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. What these initial numbers do not reflect is the way that savings from the use of OER compound over time, as more students take the redesigned courses, and as more instructors adopt materials.
For example, the post 2015 Grant Projects: One Year Later describes how an initial student savings estimate of $77,234.30 in the pilot year grew to an estimated cumulative student savings of $225,448.86 one year later, in 2017. Digging into Open Oregon Educational Resources’s past grant programs for subsequent savings data shows that this growth is the rule, rather than the exception. In the two OER grant programs for which prior data is available, the estimated cumulative student savings is $4,658,871.75, or about $14 in student savings per program dollar spent.
The weakness of these estimates is that they underrepresent student savings because they usually do not count the students using new, grant-funded materials at non-grant-related colleges and high schools. At the moment it is not possible to estimate the extent of this effect.
Congratulations to Oregon’s past OER grantees for their ongoing hard work on behalf of students!
By the numbers
Grant Program |
Funds Awarded |
2016 Estimated Savings |
2017 Estimated Savings |
2019 Estimated Savings |
Estimated Cumulative Savings Per $1 Spent |
| 2015 Grant Cohort | $52,098.00 | $77,234.30 | $225,448.86 | $477,409.24 | $9.16 |
| 2016-17 Grant Cohort | $280,154.70 | n/a | $1,146,788.33 | $4,181,462.51 | $14.93 |
| Grand Total | $332,252.70 | $77,234.30 | $1,372,237.19 | $4,658,871.75 | $14.02 |
More information about past grant programs
Read more at 2015 Grant Projects Complete. To review the materials created under this grant, visit the 2015 Grant Cohort Folder in OER Commons.
Read more at 2016-17 Grant Projects Complete. To review the OER created by grantees, visit the 2016-17 Grant Cohort Folder in OER Commons.
