The document summarizes research from the OER Research Fellows program about open educational resources. It discusses the purpose of the program, which is to encourage high-quality OER research and build researcher capacity. It provides an update that several articles have been published or accepted for publication. It then highlights research from two Fellows, Judy Orton Grissett and Huimei Delgado. Orton Grissett's research found students perceived faculty more positively when they used open textbooks. Delgado's research at Purdue University found lower withdrawal rates but similar exam performance when using free OER instead of a $121 textbook. The document ends by calling for more rigorous OER research designs.

1. Current OER Research from the
OER Research Fellows
John Hilton III
@johnhiltoniii
The Open Education Group
http://openedgroup.org

2. What is the Purpose of the
OER Research Fellows Program?
•Encourage high quality research around the areas of
“proven efficacy” and “trusted quality.”
•Build capacity in graduate students and early career
researchers by connecting them with OER research
opportunities.
•Similar to The Global OER Graduate Network (GO-
GN), but for the US and Canada with a specific focus
on research related to the cost, outcomes, use and
perceptions of OER.

4. Status Report: 18 months into the project
• Three articles have been published.
• Twelve articles are accepted for publication.
• Eight articles have been submitted for publication.
• More on the way!
These articles are being submitted to/published in a variety of venues,
including the following: American Educational Research Journal,
Computers & Education, Educational Technology, First Monday,
International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education,
International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning,
The Journal of Computing in Higher Education, The Journal of Political
Science Education, Open Praxis, Teaching of Psychology

5. Let’s hear from some Fellows

7. Judy Orton Grissett
Student Perceptions of College
Faculty Who Use OER
Participants read two written passages
about a college faculty member called
“Dr. Wilson.” In one passage that
participants read, Dr. Wilson used a
traditional copyrighted textbook, and in
another passage s/he used an open
textbook (gender was uniformly
varied).

8. Judy Orton Grissett
Student Perceptions of College
Faculty Who Use OER
After reading each passage about Dr.
Wilson, participants were then asked
to rate the faculty member on a five-
point Likert scale, on six personal
characteristics: kindness,
knowledgeability, enthusiasm,
patience, encouragement, and
creativity.

9. Lower numbers show stronger opinion (e.g., very kind)
Traditional Open t Sig (2-tailed)
Kindness 2.217 1.522 -2.697 0.010
Knowledgeability 1.565 1.435 -0.608 0.546
Enthusiasm 1.609 1.304 -1.518 0.136
Patience 2.609 2.217 -1.571 0.123
Encouragement 2.26 1.73 -2.049 0.047
Creativity 2.26 1.55 -2.431 0.019
Likelihood of taking
course
2.70 1.59 -3.131 0.003

10. Judy Orton Grissett
Student Perceptions of College
Faculty Who Use OER
When asked about why the
rated the way they did…Fewer
than 25% of students
mentioned textbook costs.

11. Judy Orton Grissett
Student Perceptions of College
Faculty Who Use OER
Key Takeaway: Using OER may
change the way your students
perceive you.

13. Huimei Delgado
OER Research Fellow at Purdue
University
Fall 2014
$121 Textbook
Fall 2015
Free OER
Number of
Students Enrolled 1,488 1,521

14. Huimei Delgado
OER Research Fellow at Purdue
University
Fall 2014
$121 Textbook
Fall 2015
Free OER
Number of
Students Enrolled 1,488 1,521
Withdrawal (W) 7.80% 5.52%

16. Huimei Delgado
OER Research Fellow at Purdue
University
•Students who used OER materials performed
about 2% worse in the course.
•The magnitude of the OER effect in Model 1 (-
1.784) is less than half the magnitude of the
coefficients on the 2:30 and 3:30 PM class time
indicators. This means that if OER have a
detrimental effect on student course
performance, the effect is substantially smaller
than moving a student from one section to
another.

17. Huimei Delgado
OER Research Fellow at Purdue
University
•For the majority of students (76%) OER had no
effect.
•Pell Grant eligible students performed statistically
better using OER materials compared to
statistically identical students who used
commercial materials. This effect, however, was
small.
•Strong evidence suggests that OER used in this
study had a substantial, positive impact on exam
performance for international students.

19. A Question we are Discussing:
How can we do better OER research?
§Rigorous studies related to Open Pedagogy

20. A Question we are Discussing:
How can we do better OER research?
§Rigorous studies related to Open Pedagogy
§Use the toolkit: http://openedgroup.org/toolkit
§Eliminate confounds
§Control for teacher effect
§Interrupted Time Series
§Same teacher using both resources in the same semester
§Control for student differences
§Statistically control for differences
§Pre-post test to determine initial differences

21. Take Away Messages
•OER Research Fellows are doing great work!
•When adopting OER we need to directly build specific
research plans and support for those research plans.
•More rigorous work is needed on how OER influence
pedagogy and student success factors, particularly with
open pedagogy.
•If you have data that you don’t know what to do with,
please contact me and let me help you connect with an
OER Research Fellow!