With the cost of higher education becoming increasingly scrutinized, and specifically, attention being paid to non-tuition costs like textbooks, digital open-educational resources (OER) offer a potential pathway to no- and low-cost course materials. While professors might encounter several concerns related to adopting any OER in their class, less is known about how students perceive the professor’s decision to opt for OER. Limited existing research suggests that assigning open-source textbooks should afford professors positive evaluations from students. The current study aims to replicate and extend upon previous experimental research comparing students’ perceptions of professors based on their textbook choices—specifically, whether they use a low-cost OER or a high-cost traditional textbook, and whether they choose to modify that book or use it as is.
