Faculty adoption of affordable learning materials saved WSU students close to 1 million dollars over the past two academic years.

Faculty have developed and/or adopted OER for 35 courses, and saved students an estimated $860,765 through grants provided by the Office of the President, the Office of the Provost and the Office of Academic Outreach and Innovation. Many other faculty members used OER independently, or chose textbook alternatives to ease the financial burden on students.

Textbook costs can often contribute to students’ unmet financial need – a major impediment to progress to graduation. By exploring OER and other textbook alternatives, faculty are helping to minimize WSU students’ unmet financial need and making a positive impact on student success.

The 35 new courses that adopted OER led to savings for roughly 6,100 students per year.

The Global Campus is making excellent progress in reducing textbook costs. Two WSU online degrees now utilize OER for each required course in the degree program.

Psychology faculty member Carrie Cuttler’s research on OER perceptions is scheduled to be published in Psychology Learning and Teaching in November. Her findings indicate students were more likely to obtain open texts than commercial tests and they reported spending more time reading/using open texts versus commercial texts. According to Cuttler’s paper, students believed the content in the open texts was more relevant to their coursework, and they rated the quality of the open texts higher than the quality of traditional texts.

According to a 2014 study by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, 82 percent of surveyed students said they would do significantly better in a course if the textbook was available free online and buying a hard copy was optional.

WSU is also utilizing other strategies to reduce the financial burden of classroom material costs. Several courses have adopted first-day access models, which reduces students’ material costs by an average of 45 percent. The program automatically bills students for online course materials, which become available through the Learning Management System on the first day of classes. By arranging the digital access in advance, WSU is able to obtain a much lower price for students, and removes the hassle of students purchasing the materials. Students may also opt out of first-day access.

For more on WSU’s efforts to promote OER and affordable learning materials, visit oer.wsu.edu.