ATD’s OER Degree Initiative

Map of the United States showing the 38 colleges in 13 states that participated in Achieving the Dream's OER Degree Initiative starting in 2016
Image of ATD OER Initiative Map by Achieving the Dream is licensed CC BY 4.0. Click to view a larger version

The largest open educational resources (OER) degree initiative to date was launched by Achieving the Dream (ATD), the national community college reform network, in June 2016. Involving 38 colleges in 13 states, it sought to remove barriers to student success and degree completion by alleviating financial burdens on students and enhancing teaching and learning through improved course redesign. A competitive grant application was submitted by colleges that committed to developing one or more OER degrees over the 31 months.

The ATD OER Degree Initiative was unique in that it provided participating colleges with a comprehensive set of services to support the development, implementation, and measurement of their OER degree programs in addition to the funding of $100,000 per individual college grantee. Lumen Learning provided technical assistance including OER course design and license verification of all course materials. The Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER) provides a national community of practice with opportunities to connect with other colleges engaged in OER adoption and degrees with webinars focused on grantee needs.  SRI International, along with partner rpkGROUP, provided research support for gathering and analyzing data on learning effectiveness and cost analysis for both students and institutions.  

Funding for the $9.8 million initiative drew upon a consortium of private foundations and corporations including the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Great Lakes Higher Education Guaranty Corporation, the Shelter Hill Foundation, and the Speedwell Foundation.

Research

Achieving the Dream’s OER Degree initiative’s research took a more holistic approach to measuring impact looking at outcomes and factors affecting students, faculty, and other staff, and overall institutional impact. For students, their progress toward degrees was measured and disaggregated by student subgroups. The research questions were organized into three categories: academic outcomes, economic outcomes, and implementation.

Academic outcomes

  • Do students who take OER degree classes make greater progress towards degrees compared with similar students who take traditional classes?

Results: “In 6 of the 11 colleges, treatment students taking OER courses accumulated significantly more course credits than those who had not taken any OER courses”

  • Are OER degrees more or less beneficial to particular subgroups of students (e.g. Pell eligible)?

Results: Taking OER courses had a significant impact on credit accumulation and, overall, appeared to have a similar effect on the different groups of students. At some colleges, Pell-eligible students benefited more. 

  • What are the key mediators of effects on student outcomes; for example, do students in OER degree classes work fewer hours outside of school?

Results: “In 8 out of 11 of the impact analyses, we found that number of semesters in which students enrolled was significantly associated with credit accumulation and cumulative GPA … it is difficult to determine whether the observed differences are caused by the availability of OER courses or some other factor such as student motivation”

Economic outcomes

  • How does enrolling in OER degrees impact costs for students pursuing degrees?

Results: “After considering students’ textbook purchasing patterns, student savings are estimated to average $65 or more per OER course when students were no longer asked to purchase commercial textbooks or other course materials”

  • What are the start-up and ongoing costs for an institution to make the transition to OER degrees, including lost revenue streams?  Is this model self-sustainable?

Results: OER courses took an average of 180 hours to develop and “The compensation cost of developing OER courses averaged $12,600 (salary and benefits) at the five cost partner colleges during the grant period.” 

  • What is the cost effectiveness of this model in terms of cost per desired unit of impact on student outcomes? What is the “return” on investment (ROI) for students, colleges, and other stakeholders, where “return” refers to financial savings from reduced cost of attendance and time to completion, or increased revenue to colleges from greater persistence and attainment?

Results: “The impact of OER course taking can generate a financial return on investment for colleges by enabling students to attempt and earn more course credits, generating additional tuition revenue” “On average, the cost partners exceeded the breakeven point on their investment, with gross revenues estimated to return $1.03 for every dollar spent (total program and delivery costs), which represents a 3% average return on investment. “

Implementation

  • How many students and other stakeholders are impacted by the OER Degree Initiative?

Results: “2,000 faculty at 38 colleges delivering 6,600 OER course sections to approximately 160,000 students”

  • What are best practices, facilitators, and barriers associated with implementation of OER degrees?

Results: Some best practices that arose from the OER initiative was to connect the initiative to institutional strategic planning to gain administrative support, ensure faculty get OER training and support, and to communicate OER course and degree options to students. Barriers associated with the implementation of OER degrees were the availability of high-quality OER, time, training, and support. 

  • What impacts do OER degrees have on key stakeholders’ experiences and on institutional culture?

Results: OER degrees can have a positive impact on enrollment and tuition revenue. There is often a positive impact on teaching and student engagement as faculty focus on the relevancy of the instructional materials used. 

Research questions and results from OER at Scale: the Academic and Economic Outcomes of the OER Degree Initiative

Resources

Resources developed under the grant for degree planning and implementation are available to help colleges assess their readiness, plan degree pathways, and design courses with OER. These can be found on CCCOER’s OER Degree Resources page.