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Full-Text Articles in Education

Impact Of Open Educational Resources (Oer) On Student Academic Performance And Retention Rates In Undergraduate Engineering Departments, Yonchao Zhao, Ashwin Satyanarayana, Cailean Cooney Nov 2020

Impact Of Open Educational Resources (Oer) On Student Academic Performance And Retention Rates In Undergraduate Engineering Departments, Yonchao Zhao, Ashwin Satyanarayana, Cailean Cooney

Publications and Research

To students and families already struggling to afford college tuition and fees, spending an additional $1,240 per year on books and supplies can be a breaking point. This cost constitutes as much as 39% of tuition and fees at a community college and 14% of tuition and fees at a four- year public institution (data obtained from the 2019-20 College Board survey for full-time undergraduate students). Moreover, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the demand for digital textbooks is surging and the problem is compounded by the fact that without on-campus resources, including library reserve textbook collections, students are facing more …


Impact Of Oer In Teacher Education, Denise Cummings-Clay Oct 2020

Impact Of Oer In Teacher Education, Denise Cummings-Clay

Publications and Research

The purpose of this research study, which employed a quantitative research design, was to determine if there was a difference in the grades achieved by students who were enrolled in an entry-level Foundations of Education course using Open Educational Resources (OER) versus the grades achieved by students who used textbooks in other course sections. The goal was to find out whether OER was of the same or higher quality as textbooks in our minority-serving higher education institution. The outcomes revealed that there was no significant difference in grades for course sections that used OER when compared to course sections that …


Teaching With Oer During Pandemics And Beyond, Jennifer Van Allen, Stacy Katz Jun 2020

Teaching With Oer During Pandemics And Beyond, Jennifer Van Allen, Stacy Katz

Publications and Research

Purpose – Open Educational Resources (OER) are learning materials openly licensed so that others may retain, reuse, revise, remix or redistribute (the 5Rs) these materials. This paper aims to raise awareness of OER by providing a rationale for using these learning materials and a strategy for educators to get started with OER during the collective crisis and beyond. Design/methodology/approach – Using a broad research base and anecdotes from personal experience, the authors make the case that OER improves student access to learning materials and improves the learning experience in both PK-12 and higher education contexts. Findings – The authors define …


Open To What? A Critical Evaluation Of Oer Efficacy Studies, Ian Mcdermott Feb 2020

Open To What? A Critical Evaluation Of Oer Efficacy Studies, Ian Mcdermott

Publications and Research

This selective literature review evaluates open educational resources (OER) efficacy studies through the lens of critical pedagogy. OER have radical potential as transformative tools for critical pedagogy or they can serve as a cost-free version of the status quo, inclined toward propagating austerity. This review analyzes studies published since 2008 with regard to cost, access, pedagogy, commercialization, and labor. These criteria are used to make explicit subjects indirectly addressed, if not ignored completely, in the existing literature. Typically, ample attention is paid to a study’s design and methodology but the underlying institutional infrastructure and decision-making process is unexamined. What emerges …


So, You Want To Write An Oer? Three Authors Share Triumphs, Pitfalls, And Options, Kathleen Offenholley, Jenna Hirsch, Yevgeniy Milman Jan 2020

So, You Want To Write An Oer? Three Authors Share Triumphs, Pitfalls, And Options, Kathleen Offenholley, Jenna Hirsch, Yevgeniy Milman

Publications and Research

Open Educational Resources (OERs) offer a free, viable alternative to costly textbooks. The authors share their experience and advice on finding and writing online content, creating an online platform for the content, finding videos and other resources, and working with an appropriate free online homework system to match the written content. In addition, the implementation and suggestions for practitioners are discussed. At the end of the article, the bibliography contains two OERs freely available under an open commons license, one for Intermediate Algebra, the other for Mathematics for Elementary Education.