Cost savings & learning impacts of open textbooks in Middle/HS science classes | Eclectic Technology | Scoop.it

When people talk about open educational resources (OER) they often state that the use of OER will save money. In this study "20 middle and high school science teachers...adopted open textbooks to understand the process and determine the overall costs of such an adoption."

The conclusion states:

"Simply substituting open textbooks for traditional textbooks did not appear to have an effect on student test scores...One area of particular interest is the teachers whose classes saw relatively large (23% and 14%) increases in their CRT scores after adopting open textbooks. One of these teachers said, “The better students write in their textbooks more.” If this comment turns out to be representative of a broader phenomenon, we hypothesize that student test scores will improve when professional development is provided to teachers to help them understand the new activities and pedagogies made possible by the open textbooks (e.g., students highlighting and taking notes directly in their books)."

Additional information may be found in the article.