An Open Education Journey: Connecting Student Affordability with Pedagogical Enhancement

Abstract

Providing educational resources without burdening students financially is considered higher education’s moral and sensible mission (Farrow, 2016). The financial burden of one or multiple textbooks can produce a great deal of stress on students, especially if the textbooks do not fulfill students’ needs in satisfying learning objectives. We attempted to bridge this digital divide by connecting student affordability with pedagogical enhancement to increase teaching impact on students’ learning. This essay will discuss the experiential understanding of student affordability, how teaching and learning can be improved by using Open Educational Resources (OER), and the team dynamic that developed while creating an OER for an undergraduate education course.