Higher Education Faculty Perceptions of Open Textbook Adoption

The high cost of tuition and textbooks can have a negative impact on potential students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Open Educational Resources (OER) offers students a way to save educational costs while utilizing high-quality open textbooks. Up until now, there have been few studies focused on a specific provider of open textbooks. This study investigates open textbooks provided by OpenStax. Specifically, this study uses the COUP framework to examine: (1) cost reduction, (2) outcomes, (3) uses, and (4) the faculty perceptions of the quality of OpenStax textbooks. Additionally, we expanded the framework to address (5) the relationship between the perceived quality of the OpenStax textbook and the faculty perception of student performance, (6) the faculty’s intention to continue to adopt OpenStax textbooks, and (7) the perceived importance of accessibility to faculty who use OpenStax textbooks. Overall, the findings suggest that a significant amount of financial savings and a number of pedagogical shifts can be supported by the use of OpenStax textbooks. Keyword: OpenStax, open textbooks, OER, perception of open textbooks


Résumé de l'article
The high cost of tuition and textbooks can have a negative impact on potential students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Open Educational Resources (OER) offers students a way to save educational costs while utilizing high-quality open textbooks. Up until now, there have been few studies focused on a specific provider of open textbooks. This study investigates open textbooks provided by OpenStax. Specifically, this study uses the COUP framework to examine: (1) cost reduction, (2) outcomes, (3) uses, and (4) the faculty perceptions of the quality of OpenStax textbooks. Additionally, we expanded the framework to address (5) the relationship between the perceived quality of the OpenStax textbook and the faculty perception of student performance, (6) the faculty's intention to continue to adopt OpenStax textbooks, and (7) the perceived importance of accessibility to faculty who use OpenStax textbooks. Overall, the findings suggest that a significant amount of financial savings and a number of pedagogical shifts can be supported by the use of OpenStax textbooks.

Introduction
Textbooks are an important part of the post-secondary college instructional model and can be expensive (Bok, 2009). One study found that the average textbook price was $90.00 at seven different colleges across multiple general education courses that included science, mathematics, humanities, and business disciplines (Hilton, Robinson, Wiley, & Ackerman, 2014).
The high cost of tuition and textbooks can have a negative impact on potential students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (Paulsen & St. John, 2002). Provasnik and Plenty (2008) found that high educational costs cause these individuals to be more prone to delay college enrollment than wealthier students. High textbook costs can also encourage students to take fewer classes per term, extending their 124 time to graduation (Buczynski, 2007). A Florida Virtual Campus study conducted in 2012 reveals that 23% of students choose not to purchase textbooks due to the high cost.
Open Educational Resources (OER), including open textbooks, are low or no cost instructional materials that are offered through some form of an open license (D'Antoni, 2009;Hilton & Wiley, 2011). Based on the type of license associated with an open textbook these materials can be used whole or in part as a course text at a much lower cost, thus mitigating some of the negative impact to students of a more expensive published textbook.
Open textbooks have been available for more than a decade. Some instructors, departments, and institutions have redesigned courses and curriculum to include or rely entirely upon OER content (Bliss et al, 2013;Caswell, 2012;Hilton & Wiley, 2011). While much has been done in recent years to create, increase awareness of and support for open textbooks, Bliss, Robinson, Hilton, and Wiley (2013)  Many OER research studies have focused on perceptions of OER use. While valuable, most studies have examined the perceptions of faculty using anything they considered to be OER. For example, research conducted by de los Arcos, Farrow, Pitt, Weller, and McAndrew (2016) reported findings from more than 600 teachers' perceptions of OER. Teachers mentioned a wide range of different types of OER, such as Ted Talks, Learning Modules, YouTube, iTunes, or Khan Academy. However, without having an operationalized definition of OER, it is difficult to validate findings (Nevo, 1985). Similarly, Bliss et al. (2013) conducted a study on OER user perceptions of 58 teachers and 490 students from Project Kaleidoscope (PK) institutions. While the study has a considerable number of respondents, the types of OER resources teachers used were not concretely defined. This is a problem across several OER-related perceptions studies (Hilton, 2016 (Coolidge, Doner, & Robertson, 2015) Finally, the impact of OER textbooks on student achievement (Bliss et al., 2013) and the relationship between faculty perceived quality and their intention to adopt OER textbooks have also been raised as areas for further study (OpenStax Representative, personal communication, August 10, 2016). Based on this context, the following research questions were developed for this study.

Methodology
The purpose of this study is to add to the literature related to adoption of educational innovations and in particular to the adoption and implementation of Open Educational Resources (OER), specifically OpenStax textbooks, in post-secondary environments. This study partially replicates and is based upon a previous study conducted by Bliss, Robinson, Hilton, and Wiley (2013)

Participants
Participants in this study include faculty who adopted open textbooks through OpenStax (https://openstax.org/). OpenStax managers communicated with their post-secondary community about the survey in the form of emails in accordance with their privacy policies. All participants (n=150) received an electronic version of the research consent form and were required to agree with the consent prior to the commencement of the survey. Bliss, Robinson, Hilton, and Wiley's (2013) survey questions provided the basis for survey development and were modified and expanded to fit the purpose and scope of this study. To ensure instrument validity, survey questions were reviewed by multiple experts in the field, including:

Instrument Validity
 John Hilton, one of the leaders of Open Education Group and the pioneering author from the research upon which this study is based;

Data Analysis
A total of 150 survey responses were collected, and all of them completed the survey. After collecting online survey responses, the researchers utilized descriptive statistics to analyze the results and thematic analysis 127 for open-ended questions. When facing conflicts of interpretation, the researchers held a series of dialogues to reach a shared understanding.

Results
Utilizing the COUP framework as the base for the study, additional components were added, including accessibility and perceptions of quality and student performance. This section presents the findings related to demographics, cost, outcome, use, perception of quality, and accessibility. For the quantitative and thematic analysis of the qualitative data, descriptive statistics were used.

Demographics
The respondents were 61% male and 39% female (n=136). Data on the faculty status of the respondents revealed that the majority of the open textbooks adopters were full-time faculty (41%) and full-time tenured faculty (35%). Many of them taught at a community college (43%) or public, four-year college or university (43%) in the United States (92%). The other almost 8% of the participants were located in Canada, South Africa, Bosnia Herzegovina, Italy, and Germany.
In terms of class format, 60% of the participants reported that they used open textbooks in face-to-face courses, while 16% used them in online courses and 24% used them in blended/hybrid courses. The major of the respondents adopted their open textbooks from OpenStax (77%), followed by OER Commons (4%), MIT Open CourseWare Online Textbooks (3%), Lumen Learning (3%), and others (7%) (respondents were able to choose multiple options).
When designing the survey, the researchers were curious as to whether the OER adopters realized that open textbooks are a type of OER. The results showed that all but one participants were aware that the textbook was an open textbook at the time of adoption, indicating that the adopters made an informed decision when adopting the open textbooks. In terms of disciplines, nearly half of the faculty respondents reported that they taught in the field of sciences and environmental sciences (51%), followed by the social sciences (23%), mathematics, computing, and engineering (14%). No respondent reported having taught in education, making it the field with the least number of open textbook adopters.

Cost
Cost saving is one of the most important factors in deciding to utilize open textbooks. Prior to using open textbooks, 70% of respondents believed that 50% to 90% of their students purchased the required course textbook ( Figure 1).

Higher Education Faculty Perceptions of Open Textbook Adoption Jung, Bauer, and Heaps
128 Figure 1. Percentage of students who previously purchased a textbook.
Data indicate that faculty members were aware of the importance of cost and more than 71% of the faculty members in our study checked textbook prices within the past 11 months ( Figure 2). Finally, 81% of faculty members in the study believed that without the use of open textbooks each student would generally spend $100 or more per course on required textbooks ( Figure 3).  Teacher preparation time. Of the faculty members in our study, 82% stated that they spent about the same or less time preparing to teach a course using open textbooks, while 18% said that they spent more time. Figure 4 shows the percentage of faculty preparation time.  Those faculty members who "spent more time" (18%) were asked a follow-up question in order to determine whether spending more time was acceptable. Of those faculty members who answered that the additional time was acceptable (78%), they stated the following reasons: (1) immediate and ubiquitous student access to textbook, (2) up-to-date content, (3) interactivity, (4) textbook better aligned with class activities, (5) content quality, (6) faculty convenience, and (7) ability to customize/modify content. Faculty members who believed that spending more time was not acceptable (22%) stated the following concerns: (1) lack of alignment between test banks and textbook content, (2) poor quality of text banks/quiz questions, (3) lack of student engagement, and (4) lack of instructor resources. Interestingly, engagement and alignment were common themes, but viewed differently depending on whether the faculty member approved or disapproved of the additional time spent.  Bliss et al. (2013), 68% of the faculty members perceived their students as equally prepared for their course using open textbooks compared to using traditional textbooks. Another 20% of the faculty members reported their students were more prepared when using open textbooks than when using traditional textbooks. Only 5% believed that their students were less prepared using open textbooks than when using traditional textbooks.

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Perceived performance. Similar to the results on student preparedness, a significant portion of faculty members (23%) believed their students performed better when using open textbooks, while a majority (64%) thought that their students showed the same level of performance. Only 4% perceived that the performance of their students was worse than when using traditional textbooks. Nine percent of the faculty members reported that they had never taught the course without the use of open textbooks. Table 1 below outlines themes that emerged from the open-ended questions related to student performance.
Themes not associated with open textbooks, such as lab or teaching methods, were excluded.  Regardless of the style of textbook, the students will interact in the same way, either they will read it or they won't. What has changed is how much I can refer to the books because every student can afford to purchase the book.  Many students are not reading the textbooks anyway. The strongest correlation with performance seems to be effort spent on homework, rather than on the particular textbook. You can tell that there is a lack of editing done by skilled, knowledgeable people.  There are many factual errors, misuse of terms, obvious lack of understanding of basic scientific principles, and more. The artwork is very poor and many of the links are broken, have been withdrawn, or are so simplistic as to be useless.
Since decreasing student drop/withdrawal/incompletion rates have been a central concern to institutions, open textbook for optimal use in their particular courses (see Figure 5). Overall, about 80% of the faculty members believed that using open textbooks was at least as good as or better than using traditional textbooks. Half of the faculty members perceived that the students used the open textbooks as often as their traditional textbooks, while 28% of the faculty members believed that the students used them more often.

Perception of Quality
Survey  A deeper analysis was conducted in order to identify the respondents' general perceptions of the quality of open textbooks as well as the rationale for these perceptions (See Table 2

Characteristics of open textbook quality.
We also explored what factors contribute to the perception of the quality of open textbooks. Table 3 summarizes the faculty members' responses. Cost and affordability (75%) were ranked highest in importance, followed by content quality (66%), content difficulty (55%), readability (53%), and scope/sequence (49%).  Table 3 Characteristics of Open Textbook Quality

Accessibility of Open Textbooks
Higher  137 (12%). Responses that were not applicable (e.g., "more time on exams" or "none this semester") were excluded from the results.

Number of students with disabilities.
All of the faculty members were asked how many students they had in their courses using open textbooks. Answers that did not indicate a specific number were excluded from the results. We calculated the median for the range response, such as "2-3." On average, the faculty members were likely to have 1.52 students with some sort of disability (M = 1.52, SD = 2).
In Finally, many faculty reported affective responses from students. Several faculty members stated students appreciated their efforts to help make textbooks affordable. Without measurement, the direct effects of student appreciation remain undiscovered, but may positively contribute to student motivation and attitude toward completing their education. Further study is needed to investigate and directly measure how student preparation and performance may be impacted by the use of quality open textbooks.

Implications
Research on open textbooks has focused on outcome-oriented studies, and findings from this study suggest a new direction. Beyond the inherent cost saving, we have found that utilizing open textbooks can enable innovative instructional approaches, such as flipped classroom or collaborative learning using hands-on activities. Potentially based on the assumption that everyone has a textbook, faculty may hold students more accountable and encourage students to take a strong sense of ownership for their learning. Given the nature of our survey method, we were unable to determine why many faculty members perceived an enhancement in student performance.
Therefore, future research should focus on identifying the relationships between increased student performance and the use of open textbooks. With the findings revealed, scholars could enrich the OER knowledge base and begin contemplating pedagogical suggestions, while reducing the cost of education.
Awareness of OER is more widespread than previously thought, which indicates a need for an elaboration on the instructional approaches related to its use. As researchers in the field of OER, we hope that this article encourages more educators and scholars to collectively advance the data on the optimal use of open textbooks.

Limitations
This study has some limitations. First, we utilized convenient sampling-the survey respondents were specifically targeted as users of certain OER providers, such as OpenStax. Thus, all of the adopters already One such limitation includes the introspective ability of the participants (i.e., they may lack the ability to accurately reflect on the past) (Merriam, 1998). However, while we admittedly report limitations, it is equally important to note that we strove to secure instrument validity through expert reviews as well as data validation using the member-checking method (Bliss, Robinson, Hilton, & Wiley, 2013) in order to lessen the bias of the self-reported data and subjectiveness of the qualitative data analysis (Creswell, 2003;Merriam, 1998).

Conclusion
This study contributes to the OER literature by examining how faculty members perceive the use of open textbooks from a particular leading OER provider-OpenStax. Overall, the findings suggest that a significant amount of financial saving and pedagogical shifts exist with the use of open textbooks. In addition, the results show that some students are perceived to spend more time reading the book, which the faculty members believe is of equal or greater quality than traditional textbooks. Some faculty members also perceived that students were better prepared for class and performed at least as well as, if not better, when using traditional textbooks.
One of the primary benefits of OER is to reduce the educational cost for students. Compared to cost reduction, percentages of perceived student performance improvement, preparedness, and textbook quality are not significantly high. However, it is evident that adopting an open textbook is no harm, and thus worth implementing. However, additional research is needed to empirically determine whether open textbooks help student performance, not merely faculty perception of student performance. As the knowledge base of OER adoption continues to be enriched, the need exists for deeper, more specific, and diversified empirical studies in multiple contexts.