EFFECTIVENESS OF OPEN ACCESS MATERIALS IN INTRODUCTORY LAB CLASSES AT A LARGE, PUBLIC UNIVERSITY

Open access literature is touted as a way to make information open and affordable to students, particularly those from low-income backgrounds. Of the 37,356 undergraduate students enrolled at the University of Houston in the Fall 2023 semester, 44.5% were first-generation college students, and 43% received Pell Grants. We are a Hispanic-serving and an Asian and Pacific Islander-serving institution, making up 33.6% and 21.9% of the Fall 2023 student body, respectively. Almost half of the undergraduate student population is under immediate financial strain where the cost of course materials is burdensome.

We created two open access lab manuals for physical geology (Investigating the Earth: Exercises for Physical Geology) and historical geology (The Story of Earth: An Observational Guide), partly because we wanted to make affordable materials for our students. Our exercises focus on making observations and inquiry-based learning. We included exercises that span our globe and align with our diverse student population.

A pertinent question is whether open access lab manuals effectively teach core geology concepts. We compared student grades for physical geology lab classes for the 2018-2019 (527 students) academic year, when we used a traditional lab manual, and 2023-2024 (533 students) academic year, when we first used our open access lab manual. We found that students perform just as well or better with open access materials. The most significant distinction in grades was an increase in A grades, from 49% to 56%. Other grades had more minor changes in either direction, and the overall D-F-W rate was also similar.

The same comparison for the historical geology lab shows a drastic change: A grades for 51% of students in 2023-2024 vs 30% in 2018-2019, and there were similar D-F-W grades both time periods. It is difficult to determine how significant this change is because the overall number of students in this course is lower, 55 in 2023-2024 and 61 in 2018-2019.

Another metric to assess the impact of these open access materials is through adoptions and page views. We know of 26 adoptions of the historical geology lab manual, primarily by community colleges, and there have been about 23,000 visitors and 75,300 page views in the last academic year. The physical geology lab manual will have an official release for Fall 2024, but we have been using it since Fall 2023.