10.25375/uct.10007147.v1
Werner Westermann Juárez
Werner Westermann
Juárez
Juan Ignacio Venegas Muggli
Juan Ignacio Venegas
Muggli
Effectiveness of OER use in first-year higher education students' mathematical course performance: A case study
University of Cape Town
2019
Chile
first-year
Global South
higher education
Khan Academy
oer
oep
open education
open educational resources
open textbook
ROER4D
Higher Education
Education
2019-10-23 06:58:26
Book
https://zivahub.uct.ac.za/articles/book/Effectiveness_of_OER_use_in_first-year_higher_education_students_mathematical_course_performance_A_case_study/10007147
<p>This chapter aims to understand the impact of Open Educational
Resources (OER) on first-year mathematics students at the Instituto
Profesional Providencia (IPP) in Santiago, Chile, where more than half
(52%) of first-year students typically drop out of their studies. In
order to address this, the institution established an innovation fund
and a project to profile, assess and monitor student performance through
an early warning system. IPP stakeholders envisioned that a strategy to
promote OER uptake could complement these efforts. By looking at an OER
intervention amongst firstyear students, this study seeks to identify
ways in which OER can provide new tools, opportunities, and contexts to
improve student performance and lower dropout rates by answering the
following research questions: What is the effect of OER use on firstyear
students’ mathematics course performance? In face-to-face instruction,
what is the effect of OER use on first-year students’ class attendance?
What are teachers’ and students’ perceptions of the OER adoption
process?</p>
<p><br></p><p>To answer questions one and two, this study used a quantitative
method to estimate the effect of OER use on students’ mathematical
course performance and class attendance. Five groups of first-year
students were compared based on the analysis of two scenarios. In
Scenario 1, a control group and two treatment groups were in a
traditional face-to-face classroom setting. The control group relied on a
proprietary textbook; the first treatment group was taught with the
help of a Khan Academy OER collection; and the second treatment group
was taught by means of a custom-designed Open Textbook. Scenario 2
compared two classes in blended-mode Algebra and Calculus courses. The
control group relied on a proprietary resource, and the treatment group
used a Khan Academy collection of OER in addition to the proprietary
resource. In order to estimate the effectiveness of OER use on students’
mathematical performance, the impact analysis focused on three result
variables: (1) students’ marks before the final exam, (2) students’
final exam marks, and (3) students’ final course marks after the exam.</p>
<p><br></p><p>To answer research question three, a mixed-methods approach was
applied in the form of a series of semi-structured interviews, a focus
group discussion and a student survey. The students who used the Khan
Academy OER collections or the Open Textbook were asked to participate
in this study in order to better comprehend learners’ and teachers’
perceptions of OER.</p>
<p>S</p><p>tudents in Scenario 1 who used Khan Academy resources obtained
statistically significantly better exam grades than those who used the
proprietary resource or the Open Textbook, suggesting that not all kinds
of OER have the same effect on student performance. In Scenario 2,
there was no improvement in mathematical course performance amongst
students using OER. In terms of student attendance, face-to-face mode
students who used Khan Academy OER had significantly lower attendance
levels than those who relied on the proprietary textbook, which may be
due to the fact that when students have access to the infrastructure
required to access OER remotely they tend to work more from home.</p>
<p><br></p><p>With regard to student and teacher perceptions of the OER adoption
process, the qualitative and quantitative data confirmed the assumption
that OER can be relevant and useful to Chilean students.</p>
<p><br></p><p>The chapter concludes with the insight that “openness” does not
necessarily produce an impact in and of itself, but is instead part of a
greater set of tools and practices in which many variables exert an
influence. Neither the intrinsic nature of information and communication
technologies nor openness are tools or instruments that can be said to
result in a specific outcome.</p>
<p><br></p><p>The dataset arising from this study can be accessed at:<br>
https://www.datafirst.uct.ac.za/dataportal/index.php/catalog/577</p>