Document Type
Blog
Publication Date
6-16-2021
Abstract
OER began as textbooks, and is an effort by faculty, librarians and other members of the academic community to increase student access to required readings at a time of fast rising textbook prices. While much of the attention by the OER community has been focused in recent years on reducing student textbook costs through the development of openly licensed works, an issue that has often been ignored is whether students are actually using them. Along with the dramatic increase in textbook costs in the last two decades there has been a phenomenon that is well studied but often overlooked by OER advocates, a decline in student completion of assigned textbook readings. Studies since 2000 (Sikorski et al., 2002; Clump, Bauer & Bradley, 2004; Podolefsky & Finkelstein, 2006; Berry et al., 2011; Hoeft, 2012; Starcher & Pro tt, 2013; Vazquez, 2016) have shown that as many as 80% of undergraduate students, from across a variety of disciplines do not read their textbooks regularly.