Development and Use of Open Educational Resources in an Undergraduate Heat and Mass Transfer Course

Abstract

Higher education costs have been increasing more rapidly than inflation over the last few decades. One way to decrease textbook costs is to use open educational resources (OER), which are materials licensed in a way that allows everyone to engage in the “5R activities”: retain, reuse, revise, remix and redistribute. The most significant benefits of using OER or other no-cost digital materials instead of traditional textbooks is cost savings to students and the ability of all students to have access to the course materials on the first day of class. Studies have investigated faculty and student perceptions of open course materials, and most have had positive experiences with them. Several studies have indicated that students in courses using OER either achieved the same learning outcomes or show improved learning outcomes compared to courses that required traditional textbooks. This paper describes the use of OER and other no-cost digital materials in an undergraduate heat and mass transfer course, as well as the development of instructor-created videos. The main resources include an electronic textbook available at no charge and openly licensed videos. Compared to a previous offering of the course, there was a statistically significant improvement in course performance on two module-level outcomes. A survey at the end of the course indicated that students found the no-cost digital textbook to be about the same quality as or better than the quality of the textbooks in their other courses. Overall, students reported using the textbook in this course more frequently than textbooks in a typical course.