Going all in on OER

As a minority-serving institution where 44 percent of students are Pell Grant eligible, TWU students benefit tremendously from the cost savings that OER can offer them. The collective savings to all students enrolled in our first- or second-semester sequence courses averages out to $197,000 annually. This means that in the last five or so years that we have been using our textbook, our FYC students have spent nearly one million dollars on textbooks for our courses. Beyond saving money, there’s relatively recent data to show that eliminating textbook costs can improve student performance. In 2018, a study of over 21,000 students at the University of Georgia found that OER improved end-of-course grades and decreased D, F, W grades for all students, particularly the Pell eligible students (Colvard 2018). These findings, initially shared with me by TWU digital services librarian, Amanda Zerangue, who mentored me through my transition to OER, gave me enough persuasive data to make the case for OER as a means to increasing student performance and possibly retention, but it only tells part of the story.