Tuition costs are beyond the control of Oregon State University faculty members, but there is a proven way they can make student learning more affordable: by replacing expensive textbooks with free and affordable course materials.
Since 2019, Oregon State students have saved more than $20 million thanks to OSU faculty who use free textbooks or other low-cost learning materials in their classes. These savings have a wide-ranging positive impact — increasing students’ access to course content, reducing their time to degree completion and promoting overall academic success.
The university’s growing use of open educational resources is in the spotlight during Open Education Week, which runs March 3-7. Open Education Week is an annual, online celebration to raise awareness of global efforts to make learning more affordable and accessible to students everywhere.
Open educational resources (OER) are teaching and learning materials that are freely available to students, teachers, researchers and the general public. Examples of OER include textbooks, course modules, lectures, digital learning objects, classroom activities and quizzes.
Oregon State faculty, in partnership with the university’s Open Educational Resources Unit, have embraced the OER movement by broadly implementing low-cost or no-cost course materials — that is, materials that cost $40 or fewer. In academic year 2024, for example, 41% of all OSU course sections (offered on campus and online) required low-cost or no-cost textbooks or materials.
These affordability measures impacted thousands of Oregon State students and resulted in savings of more than $8 million.
“The cost of commercial textbooks has been on the rise for many years,” said Stefanie Buck, OSU’s director of open educational resources. “Our 2022 survey of Oregon State students found that 61% of respondents didn’t purchase a textbook because of costs. That means that students are coming to class unprepared or underprepared because they did not do the reading.
“Students appreciate that faculty who switch to OER are recognizing the financial hardships that many students face, and faculty are doing something about it.”
Buck said students are often faced with difficult choices in order to afford textbooks. In their survey responses, some students said they may skip meals or must choose between paying rent or paying for class materials. The adoption of OER helps to mitigate these decisions.
Oregon State faculty have authored nearly 60 open textbooks. Buck and the OER Unit have seen 143 reported adoptions of OSU textbooks at many institutions including Montana State, Harvard, Boston University, State University of New York, Kansas State and Oxford University in England.
These faculty members have the subject matter expertise and, often, real-world experience that makes them ideal candidates to author textbooks. That includes Marit Bovbjerg, an associate professor in the College of Health. Her open textbook, “Foundations of Epidemiology,” was published in 2020 and has provided significant value to users worldwide.
As a result, Bovbjerg won an OER Champion Award from Open Oregon Educational Resources, a statewide organization that promotes the use of open source learning materials. She is such a proponent of OER that she uses only freely available materials in her classes.
In addition to the upfront cost savings that makes the textbook immediately available to all students, she sees another reason to embrace OER.
“There’s also a bigger-picture benefit of not requiring people to pay for knowledge,” she said. “I’m a big proponent of open access to information in general. Not everyone is in a privileged position. Open access materials help to democratize knowledge.”
Buck and the OER Unit are conducting another survey of Oregon State’s undergraduate students this winter. The study will gather insights about how course material costs affect students’ lives in order to help faculty continue implementing OER.
Every March, Open Education Week gives educators and students an opportunity to learn more about open educational practices and gain inspiration from the work being developed around the world.
Find more information about this year’s Open Education Week virtual events online and register today.
Oregon State’s Open Educational Resources Unit is a part of the Division of Educational Ventures.
