Most postsecondary instructors in the United States require students to use textbooks in their courses; however, the cost of commercial materials has increased, and copyright policies impede sharing, editing, and customizations of materials. The current study aimed to examine faculty motivation to adopt Open Educational Resources (OER) and how OER…

This dissertation consists of two separate studies exploring current and emerging technologies for education. The current technology is presented in the first study as an open educational resource (OER) for language learning. This study explored the affordances of OERs for language by comparing a traditional textbook and an OER web-book in terms…

One of the challenges experienced in South African higher education (HE) is a lack of access to affordable, appropriate textbooks and other teaching materials that can be legally shared on online forums and the Internet. There are also increasing calls to address transformation and social justice globally and in South African HE through curriculum…

E-textbooks have become more popular with college students, but there are concerns that reading is not as effective from screens as paper. In addition, students may not take advantage of tools afforded by e-textbooks. The purpose of this study was to determine if encouraging students to read from paper or modeling e-textbook tools would be better…

This article discusses the development of an interactive online textbook for undergraduate teaching, in response to moving teaching online due to COVID-19. The development took place initially for a university with less than 5% of students studying online in 2019. The online textbook was incorporated into a large, diverse, multidisciplinary and…

In just over a year, Massachusetts public colleges and universities have galvanized a statewide movement to adopt more comprehensive use of Open Educational Resources (OER). There had been prior nascent efforts to increase the utilization of OER in Massachusetts including: the launch of the Open Education Initiative at UMass Amherst, the MA #Go…

During the pandemic three widespread shifts in teaching cultures affected digital writing pedagogies: resilient teaching, open teaching, and inclusive teaching. Resilient teaching design emerged as a strategy to counter the unpredictability of public health policies on class delivery modes, and emphasised designing for maximising student…

Students desire free textbooks that incorporate multimedia and interactive experiences. Although there is an increased production of e-textbooks, these resources tend to replicate hard copy books and do not take advantage of the functions that technology offers. There is also a shift to creating e-textbooks that are considered open educational…

An interactive open-source calculus textbook is compared to a popular commercial textbook. Structured as a non-inferiority study, use of the open-source textbook does not harm student outcomes, and there is evidence that the open-source textbook is better than the commercial textbook in promoting post-course enjoyment of mathematics and confidence…

At the 2018 meeting of the American Historical Association, The University of Chicago Press launched the inaugural edition of "Building the American Republic," the publisher's new textbook authored by Harry L. Watson and Jane Dailey. The book is published using an emerging model in textbook publishing, in which the digital edition of the…

Textbook prices have increased exponentially in recent years, prompting educators to investigate the usefulness of alternative sources for course readings. This is particularly important for community college students who are more likely to be low-income and less likely to complete their educational credentials. Despite this need, there is a…

In this paper, we adopt a critical lens to investigate educators' understanding of both traditional and alternative textbooks and examine how open pedagogy may call for a rethinking of textbooks and how they are used in a pedagogical setting. Within the context of open pedagogy, including open textbooks, we conducted workshops that involved…

Open educational resources (OER) are increasingly attractive options for reducing educational costs, yet controlled studies of their efficacy are lacking. The current study addressed many criticisms of past research by accounting for course and instructor characteristics in comparing objective student learning outcomes across multiple sections of…

Institutions of higher learning are providing access to free and low-cost open resources to support students with prior college-level learning during every step of their educational journey. This unconventional approach to education removes traditional barriers to college credit by placing learners in an open environment, which encourages…

This study explores how faculty members select and use the educational materials employed in their courses. The primary sample represents all teaching faculty across all types of degree-granting higher education institution in the United States. Two subgroups of faculty are called out for detailed examination: those teaching large-enrollment…