History of art textbooks are among the most expensive textbooks for students, especially since most students are taking the course as a general education elective and are not art history majors. This makes the cost of the textbook even more extraneous. To combat the cost of the textbook in the first semester art history survey course, the authors created an OER textbook. This textbook was piloted during the 2024 – 2025 academic year at two community colleges in Virginia. The instructors are now assessing the OER textbook’s impact on student success, which is here defined through assessments and final course grades. The authors acknowledge that course grades are a traditional approach to defining student success and learning. However, this approach was used for this case study because it created a level of consistency among the three instructors and their classrooms. Anecdotal and student-provided feedback are also included here and have helped the instructors understand the textbook’s use among their student populations and how students would like to see the volume improved. This case study is a comparison of the courses using the OER textbook across both colleges and both semesters to better understand how the implementation of the new textbook contributed to student learning, as indicated through student performance within traditional grading structures.

Project Description

In July of 2022, the authors began creating an open educational resource (OER) for an art history survey course through a grant from the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA). The authors were specifically interested in reducing costs for community college students, since commercial  art history textbooks are incredibly expensive ($218 for a new print version of Gardner’s Art through the Ages, Volume 1). Previously, the instructors used zero-cost materials, such as Smarthistory and other art history OER, but found it was difficult to provide the links to course materials in a streamlined manner. Therefore, the authors of the OER textbook endeavored to compile the Smarthistory materials, which are high-quality OER articles and videos created by experts, into a single textbook that curated the materials to align with the statewide curriculum. An additional priority of the project was to create instructor materials that align with the OER text. These instructor materials include PowerPoint slides and test banks with a variety of question types. A third objective was to weave global perspectives into the textbook, but this fell by the wayside and will be re-evaluated for future editions of the textbook.

The instructors and granting agency picked the first semester survey course, The History of Art: Prehistoric to Gothic, for the project because it is a high-enrolled and high-transfer course taught at community colleges across the state of Virginia. The authors represent two of the largest community colleges in the state: Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA) and Brightpoint Community College (BCC). Since the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) provides a unified course content summary for all courses across the state, the use of an OER across different institutions was easy to conceptualize.

The textbook, History of Art: Prehistoric to Gothic, was first piloted at the two institutions in Fall 2024 and, since then, the authors have gathered data to inform how this text is impacting student success. The data is based on traditional grading structures and assessments, including quizzes and exams. Here, student success is correlated with a higher cumulative course grade. While this is one narrow definition of student success, the authors found it to be the easiest way to equate student success across the three classrooms and two colleges. Another consideration of this case study is student performance and textbook use over different course lengths (15 week, 7 week, and 3.5 week) and course modalities (synchronous and asynchronous).

Northern Virginia Community College

ART101 courses at Northern Virginia Community College have a maximum of 30 students per course and are taught on campus during a 15-week semester. The instructor typically teaches 4 sections per academic year. When using a commercial textbook (Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, Volume 1) from Fall 2021 until Spring 2024, the average final cumulative grade in those courses was 83.756%. During the 2024 – 2025 academic year, when the instructor adopted the OER text, the average grade in the four sections dropped to 82.25%, a small decline of 1.506%. This decline is relatively small and could be tied to other changes in the course, such as changes in exam format and assessment requirements due to the advent of generative AI, and not necessarily to the course materials. Another consideration is that the OER average overall course grade reflects only two semesters, while the average course grade for textbook use spans six semesters. Overall, the instructor is pleased that the overall grades are so similar.

In addition to changing the textbook, the instructor also changed their pedagogical approach to the course material. Previously, due to the high cost of the textbook, students were heavily encouraged to acquire the textbook but it was not required. The instructor tried not to rely on the resource and saw it as a supplemental material that could enhance student learning acquired through lectures and in-class activities. However, with the adoption of an OER text, the instructor shifted to making the text a key component of the course. This began by incorporating the textbook into major assignments, such as a note-taking assignment meant to help first-semester students better develop note-taking skills and a lesson plan assignment where students create potential lesson plans based on the textbook. Students mentioned enjoying both of these assignments in their end-of-semester surveys. In future semesters, the instructor plans to more fully incorporate the textbook into the course.

There is an additional factor related to textbooks at NOVA during the 2024 – 2025 academic year. In August 2024, NOVA moved to a program called “All Access,” which charges students a per credit fee for course materials. The controversial nature of this new pricing schema aside, this development also changed students’ relationship to the cost of textbooks. Students indicated they were less aware of the cost of course materials for individual classes. So, student perception of the benefit of an OER textbook shifted during the academic year.

Student Survey Results

At the end of both the fall and spring semesters, students at NOVA were asked for their feedback regarding the OER textbook. Out of a possible 120 students 69 (57.5%) responded to the survey during the academic year.

For the Fall 2024 semester, students in ART101 at NOVA were given a Textbook Quiz in Canvas as an extra credit assignment. The survey asked students the following three questions verbatim:

• Multiple Choice. Did you find the textbook useful this semester?
• Short Answer. What did you find useful about the textbook? Did you like how it was incorporated in the Canvas course?
• Short Answer. What can be improved about the textbook or the way it was incorporated into the course?

Of the 34 students who responded, 33 said that they did find the OER textbook useful. Only one student mentioned that having a zero-cost textbook was a positive aspect of the course. However, the survey didn’t ask students about the appeal of a zero-cost textbook, so that was incorporated into future student surveys.

The majority of students praised the OER textbook for being directly integrated into the LMS (Canvas) and noted that it made it very easy for them to access the information, especially when studying for exams. However, it has since been acknowledged that the question regarding Canvas integration was a leading question and that might have impacted student responses. The instructor was adamant that the textbook be integrated into Canvas so students could easily access the course materials. However, the textbook is accessible to anyone regardless of their enrollment in a course ( History of Art: Prehistoric to Gothic). Most students appreciated that the textbook was written in a more accessible format and included a lot of media, such as images and videos.

For the Spring 2025 semester, students in ART101 at NOVA were given the same extra credit quiz with an additional question:

• Multiple Choice. Was the zero cost textbook a factor in you enrolling in this course?

Of the 35 students who responded, 33 said they did find the OER textbook useful, and 15 students (42.86%) chose to enroll in the course because of the zero-cost textbook. Therefore, 20 enrolled in the course without knowing that the course materials were provided via an OER textbook.

The short response answers to the survey were equally enlightening. For the most part, students appreciated the textbook, how it was integrated into the course, and how the text was written in an accessible manner. One student mentioned that they appreciated that the textbook was written by the instructor, which that student felt gave them a more personal connection to the instructor. Multiple students indicated a desire for interactive components to the textbook, such as knowledge checks or quiz pop-ups within the textbook itself. This is valuable feedback and will be investigated for integration into future editions of the textbook.

Brightpoint Community College

At Brightpoint Community College, the instructors who co-authored the OER text, Dr. Amy Marshman and Dr. Paula Winn, teach ART 101 in a variety of modalities and sessions lengths, including 15-week in-person class and asynchronous, 7-week asynchronous, and asynchronous mini-sessions (3.5 weeks). While courses can vary in size, they are capped at 25 students.

For 15-week synchronous courses, which can be attended on campus or through Zoom, the final grade for courses using the textbook versus the OER textbook were similar. The average final grade for students using the textbook in the Spring 2024 semester was 72%. Students using the OER text in Fall of 2024, only performed slightly below the previous semester, averaging 71%. This downshift in cumulative final grade average is remarkably similar to the trend observed at NOVA during the same course length and modality.

Overall, students using the commercial textbook version of ART 101 performed an average of two points above their OER counterparts on reading quizzes. However, while the final grades and quiz grades of the textbook-based Spring 2024 students were better, the exam grades of the OER Fall 2024 course were on average about nine points higher. However, the exams are based mainly on the instructor’s lectures. This breakdown by assessment type was interesting and would be a fruitful way to continue analyzing student performance in art history courses that use OER texts.

Significantly, students assigned the textbook in the 15-week asynchronous course scored much higher on quizzes and final grades than the OER sections. For the Spring 2024 semester, which utilized the traditional textbook, the textbook quiz grades were about eight points higher than the OER quiz grades from Fall 2024. This result also corresponds to their final grades. On average, the Spring 2024 textbook-based students received final grades averaging 87%, while the Fall 2024 OER course students averaged 73% for their final grades. This is a significant decrease in the average overall final grade and was slightly surprising given that students using the textbook fared much better than students using the OER materials.

7-week asynchronous

In 2023, Brightpoint Community College converted from 8-week to 7-week for their condensed semester courses. The two instructors associated with the 2024-2025 piloting of the OER textbook taught this session length exclusively as asynchronous classes. With regards to gathering comparative data between the traditional textbook and OER courses, it is worth noting that some of the 2023 information is based on the 8-week version of the class. Both courses were taught asynchronously online.

In the 8-week textbook edition of this course, Dr. Marshman’s students had two opportunities to complete chapter quizzes. Even with this second chance, the grades for the textbook reading quizzes and the OER reading quizzes from the 7-week course were fairly even. This means that students in the 7-week OER course received higher grades than the 8-week textbook course, as the OER students were only given one chance to take their quizzes. While OER students performed better on their reading quizzes, overall, the 8-week textbook students received higher final grades. Whether this higher grade is due to the assigned course materials or the additional week in the course length is unknown. A 7-week course is extremely challenging, especially when taken during the traditional semester. Meanwhile, the 8-week textbook course was conducted during the summer semester. This disparity raises another question regarding whether or not there is a trend in grade fluctuation based on the semester (Spring, Summer, or Fall).

Between the 2023–2024 and 2024–2025 academic years, the average course grade in Dr. Winn’s 7-week asynchronous courses declined by two percent. It is important to note that the tests for these years were vastly different. Testing formats underwent a significant transformation, shifting from timed open-book exams to proctored assessments. These exams, along with various course projects, were primarily designed to align with lecture content rather than textbook readings. However, two key assignment types, the discussion boards and chapter quizzes, continued to rely heavily on student engagement with required readings.

The transition to the new OER textbook in 2024–2025 was associated with an eight percent increase in average discussion board grades. These assignments require students to critically engage with specific readings, compose analytical responses, and interact with peers through discussion. Given that neither the assignment structure nor the grading rubric changed during this period, the substantial increase in success rates implies that more students were accessing the textbook, understanding the material, and able to convey that information more effectively in their posts. In contrast, chapter quiz performance showed minimal change, with less than a one percent variation between academic years using the commercial textbook (Stokstad and Cothren’s Art: A Brief History) and those using the OER content. This stability indicates that quiz outcomes remained largely unaffected by the shift in instructional materials.

This variation in success based on the assessment type seems significant. While students using the textbook scored higher on rote memorization assessments, such as quizzes, students using the OER text scored higher on critical thinking assignments, such as discussion boards. This could be due to the way that textbooks distill information into easily-digestible chunks of information that can be quickly retrieved versus the OER text, which goes into more detail regarding the artworks and their history. A more standards-based grading approach, where student learning is more transparently tied to the learning objectives, would help to further elucidate this potential connection.

3.5-week asynchronous

In addition to the regular semester asynchronous format lengths, BCC offers condensed mini-session courses during the winter break and May term. These courses span 3.5 weeks but maintain the same number of contact hours and similar assignment structures as their longer counterparts. Between Fall 2023 and Spring 2025, five sections of this accelerated format were taught by Dr. Winn.

During the 2023–2024 academic year, these mini-sessions utilized a traditional textbook. However, beginning in December 2024, all mini-session sections transitioned to OER. Because the same instructor taught all sections and all courses employed identical assessments, the resulting data offers a reliable measure of student performance and learning outcomes. As in the 7-week courses, assignments in the mini-sessions included discussion board posts and chapter quizzes closely tied to the required readings. Following the adoption of OER materials, measurable improvements were observed across both categories: chapter quiz averages increased by over three percent, while discussion board performance improved by nearly eight percent. Additionally, the average final course grades rose by approximately three percent during the 2024–2025 academic year. One likely factor contributing to these gains is enhanced access to course materials. In previous years, students frequently reported not purchasing the required textbook due to its high cost, especially for a short-duration course. The shift to a no-cost OER textbook eliminated this barrier, allowing more students to engage fully with the required content, an improvement reflected across all major assessment categories during the mini-session classes.

Conclusions

There are a few trends that we can pull from this data. First, the course with the most consistency (3.5 week asynchronous at BCC) across multiple semesters demonstrated the highest increase in student grades after the transition to the OER textbook. Second, there are trends in student grades decreasing incrementally during longer semesters, in both synchronous and asynchronous courses, after the adoption of the OER textbook. Third, students on average score higher on critical-thinking assignments than on memorization assignments after the implementation of the OER textbook. Overall, these trends might demonstrate that students are more engaged with the course material and understand the content more thoroughly when assigned the OER textbook. Students might also find it more difficult to search for quick nuggets of information in the OER text, which would contribute to lower quiz grades.

In this case study we analyzed student success from the viewpoint of traditional grading practices and assessments. At Brightpoint Community College, the success of students, as indicated by final course grades, in the OER course compared to a traditional textbook course is inconclusive. More data will need to be collected. Student feedback has favored the OER course. Students note that the textbook is expensive and not as engaging as the OER, particularly the open access materials from Smarthistory. Several students noted that they did not purchase the textbook, despite it being required, and used other sources to answer textbook questions.

At Northern Virginia Community College, the success of students in the OER course is also inconclusive. Anecdotally, students are better prepared for the in-class lectures and ask more in-depth questions during class time. This may stem from them having reviewed the OER textbook prior to class. However, some students admitted to not remembering that there is a virtual OER textbook, which caused them to rely solely on other resources for course content.

One final consideration is the reliance on grades to indicate a student’s comprehension of the course material and completion of learning outcomes. While our research methodology relies heavily on the comparison of grades across semesters, recent pedagogical practices, such as ungrading, have put forth that grades are only one way of assessing student learning. A more nuanced research methodology that balances the quantitative data of grades with qualitative evidence would help us gain more insight into the impact of OER on student success. In the Fall 2025 semester, one of the co-authors will begin shifting to a standards-based grading practice and will investigate the connections between the use of the OER text and student comprehension of predetermined standards tied to specific learning outcomes.

In addition, we do want to provide a caveat that student success and performance is not solely based on the texts or materials provided and is not only measured through traditional assessments like quizzes and exams. While we firmly believe that the adoption of OER materials benefits student success in a myriad of ways (not just quantifiable ones gathered via traditional grading practices), we want to provide an asterisk that accounts for the impact of larger trends in education, the widespread use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in higher education, and a learning loss post-pandemic. An additional unforeseen complication for community college students is the concern regarding visas and immigration status for themselves and their loved ones. So, while we discuss the relationship between an OER textbook and student success, we acknowledge the panoply of other factors that contribute to student success within the community college classroom. One additional variable that was unaccounted for in this case study is the difference in teaching style across the different instructors and modalities.

In conclusion, the authors are undecided about the correlation between adopting an OER textbook and student success, as demonstrated through final course grade averages, in a first-year art history survey course at a community college. At this point, we are positive that students have saved over $100,000 in course materials over one academic year with a projected savings of over $500,000 over five years. Because of this metric alone, we believe that zero cost course materials are in the best interest of the student, but we do need better methods to fully understand how to best incorporate those materials into the class and ensure students are accessing them. Moving forward, the instructors will update the text to incorporate student and instructor feedback, create more engagement between the OER text and the assigned assessments, and create a method for tying student success more transparently to learning outcomes.

About the authors

name: Amy Marshman

name: Jeanette Nicewinter, PhD

institution: Northern Virginia Community College

Dr. Jeanette Nicewinter is a Professor of Art History and Honors Program Director at Northern Virginia Community College. The project “Adopting OERs and Creating Course Materials for the History of Art,” co-authored with Dr. Amy Marshman and Dr. Paula Winn, was funded by the Virtual Library of Virginia (VIVA) in 2022. Dr. Nicewinter received her PhD in Art Historical Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2016.

name: Paula Winn, PhD

institution: Brightpoint Community College

Dr. Paula Winn is a Professor of Art History at Brightpoint Community College. She has been teaching for over 20 years. Her passion for art history is evident both in and out of the classroom. She believes that whenever possible, people should interact directly with art and architecture to fully appreciate the form, technique, scale, and splendor intended by the artists. As a result of this philosophy, Dr. Winn has co-led several international education programs, including Italy (219) and the United Kingdom (2024). In 2018, she co-founded The Gallery at Brightpoint, an on-campus art gallery that features artwork of regional and national artists. Outside of the classroom, Dr. Winn focuses on student success and the college experience through club leadership (Art Club, Gay Straight Alliance), co-hosting community events (Fall Festival, Mission Tomorrow, Fool for Art).