Abstract
From reducing costs (Dimeo, 2017; Saldutti,
2017) to enhancing instructor autonomy
(Bongiovanni & Buljung, 2020) and improving stu-
dent success (Colvard & Watson, 2018; Winitzky-
Stephens & Pickavance, 2017), Open Educational
Resources (OER) have been impactful to the higher
education sphere. The potential of implementing
such resources has led organizations, like NC LIVE,
to incentivize adoption through the application and
distribution of faculty grants. The Open Education
North Carolina (OENC) grant has been shown to
improve success rates in introductory biology cours-
es in North Carolina community colleges (Marsh &
Chesnutt, 2021) but the question remained, which
students benefited most? This study viewed the
OENC grant as a proxy for adoption of OER and
examined the impacts of the grant program on equi-
ty gaps in colleges employing faculty receiving an
OENC award. After application of a propensity
score matching algorithm, the authors of this study
identified that success gaps between students identi-
fying as White and students identifying as Black/
African American or Hispanic/Latinx were signifi-
cantly decreased during the implementation year of
an OENC award to a faculty member at that institu-
tion. This study further reinforces the body of aca-
demic literature supporting the application of open
resources in STEM and adoption as a means for de-
creasing equity gaps in North Carolina community
colleges. Keywords: open educational resources
(OER); equity; success gaps; science,
2017) to enhancing instructor autonomy
(Bongiovanni & Buljung, 2020) and improving stu-
dent success (Colvard & Watson, 2018; Winitzky-
Stephens & Pickavance, 2017), Open Educational
Resources (OER) have been impactful to the higher
education sphere. The potential of implementing
such resources has led organizations, like NC LIVE,
to incentivize adoption through the application and
distribution of faculty grants. The Open Education
North Carolina (OENC) grant has been shown to
improve success rates in introductory biology cours-
es in North Carolina community colleges (Marsh &
Chesnutt, 2021) but the question remained, which
students benefited most? This study viewed the
OENC grant as a proxy for adoption of OER and
examined the impacts of the grant program on equi-
ty gaps in colleges employing faculty receiving an
OENC award. After application of a propensity
score matching algorithm, the authors of this study
identified that success gaps between students identi-
fying as White and students identifying as Black/
African American or Hispanic/Latinx were signifi-
cantly decreased during the implementation year of
an OENC award to a faculty member at that institu-
tion. This study further reinforces the body of aca-
demic literature supporting the application of open
resources in STEM and adoption as a means for de-
creasing equity gaps in North Carolina community
colleges. Keywords: open educational resources
(OER); equity; success gaps; science,
| Original language | American English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 6-12 |
| Number of pages | 6 |
| Journal | North Carolina Community College Journal of Teaching Innovation |
| State | Published - 2022 |
Keywords
- OER
- Success
- Biology
- textbooks
- teaching
- innovation
- gaps