The OER Knowledge Cloud makes use of cookies. By continuing, you consent to this use. More information.
Effectiveness of OER use in first-year higher education students' mathematical course performance: A case study
Westermann Juárez, Werner and Venegas Muggli, Juan Ignacio

PublishedDecember 2017
PeriodicalChapter 6, Pages 187-229
PublisherAdoption and impact of OER in the Global South, African Minds, International Development Research Centre & Research on Open Educational Resources
EditorsHodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl and Arinto, Patricia B.

ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to understand the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) on first-year mathematics students at the Instituto Profesional Providencia (IPP) in Santiago, Chile, where more than half (52%) of first-year students typically drop out of their studies. In order to address this, the institution established an innovation fund and a project to profile, assess and monitor student performance through an early warning system. IPP stakeholders envisioned that a strategy to promote OER uptake could complement these efforts. By looking at an OER intervention amongst firstyear students, this study seeks to identify ways in which OER can provide new tools, opportunities, and contexts to improve student performance and lower dropout rates by answering the following research questions: What is the effect of OER use on firstyear students’ mathematics course performance? In face-to-face instruction, what is the effect of OER use on first-year students’ class attendance? What are teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the OER adoption process?

To answer questions one and two, this study used a quantitative method to estimate the effect of OER use on students’ mathematical course performance and class attendance. Five groups of first-year students were compared based on the analysis of two scenarios. In Scenario 1, a control group and two treatment groups were in a traditional face-to-face classroom setting. The control group relied on a proprietary textbook; the first treatment group was taught with the help of a Khan Academy OER collection; and the second treatment group was taught by means of a custom-designed Open Textbook. Scenario 2 compared two classes in blended-mode Algebra and Calculus courses. The control group relied on a proprietary resource, and the treatment group used a Khan Academy collection of OER in addition to the proprietary resource. In order to estimate the effectiveness of OER use on students’ mathematical performance, the impact analysis focused on three result variables: (1) students’ marks before the final exam, (2) students’ final exam marks, and (3) students’ final course marks after the exam.

To answer research question three, a mixed-methods approach was applied in the form of a series of semi-structured interviews, a focus group discussion and a student survey. The students who used the Khan Academy OER collections or the Open Textbook were asked to participate in this study in order to better comprehend learners’ and teachers’ perceptions of OER.

Students in Scenario 1 who used Khan Academy resources obtained statistically significantly better exam grades than those who used the proprietary resource or the Open Textbook, suggesting that not all kinds of OER have the same effect on student performance. In Scenario 2, there was no improvement in mathematical course performance amongst students using OER. In terms of student attendance, face-to-face mode students who used Khan Academy OER had significantly lower attendance levels than those who relied on the proprietary textbook, which may be due to the fact that when students have access to the infrastructure required to access OER remotely they tend to work more from home.

With regard to student and teacher perceptions of the OER adoption process, the qualitative and quantitative data confirmed the assumption that OER can be relevant and useful to Chilean students.

The chapter concludes with the insight that “openness” does not necessarily produce an impact in and of itself, but is instead part of a greater set of tools and practices in which many variables exert an influence. Neither the intrinsic nature of information and communication technologies nor openness are tools or instruments that can be said to result in a specific outcome.

The dataset arising from this study can be accessed at:
https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/577

Keywords attendance · Chile · first-year · global south · higher education · Khan Academy · OEP · OER · open education · Open Educational Resources · Open textbook · performance · ROER4D

Published atCape Town & Ottawa
ISBN978-1-928331-48-3
RefereedYes
RightsAttribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
DOI10.5281/zenodo.1094848
URLhttps://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.1094848
Export optionsBibTex · EndNote · Tagged XML · Google Scholar



AVAILABLE FILES
ROER4D-ch6-final.pdf · 638.7KB60 downloads



Viewed by 237 distinct readers




CLOUD COMMUNITY REVIEWS

The evaluations below represent the judgements of our readers and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Cloud editors.

Click a star to be the first to rate this document


POST A COMMENT
SIMILAR RECORDS

Effectiveness of OER use in first-year higher education students’ mathematical course performance
Venegas Muggli, Juan Ignacio; Westermann, Werner
This article examines the effect of two Open Educational Resources (OER) - Khan Academy Collection and a teacher-authored open textbook - on mathematical course performance and attendance amongst first-year higher ...
Match: Venegas Muggli, Juan Ignacio; Chile; higher education; Khan Academy; OER; Open textbook

Open access and OER in Latin America: A survey of the policy landscape in Chile, Colombia and Uruguay
Toledo, Amalia; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia B.
This chapter presents an overview of the mechanisms (funding, policy, legislative and procedural) adopted by Latin American governments with respect to Open Access and Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives in the ...
Match: Chile; global south; higher education; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D

Open Access and OER in Latin America: A survey of the policy landscape in Chile, Colombia and Uruguay
Toledo, Amalia; Hodgkinson-Williams, C.; Arinto, P B.
This chapter presents an overview of the mechanisms (funding, policy, legislative and procedural) adopted by Latin American governments with respect to Open Access and Open Educational Resources (OER) initiatives in the ...
Match: Chile; global south; higher education; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D

Higher education faculty attitude, motivation and perception of quality and barriers towards OER in India
Mishra, Sanjaya; Singh, Alka; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia B.
The premise of this study is that teachers’ conceptions of the quality of Open Educational Resources (OER) and their attitudes and motivations towards using OER will influence whether and how they use and/or ...
Match: global south; higher education; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D

Impact of integrating OER in teacher education at the Open University of Sri Lanka
Karunanayaka, Shironica P.; Naidu, Som; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia B.
This chapter reports on a research project implemented in the Faculty of Education at the Open University of Sri Lanka (OUSL) which investigated the impact of integrating Open Educational Resources (OER) in the ...
Match: global south; OEP; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D

Factors influencing open educational practices and OER in the Global South: Meta-synthesis of the ROER4D project
Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia; Cartmill, Tess; King, Thomas; et al.
This chapter provides a meta-synthesis of the findings from the Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) empirical studies based on the 13 sub-project chapters in this volume as well as other ...
Match: global south; OEP; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D

Factors shaping lecturers' adoption of OER at three South African universities
Cox, Glenda; Trotter, Henry; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia B.
The research presented here focuses on understanding the obstacles, opportunities and practices associated with Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption at three South African universities. It addresses the question: ...
Match: global south; higher education; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D

Research on open educational resources for development in the Global South: Project landscape
Arinto, Patricia; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; King, Thomas; Cartmill, Tess; et al.
The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project was proposed to investigate in what ways and under what circumstances the adoption of Open Educational Resources (OER) could address the ...
Match: global south; OEP; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D

Teacher professional learning communities: A collaborative OER adoption approach in Karnataka, India
Kasinathan, Gurumurthy; Ranganathan, Sriranjani; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia B.
This chapter analyses collaborative Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption amongst Indian school teachers by examining the enabling and constraining techno-social, techno-pedagogical and sociocultural factors in an ...
Match: global south; OEP; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D

OER and OEP in the Global South: Implications and recommendations for social inclusion
Arinto, Patricia; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Trotter, Henry; Hodgkinson-Williams, Cheryl; Arinto, Patricia B.
The Research on Open Educational Resources for Development (ROER4D) project was undertaken to provide a better understanding of the uptake of Open Educational Resources (OER) and their impact on education in the Global ...
Match: global south; OEP; OER; open education; Open Educational Resources; ROER4D