TY - JOUR
T1 - Do open educational resources improve student learning? Implications of the access hypothesis
AU - Grimaldi, Phillip J.
AU - Basu Mallick, Debshila
AU - Waters, Andrew E.
AU - Baraniuk, Richard G.
N1 - Funding Information:
Authors PJG, DBM, and AEW are employees of OpenStax, a non-profit OER textbook publisher based out of Rice University. RGB is the founder. OpenStax provided support in the form of full or partial salaries for authors PJG, DBM, AEW, & RGB, but did not have any additional role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. The specific roles of these authors are articulated in the ‘author contributions’ section.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Grimaldi et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2019/3
Y1 - 2019/3
N2 - Open Educational Resources (OER) have been lauded for their ability to reduce student costs and improve equity in higher education. Research examining whether OER provides learning benefits have produced mixed results, with most studies showing null effects. We argue that the common methods used to examine OER efficacy are unlikely to detect positive effects based on predictions of the access hypothesis. The access hypothesis states that OER benefits learning by providing access to critical course materials, and therefore predicts that OER should only benefit students who would not otherwise have access to the materials. Through the use of simulation analysis, we demonstrate that even if there is a learning benefit of OER, standard research methods are unlikely to detect it.
AB - Open Educational Resources (OER) have been lauded for their ability to reduce student costs and improve equity in higher education. Research examining whether OER provides learning benefits have produced mixed results, with most studies showing null effects. We argue that the common methods used to examine OER efficacy are unlikely to detect positive effects based on predictions of the access hypothesis. The access hypothesis states that OER benefits learning by providing access to critical course materials, and therefore predicts that OER should only benefit students who would not otherwise have access to the materials. Through the use of simulation analysis, we demonstrate that even if there is a learning benefit of OER, standard research methods are unlikely to detect it.
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U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0212508
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0212508
M3 - Article
C2 - 30840653
AN - SCOPUS:85062594782
VL - 14
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
SN - 1932-6203
IS - 3
M1 - e0212508
ER -