The traditional textbook might soon join the dinosaurs.

Over the past two years, several faculty and alumni from the McKay School of Education have made important contributions to the Utah Open Textbook project (UTOT). These contributors include David Wiley, IP&T professor; McKay School alumni John Hilton and Shelley Ellington; and Tiffany Hall, former CITES associate director and current literacy coordinator at the Utah State Office of Education.

This project could change the future of textbooks. The research initiative investigates both the impact on student learning and the cost effectiveness of replacing traditional, expensive textbooks with inexpensive, open textbooks in Utah classrooms. Open textbooks are essentially openly licensed textbooks offered online by their authors.

The results of the study have been published in a recent issue of International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning. The article is titled “A Preliminary Examination of the Cost Savings and Learning Impacts of Using Open Textbooks in High School Science Classes.”

Earlier this year the Utah State Office of Education announced that, based on the results of the UTOT research, it will develop and support open textbooks in the major curriculum areas of secondary language arts, science, and mathematics. The USOE will encourage districts and schools throughout the state to consider adopting these textbooks for use beginning fall 2012.

Wiley is confident the UTOT research will promote significant improvements in education. “Once people hear about this, the policies regarding curriculum will change themselves. This, along with subsequent studies, will change the next decade of education,” Wiley said.

In the UTOT study, researchers evaluated the potential open textbooks have in promoting learning outcomes and reducing traditional textbook costs. Seven middle or high school science teachers in Utah replaced their commercial textbooks with open textbooks for the 2011-2012 academic year. The content of these open textbooks was provided by the CK-12 Foundation, a nonprofit organization that produces web-based, collaborative curricula that are easily accessible to students and teachers. Approximately 2,700 students participated in the study, using the open textbooks in both print and digital forms.

In determining the total cost of implementing the open textbooks in classrooms, the study took into account the wages paid to teachers for participating in training activities, the cost of teachers’ time in making adaptions to their open curricula, and the cost of printing the open textbook materials.

Implementing open textbooks saved an average of $5.29 per student per course per year. To emphasize the magnitude of these savings, consider the following example: If a school district with 10,000 students adopted open textbooks for its four science courses over a seven-year period, the savings would surpass $1.7 million dollars.

UTOT’s study clearly illustrates the cost effectiveness of open textbooks. However, the question on impact of the inexpensive open textbooks on student’s learning remained.

To determine learning impact, the UTOT study analyzed the results from criterion-referenced tests (CRT), Utah’s annual standardized exams. The following table shows the 2010 CRT results of students using traditional textbooks compared to the 2011 CRT results of students using open textbooks.

Although the totaled CRT scores of students using open textbooks were slightly higher than the totaled scores of those using traditional textbooks, this difference is not enough to be statistically significant. While the UTOT study reflects positively on open textbooks, further studies are needed to substantiate its conclusions. However, early indications show that open textbooks will allow schools to save a substantial amount of money, while maintaining the learning outcomes of their students.

August 15, 2012