In some educational settings, the cost of textbooks approaches or even exceeds the cost of tuition. Given limited resources, it is important to better understand the impacts of free open educational resources (OER) on student outcomes. Utilizing digital resources such as OER can substantially reduce costs for students. The purpose of this study…

The rise of Open Educational Resources (OER) research provides data that Open Textbooks and other forms of OER may be one cost saving approach for college and university students. Yet little research has been conducted around the attitudes and perceptions of the students using these Open Textbooks. This paper examines the perceptions that students…

Many college students and their families are concerned about the high costs of textbooks. A company called Flat World Knowledge both gives away and sells open-source textbooks in a way it believes to be financially sustainable. This article reports on the financial sustainability of the Flat World Knowledge open-source textbook model after one…

With increasing frequency, authors in academic and non-academic fields are releasing their books for free digital distribution. Anecdotal evidence suggests that exposure to both authors and books increases when books are available as free downloads, and that print sales are not negatively affected. For this study we interviewed ten authors to…

The high cost of textbooks is of concern not only to college students but also to society as a whole. Open textbooks promise the same educational benefits as traditional textbooks; however, their efficacy remains largely untested. We report on a case study about one community college's adoption of a free online psychology textbook. During the fall…

An important element of open educational resources (OER) is the permission to use the materials in new ways, including revising and remixing them. Prior research has shown that the revision and remix rates for OER are relatively low. In this study we examined the extent to which the openly licensed "Flat World Knowledge" textbooks were being…

A significant movement in education concerns the use of open educational resources. By "open" it is generally meant that the resource is available at no cost to others for adaptation and reuse in different contexts. However, "open" is not a simple dichotomy; rather, there is a continuum of openness. We discuss four separate aspects of reuse and…

This study reports findings from a year-long pilot study during which 991 students in 9 core courses in the Virginia State University School of Business replaced traditional textbooks with openly licensed books and other digital content. The university made a deliberate decision to use open textbooks that were copyrighted under the Creative…