In the largest study of its kind, a group of researchers has examined the use of open educational resources (OER) and found that students who used OER in their undergraduate courses performed as well or better than those assigned commercial textbooks.

This study reports findings from a year-long pilot study during which 991 students in 9 core courses in the Virginia State University School of Business replaced traditional textbooks with openly licensed books and other digital content. The university made a deliberate decision to use open textbooks that were copyrighted under the Creative Commons license. More students accessed digital open textbooks than had previously purchased hard copies of textbooks. Higher grades were correlated with courses that used open textbooks.

A case study about one community college’s adoption of a free online psychology textbook. During the fall semester 2011, 690 students used this book. Compared with students using a traditional text in the spring of 2011, students who used the free online textbook scored higher on departmental final examinations, had higher grade point averages in the class and had higher retention rates.