Open Education 2015

Evidence for the impact of open textbooks is critical to making the case for the use of OER in the classroom. Open textbooks have been shown to have a range of impacts with particularly strong evidence for student cost savings and emerging evidence that using open textbooks rather than proprietary textbooks result in at least similar test score results (for example: Wiley et al, 2012; Hilton III et al, 2012; Bliss et al, 2013). But what other impacts and benefits are open textbooks having on students and educators? And what do these findings tell us about next steps for mainstreaming the use of open textbooks?

This session will explore and contextualize the latest research conducted by the OER Research Hub (http://oerresearchhub.org) on the efficacy and impact of open textbooks. In particular the presentation will focus on presenting the latest research findings from collaborative research with OpenStax College (http://openstaxcollege.org) whilst contextualizing these findings within other research conducted with educators using open textbooks and other types of OER. Research to date has revealed a range of wider impacts of open textbooks, including increased likelihood of educators using other OER, increased likelihood of contributing to improving material and discussing OER with others, including their institutional administrators.