Executive Summary

The adoption of open educational resources (OER) for dual credit and general education
courses across Idaho has the potential to impact campus climate. With students in higher
education needing to budget around $1200 a year for textbooks alone, textbook costs tend to
be on the top of the grievance list by college students (Weisbaum, 2016). Also, with the
disturbing go-on rate in Idaho having recently fallen below fifty percent, curbing costs for dual
credit courses may be a way to get more students enrolled in higher education by helping them
to afford college credit while in high school (Clark, 2016). According to Fischer, Hilton,
Robinson, and Wiley (2015), “Even when controlling for differences in previous enrollment,
students in courses using OER enrolled in a significantly higher number of credits in the next
semester” (p. 169). This group also concluded, “the moderate difference in completion rates
and final grades between the control and treatment groups are likely a function of access”
(Fischer, Hilton, Robinson & Wiley, 2015, p. 169). By making textbooks more affordable,
possibly even free if students opt for the digital version, students are guaranteed access to
important materials to be successful in courses. With tuition rates rising drastically and incomes
typically not following suit but instead falling slightly, institutions of higher education must
make changes in order to make college more affordable (Blaire, 2012). Though there is ongoing
research regarding the impact of open education resources, much of it relates to comparisons
between traditional and OER texts, student grades in courses that use OER materials, and
student preference for materials. What is needed now is a deeper look at impact of OER on
campus climate, including whether or not the adoption of OER materials can impact retention
rates and go-on rates.
The Idaho State Department of Education (ISDE) along with key players in OER practice
from higher ed and K-12 institutions around the state are currently proposing a long-term plan
related to state wide OER implementation. ISDE funded a summer institute in 2016 for a group
of 30 K-12 science teachers to develop open education science textbooks in cooperation with
the University of Idaho Doceo Center. While the Doceo Center’s involvement with OER began
four years ago, this was the first time the state had invested in OER. The state is currently
funding a project to adapt the biology text that was created by this group to fit the needs of the
dual enrollment biology courses offered at institutions across the state. The plan for continuing
this effort is to focus on adopting OER materials for other Idaho GEM (General Education
Matriculation) courses because these courses are universally accepted across all institutions of
higher education in Idaho. Specifically, the state will first focus on funding educators to create
OER textbooks to support dual enrollment GEM courses with the intention of having the
greatest impact by focusing on those courses with high enrollment rates. For example, the
adoption of an OER textbook for the biology dual enrollment GEM courses will impact over 800
students throughout the state. Simultaneously, the higher education institutions are internally
funding OER adoption projects that focus on general education courses that have high
enrollment. With these two efforts combined, the prices of textbooks will drop dramatically for
students in their first two years of college. There are also multiple efforts happening within
specific programs to adopt OER materials. Though that plan is not formalized like the plan with
GEM and general education courses, it will help to continue reducing the burden of textbook
costs for students in their junior and senior years.
 Though ISDE can invest monies in specific projects that impact all institutions state wide,
there is no funding available through ISDE to study the impact of such a state wide project. The
objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of campus climate related to this project in
institutions of higher education around the state. Since the Doceo Center is highly involved in
the state OER movement and has already published research related to OER summer institutes
with K-12 educators, it makes sense to build upon this research base to include OER in higher
education. Therefore, the University of Idaho Doceo Center Director, Cassidy Hall, will lead this
effort in collaboration with two colleagues of the other two research institutions from the state,
Idaho State University and Boise State University. (will plug in names and reasoning as these
people are identified)
We are hypothesizing that a component of student retention relates to availability of
course materials which can be impacted by the adoption of OER materials. We are also
hyposthesizing that free access to textbooks for dual credit courses will impact the go-on rate
by allowing high schools students a less-costly entry into higher education courses.
Our two research questions:
 Do the implementation of OER textbooks in general education courses influence
student retention rates?
 Do the implementation of OER textbooks in dual credit courses influence the go-
on rate?

Plan of Work
This project will be approached as a mixed methods study consisting of surveys,
interviews, and course data. Each member of the team will be responsible for gathering data
for their own institution and one of the non-research institutions in the state. The Doceo Center
research assistant will undertake preliminary data analysis. The team will then work to analyze
overall trends in the data and divide writing responsibilities with primary journal submission
and editing responsibilities being taken on by the team leader.

Needs Assessment
Insert Lit Review here – minor edits needed from previous version for another grant
Lit review includes works previously sited in executive summary as well as additional works
from OER guru David Wiley and Doceo Center previous director Royce Kimmons.
Though there is much OER research currently being conducted, to this point, there is a
lack of research specifically related to go-on rates and student retention rates. This project aims
to be guided by the previous studies which have limited information related to student
retention while developing unique approaches with studying the connection to go-on rates
since the literature has not yet touched on this subject.

Previous Work
In May-June 2015, the Doceo Center hosted a group of science teachers from a
moderately-sized Idaho school district for a series of open textbook creation institutes. In these
three-day institutes, teachers worked in groups to adapt, revise, and remix openly licensed
textbooks for use in their classrooms. Targeted subject areas included middle and high school
sciences, and using pre-existing open textbook content from CK-12(link is external) and other
sources, five textbooks were created in total.
All revised textbooks were released under a Creative Commons license and are available
for other educators to freely access, distribute, download, share, print, edit, adapt, and
otherwise use. They may be downloaded either as PDF or ePub files on our Open Textbook
Crash Course website.
To ensure that created textbooks exhibited sufficient quality for classroom use,
participants were also asked to evaluate a) their previous, non-open textbooks, b) an exemplary
open textbook, and c) their own revised version of an open textbook. Results of these
evaluations revealed that participants generally believed that: a) the exemplary open textbooks
were of higher quality than the non-open predecessors and b) by revising these textbooks, they
became even stronger. More detailed visual results are available at
http://doceocenter.org/open_textbook_creation_results.
In July of 2015, the Blended Learning with Open Education Resources Summer Institute
was offered through the Doceo Center. This was a collaborative effort between the center
and Idaho Digital Learning Academy (IDLA) to introduce new teachers to the tools and
pedagogy of blended learning with open education resources. Teachers also participate in a
follow up portion for 5 days throughout the following school year.
During the summer of 2016, 36 science teachers from across the state joined us in
creating version 2.0 of the five science texts (version 1.0 was created the summer prior). This
institute was facilitated by six science teachers who had created the open education science
texts and implemented them in their classrooms. Each participant earned two professional
development credits (provided by SDE) at the institute and had the opportunity to earn one
professional development credit for full participation in follow-up meetings, implementation,
and providing feedback. This entire project was funded by the Idaho State Department of
Education (ISDE).
We are currently in the process of planning the Dual Credit Biology Open Textbook
Project that will be funded entirely by ISDE as well. In addition, ISDE will partner with the Doceo
Center to offer one day professional development workshops on OER at multiple locations
throughout the state. This will also be funded by ISDE.

Key Personnel
Cassidy Hall, Director, University of Idaho Doceo Center for Innovation + Learning will
serve as PI on this project. She has been involved with educating K-12 educators on OER for the
past four years and is also involved in the OER movement at the university. She currently serves
on a review committee that offers OER fellowships to faculty who are committed to integrating
OER materials in their courses. She also works closely with the Idaho State Department of
Education to ensure that the OER movement is a priority. Through this relationship, she has
secured funding from ISDE to support multiple OER professional development opportunities for
educators in K-12 and higher education. She is heavily involved in ISDE’s long-term plan to
rollout OER in Idaho.
Others will be plugged in when identified.

Budget
Name/Title Rate Fringe Dollar Amount Requested
Cassidy Hall, PI – 15 days $36.32/hr. $1,377.25 $5735.65

Budget Justification
Need to wait until co-pi’s are identified.

References

Broidy, Blaire (2012, Nov. 30). Shocking chart on tuition vs. earnings for college grads. The
Fiscal
Times. Retrieved from http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2012/11/30/Shocking-
Chart-on-Tuition-vs-Earnings-for-College-Grads

Corbin, Clark (2016, Oct. 19). Idaho's college go-on rate dips below 50 percent. IDEDNEWS.org.
Retrieved from https://www.idahoednews.org/news/idahos-college-go-rate-drops-50-
percent/

Fischer, L., Hilton III, J., Robinson, T. J., & Wiley, D. A. (2015). A multi-institutional study of the
impact of open textbook adoption on the learning outcomes of post-secondary
students. Journal of Computing in Higher Education, 27(3), 159-172.

Weisbaum, Herb (2016, Feb. 10). Students are still saddled with soaring textbook costs, report
says. NBC News. Retrieved from http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-
news/students-are-still-saddled-soaring-textbook-costs-report-says-n516011