Continuing Savings from Past OER Grants (Second Report)

Wrapping up an OER grant funding period includes providing information about student savings during the pilot run of the courses redesigned with open educational resources. But savings from the use of OER also compound over time. For example, the first post on Continuing Savings from Past OER Grants describes how cumulative savings grew for the two grant cohorts for which data was available in 2019.

Now there is cumulative savings data available for four of Open Oregon Educational Resources’s past grant programs. In the OER grant programs for which prior data is available, the estimated cumulative student savings is $14,108,853, or about $12 in student savings per program dollar spent. For these four grant programs, savings have tripled over the past two years.

Combined with the impact of the 2019-21 grant cohort, which just concluded, overall student savings for the Open Oregon Educational Resources grant program since 2015 is estimated to be $16,529,204, or about $10 in student savings per program dollar spent. Over 119,000 students by headcount have taken the 633 courses redesigned with OER through the support of a grant program.

Congratulations to all of Oregon’s OER grantees for their ongoing work on behalf of students!

By the numbers