In 2018, Florida Virtual Campus’s Office of Distance Learning and Student Service conducted a survey of more than 21,000 students. Key findings include that 64% of students said that they had decided against buying a textbook because it was too expensive, 42% took fewer courses because of the cost of textbooks, and 17% reported failing a course because they could not afford to by a textbook. Open textbooks are a solution to these academic and financial concerns.

2018 Student Textbook and Course Materials Survey by Florida Virtual Campus’s Office of Distance Learning and Student Service.

Student and Faculty Benefits

Open textbooks address not only financial issues, but pedagogical ones as well. The open licenses mean that faculty and students can create and edit textbooks that reflect the latest research as well as better speak to their local communities. Content be updated to reflect recent changes in the law, or breakthroughs in science, and it can be localized and indigenized. By including diverse voices and perspectives we strengthen learning content, and provide context for understanding a variety of issues.

Faculty may choose to involve their students in the production or review of content, which is commonly called open pedagogy. This involvement can take a variety of forms, and may include student-generated case studies, stories, interviews and multimedia.

Qualitative Research

The Review Project, led by John Hilton III, provides a summary of all known empirical research on the impacts of Open Educational Resources (OER) adoption. Here's the summary as of July 2018:

Several thousand students and faculty members have shared their perceptions across more than a dozen studies that have focused on perceptions of OER. In no instance did a majority of students or teachers report that the OER were of inferior quality. Across multiple studies in various settings, students consistently reported that they faced financial difficulties and that OER provided a financial benefit to them. A general finding seems to be that roughly half of teachers and students find OER to be comparable to traditional resources, a sizeable minority believe they are superior, and a smaller minority find them inferior. -- https://openedgroup.org/review

Read the latest at The Open Education Group, or watch this 5 minute recap from 2016:

"A Review of the Effectiveness & Perceptions of Open Educational Resources As Compared to Textbooks" by Research Shorts on YouTube (CC BY 3.0)