International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning Teaching and Learning Without a Textbook Undergraduate Student Perceptions of Open Educational Resources

in a large American public university. As reported by study participants, advantages of using OER include textbook cost savings, access to dynamic and plentiful OER materials, that OER enabling mobile learning, and that OER foster the development of self-directed skills and copyright guidelines. Challenges reported include lacking a tactile sense with OER, slow Internet connections, unclear instruction and guidance, and insufficient self-regulation skills. Course design and implementation considerations were discussed.


Introduction
Omnipresent computers, the Internet, and associated technological developments have led to exponential growth in the use of Open Educational Resources (OER) in education (Blumenstyk, 2015).College instructors have increasingly incorporated OER into their teaching, either to supplement their curriculum or to replace traditional textbooks with e-textbooks entirely (Forsyth, 2016;Hilton, 2016).With increased development, publicity, and dissemination of OER, a recent "Opening the Textbook" survey of 2,700 instructors by Babson Survey Research Group (2017) revealed that the number of instructors at two-year and four-year institutions using OER in place of textbooks has nearly doubled from 5% in 2015-2016 to 9% in 2016-2017.Moreover, 29% of the surveyed instructors described themselves as "aware" or "very aware" of OER in 2017, compared to 25% in 2016and 20% in 2015(Babson Survey Research Group, 2017).While such data is exciting, the survey also noted that awareness of OER is still low, and that many instructors also reported significant barriers (e.g., finding and evaluating the quality of materials) to wider adoption of OER (Babson Survey Research Group, 2017).
Researchers have called for more empirical studies to determine student perceptions and experiences of using OER -either e-Textbooks or OER components, in teaching and learning in hopes of providing evidence about OER's efficacy and quality (Allen & Seaman, 2014;Hilton, 2016) as well as to help instructors develop a new set of skills and attitudes with open pedagogy (Annand & Jensen, 2017;Hegarty, 2015).Past studies usually investigate e-Textbooks or a partial adoption of OER components.The purpose of this study is to investigate using only OER to replace traditional textbooks in an introductory undergraduate course.It aims to discover how students perceive their experiences differently when only OER are adopted in teaching and learning.The study centers on the following research questions: 1. What advantages did students identify when using only OER in an undergraduate introductory course?
2. What challenges did students experience when using only OER in their learning process?

Literature Review
Forces Promoting the OER Movement UNESCO first defined the term "Open Educational Resources" in 2002 as: "teaching, learning, or research materials that are in the public domain or released with an intellectual property license that allows for free use, adaption, and distribution" (UNESCO, 2002, p. 24).The ultimate goal of developing OER is "to enable the creation of free, universally accessible educational materials, which anyone could use for teaching or learning purposes" (Hilton, 2016, p. 574).
In the past two decades, several forces have greatly pushed the OER movement.The first force is the prices of the textbooks, which have increased by 82% in the last decade, and students spend an estimated $1,200 per year on textbooks (Affordable Learning Georgia, 2016).In the same time period as the aforementioned textbook price increase, a 7% average annual increase in tuition, fees, and housing occurred as well, furthering student financial stress (Blumenstyk, 2015).A more recent survey of more than 22,000 college students had sobering results, as 53.2% of these students spent more than $300 on textbooks in a semester, and 17.9% spent more than $500 (Florida Virtual Campus Survey, 2016).Additionally, 66.6% of students did not purchase some required textbooks, and 37.6% of students earned a poor grade as a result.This survey indicated that many college students compromised their academic success because of the high cost of instructional materials.Clearly, the economic barrier of textbook costs on top of tuition is an important factor contributing to student academic failure.
In light of the information presented above, several OER initiatives have emerged to help increase student accessibility to learning materials.(Lin & Kelsey, 2009).Moreover, non-profit organizations such as Openstax, Khan Academy, and the Saylor Academy emerged as leading providers of OER (Hilton, 2016).Secondly, upon determining that savings benefits of OER may systematically address the textbook problem in Higher Education, the U.S. Department of Education has launched a $4.9 million pilot program to create and expand academic OER materials for Higher Education in 2018 (Department of Education, 2018).Thirdly, there has been increasing proliferation in publishing and copyright, such as Creative Commons (CC) licensing, GLAMs (Gallaries, Libraries, Archieves, and Museums), and even for-profit companies such as YouTube and Flickr.In particular, CC licensing allows authors to decide how they wish to share their work, reserve their rights, or adjust the license to make their work more open, accessible for reuse, repurposing, and remixing (Kelly, 2014).Higher Education has also worked to support OER growth: a 25-member consortium of Higher Education institutions purchased course materials in bulk from textbook publishers and offered the digital format at a low cost to their students on the first day of a course (Unizin, 2018).Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have also been rapidly adopted in Higher Education: The Open Education Consortium, which consists of hundreds of Higher Education institutions and associated organizations worldwide, spearheaded the creation and distribution of many free MOOC courses to attract a broader audience around the world in the early 2010s (edX, 2018;Lin, 2014).
While these positive initiatives foster the creation and dissemination of OER, researchers indicated that OER has not been systematically integrated into the curriculum due to several critical challenges including: the reality that open technology is still an unknown territory to most instructors (Babson Survey Research Group, 2017), the lack of institutional faculty support and development to integrate OER into curriculum (Annand & Jensen, 2017), and a lack of OER quality assessments to help faculty to choose from the multitude of OER options (Hilton, Bliss, & Wiley, 2013).The following section outlines a framework of open pedagogy.This framework serves as an anchor for instructors seeking to integrate OER into their curricular as well as demonstrates the challenges that exist for instructors.

Theoretical Framework of Open Technology
Readily accessible materials do not guarantee successful teaching and learning with OER.A model of open pedagogy by Hegarty (2015) used eight attributes to guide successful OER integration.Therefore, the model 4 served as a theoretical framework to guide the redesign of the course within which the study at hand was conducted.
1. Participatory technologies.OER technologies enable a participatory culture via tools such as blogs, wikis, videoconferencing, audio file sharing, online journaling and publishing, forums, and chats.However, technology itself does not guarantee a participatory culture to occur naturally (Hegarty, 2015).Instructors need to carefully select OER to encourage interaction, facilitate mobility, and support the development of communities of practice (Cochrane, 2014).

People, openness, and trust.
In an open learning environment, students' willingness to learn, participate, and interact is fragile unless an element of trust can be built (Hegarty, 2015).With this, building confidence and connections among students is a logical step.This type of support engages learners to feel conformable, trusted, and valued as they access and interact with resources and each other (Kop, Founier, & Mak, 2011).
3. Innovation and creativity.The New Media Consortium (NMC) 2015 Horizon Report indicated that developing innovative models of learning with OER can foster personalized experiences and collaborative engagement.This attribute stresses that students should not be passive receivers of information by using OER and technologies, and that an open environment can promote innovation, creativity, and engagement in which students act as creators and collaborators (Johnson, Adams Becker, Estrada, & Freeman, 2015).
4. Sharing ideas and resources.This attribute states that students are exposed to effective practices in an open environment by sharing their knowledge, ideas, and projects and actively asking for assistance among a community of peers (Hegarty, 2015).Instructors need to adequately address students' reasonable questions such as: "What's in it for me?" "Why do I post my work on the Web?" "I don't want to have my work judged, as it might not be good enough" (Hegarty, 2015, p. 89).
5. Connected community.This attribute relates to Attribute 1 in that a connected community is not only important to promote collaboration and sharing via participatory technologies, but also critical to encourage students to function as a community member in OER-based courses (Hegarty, 2015).In the OER-based courses, which students may perceive as too open and less directive, it is important not just for instructors to clarify directions but to also help students adopt a more "peerto-peer learning" attitude (Conole, 2013).
6. Learner-centered environment.Encouraging students to fully engage with OER in the learning process empowers then to take the lead, direct their own learning, solve problems, collaborate effectively, and share work meaningfully (Ehlers & Conole, 2010).Moreover, immersing students in OER encourages them to create learner-generated OER content so that they are able to produce creative work (Ehlers & Conole, 2010).
7. Reflective practice.A great part of learning comes from reflecting about what we do.According to Conole (2013), learning with OER is not just about generating experiences, but also about making time to process those experiences, and reflective practice is an integral part of OER course design and teaching.Students must also have opportunities to reflect and receive feedback from their instructors and peers (Conole, 2013).8. Peer review.While open peer review serves as the foundation to perform in a participatory culture, this approach can pose challenges for some students.Fear of criticism, self-doubt about quality of work, difficulty evaluating the quality of OER, and hesitancy to critique peers' work are some of the common concerns identified by students using OER in their projects (Conole, 2014).
From this, researchers recommend that instructors teach students how to evaluate OER quality and model OER integration into student projects (Conole, 2013;Richter & Ehlers, 2011).
After a review of the attributes of open pedagogy, the following question naturally arises: how do students perceive their learning with OER replacing traditional textbooks?In other words, when the opportunities are made available, will students take them?The following section reviews emerging literature on student perceptions.

Student Perceptions of OER
Literature on student perceptions and experiences of OER is still in an early phase of development.Several large-scale studies have investigated student responses to courses using OER either as e-Textbooks or OER components.Hilton, Gaudet, Clark, Robinson, and Wiley's (2013) survey of 1,400 students resulted in 910 responses.Within this survey, 83% of students reported that OER supported their work outside of the class, and 78% of the students would recommend OER to their peers (Hilton, Gaudet, Clark, Robinson, & Wiley, 2013).Feldstein et al. (2012) conducted a survey of 1,393 students about OER.Of the 315 students who responded to the survey, about two-thirds of students "strongly agreed" or "agreed" that they preferred the OER content to traditional textbooks (Feldstein et al., 2012).About one third of the students reported problems with the quality and credibility of the OER content (Feldstein et al., 2012).A third large-scale study on student perceptions involved 345 students in a computer science course who created an OERsupported blog project incorporating two major OER components into their classes (Gil, Candelas, Jara, Garcia, & Torres, 2013).Of the 345 students, 150 (43%) indicated that a blog using OER was better than a blog without OER support, however, 15% of the students favored non-OER blogs (Gil et al., 2013).In another survey of 1,830 students, 79% of 126 respondents reported overall satisfaction with OER integration into the curriculum, while 17% were undecided and 4% were dissatisfied with the quality of the OER (Pitt, Ebrahimi, McAndrew, & Coughlan, 2013).
To sum up, the majority of the surveyed students in the abovementioned studies noted that using OER helped them not only with textbook cost savings, but also positively impacted their learning experiences with OER.One challenge that a limited number of students identified was evaluating OER for quality and credibility.

Method Participants
Fifty-eight students enrolled in an introductory education course in a large American public university.
Forty-nine of them majored in elementary and secondary education, eight in health and physical education, and one in French.Fifty-two students (89.6%) were freshmen and sophomores, and six were senior students.There were 35 female students and 23 male students, and all participants were between the ages of 18 to 21.

Context of the Study
The introductory education course traditionally required students to purchase a $60 textbook.The goals of the course were twofold: promoting the effective integration of technology into lesson plans (technologies focus) and the integration of OER into lesson plans (OER focus).
To meet these goals, the course instructor spent more than 250 hours evaluating and contextualizing OER into the course content.Examples of selected OER as instructional materials included tutorials, lesson plans, journal articles, video clips, case studies, documentaries, blogs, WebQuest entries, library databases, online professional discussion forums, and state and national teacher evaluation criteria.Links to OER content were embedded in weekly modules and provided in a learning management system (LMS) -Desire2Learn.Meanwhile, students in the course were not strictly passive consumers of OER, but instead were "active creators" of OER artifacts as well (Johnson et al., 2015).Some examples of assignments that The second data source was two focus groups conducted after the reflective survey, each lasting 20-25 minutes.Of the students surveyed, 29 of 46 (63%) also participated in one of the two focus groups.Building on initial responses in the reflective survey, the focus groups asked more specific questions to generate indepth examples that may not be shared by the reflective survey.As suggested by Van Manen (1990), the advantage of in-depth interviews is that the researcher can discover the meaning of the lived experience directly from the participants' perspectives.

Data Analysis
The course instructor and a faculty member conducted the data analysis.First, after the reflective survey data had been collected, we followed the constant comparison techniques described by Strauss and Corbin (1990).Following Strauss and Corbin's framework, we first employed the free and open-coding technique, which involves "the naming and categorizing of phenomena through close examination of data " (1990, p. 62).This stage involved exploring and examining survey data to identify common themes, patterns, regularities, and irregularities.Recurring words, themes, and patterns emerged.We, therefore, began to regroup themes and patterns that were conceptually congruent.
After data from the focus groups had been collected and transcribed, we used the same open-coding technique to identify common themes.After identifying recurring patterns and themes from both the reflective survey and focus groups, the researchers began to triangulate data using axial coding.This method makes connections within and between groupings and allows for new combinations of data (Strauss & Corbin, 1990).Where necessary, patterns and themes were regrouped in accordance with the axial coding method as they emerged.Eventually, we categorized the data based on a collection of aggregated instances.
In cases of disagreement, we discussed and resolved differences and reached inter-rater agreement at 90%.

Research Question 1
What advantages did students identify when using only OER in an undergraduate introductory course?Data analysis indicated that 39 out of 46 (84.7%) students who took the reflective survey and 25 out of 29 (86.2%)students who participated in the focus groups reported that they appreciated that there was not a required textbook in this course.Several themes concerning the advantages of using only OER emerged from the two data sources.These themes are discussed in detail below.
Cost saving.First and foremost, students knew from their senior counterparts or past instructors that a $60 textbook, with a new edition every year, had been traditionally required in this course.For this reason, 84% of the 46 students who took the reflective survey, and 88% of the 29 in the focus groups expressed overwhelming satisfaction with using OER in place of a traditional textbook.One student's comment was representative of many students' perceptions: One of the best things in this course is that there was no a required textbook.This is an introductory course, and I know a newer version is out every year.Thank you for not asking us to buy another expensive textbook when all we need is online.
Another participant added: "Technology is the way of the future.Textbooks are overpriced and soon to be outdated.The Internet and a printer are far better than a textbook because of the open resources available online."Clearly, the students were concerned about the upsurge in textbook costs.They appreciated that only OER were used in the course.As one student summarized, "I don't see why we need another expensive textbook when OER can do a great job as well, or even better." Dynamic and plentiful materials.Another recurring theme was that OER enriched student learning because of the dynamic, multimedia online resources.One student explained the situation: This is an introductory technology course.It makes sense that we used OER to learn technology in a digital age.It would be a waste if we had to "read technology"' in a textbook.That will help us use OER effectively when we become teachers.
Another student noted: "I enjoyed not having to buy a book.I think I benefited as much from OER as I would have from a traditional textbook.It is the BEST CHOICE to make an introductory course interesting." Interestingly, this student's comment was not solely about the cost saving of OER, but highlights the way in which the use of OER can actually make a course more interesting.Another student noted: I am a third-year student taking this introductory course that I didn't take before.I never had a course that only used OER.It worked great in this introductory course.I hope my professors will use more OER in my senior year.
These comments indicate that students perceived multimedia-enriched OER as effectively contributing to their learning and viewed OER integration to be appropriate for an introductory course.
Mobile learning.The third most identified theme from the triangulated data is about OER and mobile learning.Specifically, 30 of 46 (65.2%) students who took the reflective survey and 23 of 29 (79.3%) in the focus groups indicated that OER enabled their mobile learning.One student noted that: Digital is much better as long as you have access to a computer at any time you need.There was no need for a textbook in this course and in several introductory courses I've taken either.All I need is online in the course site.This student contextualized the convenience of not carrying a textbook into his or her mobile learning experience.One student added: "OER are simpler, and it is easier to get the homework done.When all my readings and submissions are online, I only need a computer to do my homework.I do not like dealing with textbooks and pens.Very cool."Another student also noted: "When I go to the class, the Libraries, or the Union, I can forget to bring my textbook, but I will never forget my laptop."These comments indicate that students perceived OER as a great convenience for mobile learning.
OER evaluation and copyright.Data analysis showed that 26 of 46 (56.5%) students in the reflective survey and 20 of 29 (68.9%) in the focus groups also commented on OER instructions in the context of the course.Some students indicated that course assignments encouraged students to pay due attention to copyright issues and the reliability of OER content.One student explained: "I learned to look closely whether the site is reliable and updated, and whether it is copyright free.These skills will definitely help me prepare my lesson plans when I become an in-service teacher in the future."Given that some OER might, at a glance, appear as legitimate sources when in fact they are not, the course instructor exerted great effort to help students evaluate OER and be cognizant of copyright implications for their assignments.One student commented on the instructor's effort: "I am glad that the professor often talked about copyright and fair use guidelines in the class.She made sure that our lesson plans had OER-supported activities and we didn't just copy and paste others' online lesson plans."Another student further explained that: "I got to know that some OER in the open domain can still have copyright implications."These comments indicated that simply providing OER was not enough to help students learn effectively.
In sum, students appreciated not having to purchase and carry textbooks, and their experiences with OER were positive overall.Students in the present study identified several major advantages of using only OER to replace traditional textbooks, summarized in Table 1.No outliers were found for the advantages of OER.
Internet accessibility.In terms of Internet accessibility, 31 out of 46 (67.3%) students lived off campus, and seven students indicated that they had Internet access, but they did not have high-speed Internet connections.One student expressed the following concern: "I like OER, but I don't have high-speed Internet in my apartment.I prefer to do my homework when I come to the campus."Another student added: I live off campus and don't have a fast Internet connection.I had to use computers on campus a lot to go over online materials.Sometimes, it was just easy to have a book on hand, read it, and do the assignments.
These students felt frustrated doing homework with a slow Internet connection.As a result, a course using only OER posed real challenges to their learning.One student explained the situation further: "I found it very challenging to do homework with solely OER in this course.If I lived on campus like last year, I should be fine, but my off-campus apartment this year doesn't have high-speed Internet."Instruction and guidance.Six students in the survey reported that instructions of using OER were not clear to them.One student provided some context: I feel like I need the professor's help all the time because the scope of OER is too big.Also, some quiz items had nothing to do with what was discussed in class.I may have read it somewhere online, but I don't remember.
One student expressed the need for additional guidance due to the broad scope of OER used in the course: "I definitely need more help for the assignments because the amount of the online resources is just overwhelming."Wanting extra guidance could also be correlated with students' concern about not having a tangible textbook.Another student mentioned the same concern: "While I appreciate so much not to buy a textbook and I like OER in this course, I have to admit I got lost sometimes.You have to follow the professor's instructions and ask questions in a timely manner." Self-regulation skills.Self-regulation "is the self-directive process by which learners transform their mental abilities into academic skills" (Zimmerman, 2002, p. 65).In the context of OER, it refers to the ability to stay focused and on track when using OER.Six students in the study also experienced lack of selfmonitoring skills when learning with OER.They found it all too easy to spend hours visiting different Websites and often strayed from their purpose when their initial intention was to browse relevant OER for their assignments.One student described the double-edged sword of using OER: "Using only OER like this course is exciting as well as dangerous.If you don't keep an eye on where you visit, you can surf on the Internet forever and totally forget about your assignments."Another student reported a similar experience: "I found myself clicking on one link after another.I can easily spend hours visiting different Websites, like when you are on YouTube."Such comments indicated that the students could easily get sidetracked if they did not consciously monitor their time using OER, and that conscious monitoring of one's time using OER may be important to ensuring that students maintain focus on their coursework and learning.Table 2 summarized the challenges experienced by students, which did not reveal any outliers.

Discussions and Implications
This study investigated 46 undergraduate students' perceptions of using only OER in an introductory course in a large American public university.OER advantages that students identified include textbook cost savings, that OER materials are dynamic and plentiful, that OER enable mobile learning, and that the use of OER can help students develop skills to evaluate and select reliable online materials and better understand copyright guidelines.Challenges that students experienced include missing the tactile sense (commonly associated with textbooks) when using OER, slow Internet connections, unclear instruction and guidance, and insufficient self-regulation skills.Based on these findings, several recommendations were drawn up for pedagogical purposes.

Course Structure and Preparation
The study examined an introductory course on technology integration.With this, students may have been primed to embrace OER (Cochrane, 2014).Further research is needed to better understand whether courses not specifically geared toward technology would have similar perceptions.Instructors should take into the consideration the nature of the course when deciding the weight of OER in a course (Hilton et al., 2013).
This study also found that course level, introductory or advanced, was an important factor affecting student perceptions of using OER to replace textbooks.In this study, some students indicated that since it was an introductory course that covered basic knowledge and practices, OER, therefore, would likely be widely available.The course instructor, however, did not make this same assumption.When looking for potential OER, the instructor experienced a great challenge in selecting quality OER content and in customizing course design based on plentiful OER content.Such a challenge is in line with the literature.In a study of 2,700 instructors, it was revealed that challenges in evaluating quality OER were a great barrier of OER adoption (Babson Survey Research Group, 2017).Eighty instructors in eight colleges also reported that they spent a lot more time preparing for teaching because they were adapting and revising existing OER, or they were developing assignments and materials specific to OER content (Hilton, Bliss, & Wiley, 2013).It is recommended that instructors start small by incorporating a few OER components into their courses, and then add more OER gradually (Conole, 2013;Hegarty, 2015).

Student Learning with OER and Copyright
Teclehaimanot, Mentzer, and Hickman (2011) found that many instructors talked about integrating technology into their curriculum, but few provided students with exercises and activities to help them develop technology integration skills.The literature also suggests that students found it challenging when they were expected to evaluate the quality and credibility of OER content and incorporate such content into their discussions, assignments, and collaborative projects (Conole, 2013;Hegarty, 2015).When OER are used predominately in a course, students should learn to navigate OER content, and instructors should learn to teach students how to use OER to enhance collaborative thinking, perspectives, and mentoring (Bonk & Lee, 2017;Brown & Munger, 2010).
Another consideration for instructors is the importance of modeling copyright and fair use practices.The Digital Citizen Project from Illinois State University reiterated that digital natives do not necessarily have a solid understanding of intellectual property when using online materials for personal and academic purposes (Digital Natives and Intellectual Property, 2007).As indicated by some students in the present study, it is helpful for instructors to discuss copyright and model fair use on an ongoing basis in class.
Students thereby become more copyright conscious when using online materials in general and in OER in particular.

Self-Regulation Skills and Connected Community
The present study found that self-monitoring is more critical when using only OER compared to when using traditional textbooks.Undoubtedly, it was tempting for students to explore additional OER outside the scope of the course, and not all students have self-monitoring skills in an OER-only pedagogy (Conole, 2014).The findings of the present study supported Bonk and Lee's (2017) study that students who stayed on task and satisfactorily completed their assignments in a timely manner benefited most from OER.Only six students identified challenges with self-regulation skills.Therefore, a correlation between unclear instruction and guidance and insufficient self-regulation skills cannot be safely concluded.However, one way that instructors can help students develop their self-regulation skills is to have their peers share their best self-directed learning strategies in an open environment (Chu & Tsai, 2009).

Instruction and Guidance
Clear instruction and guidance on using OER foster personalized learning experiences, problem solving, and critical thinking skills (Johnson et al., 2015).It is recommended that instructors continuously model OER evaluation, fair use, and general copyright guidelines, as well as learning strategy adaptations when new resources and opportunities are offered online (Kelly, 2014).By self-monitoring their own learning processes, students become meta-cognitively and behaviorally active in their own learning, so they are able (introductory vs. advanced course), nature of a course (technology-based vs. non technology-based course), instructor differences (OER novice vs. expert), student standing (freshmen vs. seniors), and class attendance (active vs. absent) make a difference in selecting, incorporating, and teaching with OER effectively when OER serves as the only instructional materials or as a supplement (Hegarty, 2015;Hilton & Bliss, 2013).Future research can also examine how to develop mechanisms to help instructors integrate OER into curriculum effectively and efficiently and to help students develop self-monitoring skills in an open learning environment (Hilton et al., 2013;Hilton, Bliss, & Wiley, 2013;Johnson et al., 2015).
Firstly, institutional efforts to fund and spearhead the development of several OER emerged in the early 2000s, including the Hewlett Foundations' Strategic Plan to Increase Access to High-Quality Educational Context and UNESCO's Paris OER Declaration.Additionally, Wikipedia was launched in 2001 and has evolved into the biggest OER that exists.The Wikibooks platform curated numerous open textbooks, Web pages, and classroom projects built upon OER included: the creation of five lesson plans with instructional technologies and OER components, the development of an open blog, weekly face-to-face and online discussions supported by OER references, and peer review of projects based on OER content.The course employed blended instruction.Students met twice a week in class on Mondays and Fridays and had online discussions and assignments on Wednesdays in the LMS.One example of students using OER to interact was about teaching Internet Safety to elementary students.Students in the course met in class and watched a recent video from a local TV station, explaining how a middle school student was killed by a stranger she met online.Before students in the course recovered from the shock, they were asked to use their devices to explore a national Website, which listed details of child sex offenders in their neighborhoods.Infused with shock, anger, and a strong sense of responsibility to teach young kids about Internet Safety, students formed small groups to brainstorm their lesson plans.After the class, the groups developed their lesson plans including at least three OER-supported references.Afterwards, they received feedback from peers and the instructor online before submitting their final papers.Data SourcesData were collected through two sources: an anonymous online survey and two focus groups.First, a reflective survey was designed by the instructor and reviewed by a faculty member who is an expert on education and OER.In addition to demographic questions about gender and age, the survey had four openended questions.It took 10-15 minutes to complete in the course LMS.The four open-ended questions included in the survey were: 1. Have you taken any course before in which teaching and learning occurred without a traditional textbook?2. What do you like about only using OER in teaching and learning?3. Did the OER content in this course help you learn the same as textbooks would have?4. What challenges did you experience with OER in your learning and assignments?A pilot study was administered with five randomly chosen students from the class to ensure the clarity of the questions.Of the 58 students enrolled in the course, 46 (79.3%) took the reflective survey, including 30 females and 16 males.All 46 students indicated that this course was their first course in which OER were used to replace traditional textbooks entirely.

Table 2
Challenges When Using Only OER