Lane Fischer, John Hilton, Jared Robinson, and David Wiley, have a recently published and much anticipated paper that reports on the impact of OER on student success in higher education courses. See the open access article at:
Fischer, Lane, et al. “A Multi-Institutional Study of the Impact of Open Textbook Adoption on the Learning Outcomes of Post-Secondary Students.” Journal of Computing in Higher Education (2015): 1-14. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12528-015-9101-x .
The study compares student success in courses that used no-cost open digital textbooks with student success in courses with traditional textbooks based on three criteria, 1) student completion of courses, 2) grades, and 3) number of classes taken during and after semesters in which OER were used. The results indicate favorable outcomes for students who had OER assigned. Students in courses that used OER performed as well as students in courses with traditional textbooks on comparable exams.
