Impact of Student Choice of Content Adoption Delay on Course Outcomes

It is difficult for a student to succeed in a course without access to course materials and assignments; and yet, some students delay up to a month in obtaining access to these essential materials. Students delay buying material required for their course due to multiple reasons. Out of a concern for students with limited financial resources, some publishers offer a period of free courtesy access. But this may lead to students having access later in the course but then having a lapsed period until they pay for the materials after the courtesy access period ends. Not having key course materials early on probably hurts learning, but how much? In this paper, we investigate the question, "Does lack of access to instructional material impact student performance in blended learning courses?" Specifically, we analyze students who purchased and obtained access to online content at different points in the course. We determine that both types of failure to obtain access to course materials (delaying in signing up for the product, or signing up for a free trial and letting the trial period lapse without purchasing the materials) are associated with substantially worse student outcomes. Students who purchased the product within the first few days of class had the best scores (median 77). Those who waited two weeks before accessing the product did the worst (median 56, effect size Cliff's Delta=0.31(1)). We conclude with a discussion of possible interventions and actions that can be taken to ameliorate the situation.