenStax textbook . At RVCC , some courses used existing , published open textbooks ( Anatomy & Physiology , for example ) while others curated free and / or open digital materials in lieu of a commercial textbook
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( Cardiovascular Conditioning , for example ). Potentially , the consistency of OER selection in the previous study , a one-to-one replacement of a traditional textbook with an OpenStax textbook , impacted students ’ learning experiences differently . Is it possible that students in underserved populations perform better with traditionally formatted textbooks like those published by OpenStax rather than curated materials that need to be accessed through the LMS and are organized in a structure determined by the individual faculty member ? Student use of textbooks compared to curated materials is a potential area for future research .
There was an unanticipated finding on withdrawal rates in this study : students in OER courses withdrew at significantly higher rates than students in non-OER courses . This finding refutes the access hypothesis — that “ day 1 access ” to course materials has a positive impact on student performance (
Hilton , 2016 ;
Grimaldi , Mallick , Waters and Baraniuk , 2019 ). It also contradicts the findings of four prior studies conducted at community colleges that analyze differences in withdrawal rates ( Hilton & Laman , 2012 ; Hilton , Gaudet , Clark , Robinson & Wiley , 2013 ; Hilton , Fischer , Wiley & William , 2016 ; Grewe & Davis , 2017 )
1 . These studies either did not report student demographic data or did not disaggregate the data by demographics for analysis , so it is unclear whether there would have been significant findings based on ethnicity