Faculty Survey Finds Awareness Of Open Educational Resources Improving - Babson Survey Research

The study, Opening the Textbook: Educational Resources in U.S. Higher Education, 2017 was supported by a grant from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, is based on responses of over 2,700 faculty, which shows incremental improvements in almost all measured OER awareness and adoption metrics. Key findings from the report include:

• Faculty awareness of OER has increased, with 30 percent of faculty reporting that they were "Aware" or "Very Aware" of open educational resources, up from 25 percent last year and 20 percent the year before. 
• Only 9 percent of courses are using open textbooks (includes public domain and Creative Commons licensed), but this is up from 5 percent last year. 
• A majority of faculty classify cost as "Very important" for their selection of required course materials. 
• Faculty report that their required textbooks have an average price of $97, and only 22% say that they are "Very satisfied" with that cost. 
• Only a third of faculty report that 90% or more of their students have purchased the required textbook. 
• The barriers to adopting OER most often cited by faculty are that "there are not enough resources for my subject" (49 percent) and it is "too hard to find what I need" (50 percent).

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/faculty-survey-finds-awareness-of-open-educational-resources-improving-300573353.html