CCCS Faculty Toolkit

Affordable

One of the main reasons faculty choose to use open educational resources is the benefit to students in saving on textbook costs.

• Textbooks can be cost prohibitive to students, particularly nontraditional students who rely on financial aid for tuition. The high cost of textbooks is most impactful towards community college students. According to a 2016 report from U.S. PIRG's Student Group, 50% of community college students report relying on financial aid to cover the cost of their textbooks.
• In 2022, the Florida Virtual Campus completed a survey of 13,000 students about the price of textbook and instructional materials. Of the 13,000 students surveyed, 44% said they took fewer courses, 32% reported earning a poor grade, and 24% reported dropping a class due to required textbook costs.

Flexible and Customizable

Creative Commons licenses allow for the retention, remixing, revising, reusing, and resharing of OER materials to match a course's objectives. Faculty report that they benefit from being able to adopt and customize course materials because of the open license. Here are a few examples:

• What is Open Pedagogy?
• OER and the Spring 2020 remove learning pivot: Faculty Stories
• Rating the Quality of Open Textbooks: How Reviewer and Text Characteristics Predict Ratings
• A Qualitative Analysis of Open Textbook Reviews

Collaborative

• OER encourages peer collaboration and participation. OER supports contributions among faculty, students, library staff, and institutions. These collaborations encourage innovation and sharing.

Equitable

• By selecting to implement an OER textbook, students will have immediate and unlimited access to their textbooks, ensuring that all students enrolled in the course will be prepared for the first day of class.
• More affordable is more accessible. Implementing OER into a course improves equity for learners in this course. Additionally, OER can effectively support culturally responsive educational environments where all learners have the opportunity to achieve their fulll potential.

Impact

Faculty Benefits

• Ability to customize learning content
• Reduce course costs for students
• Provide equitable access to required content
• Control updates

Student Benefits

• College and student success is more affordable
• Day 1 access to textbooks for the course
• Improves end of course grades and reduces DFW grades for all students
• Improves course grades and decreases DFW rates at greater rates for students who receive Pell grants, part-time students, and populations historically under-served by higher education.

Adapted from “The Impact of Open Eucational Resource on Various Success Metrics" ,  Concordia University Libraries