Best free resources for DSST Organizational Behavior (and which to skip) | Flying Prep
Best free resources for DSST Organizational Behavior (and which to skip)
BCcampus/OpenTextBC Organizational Behavior is a complete free college textbook directly mapped to the exam. Pair it with OpenStax OB, Saylor Academy BUS208 and PSYCH101, Coursera audit-mode OB courses, Harvard Business Review's free articles, Khan Academy psychology, the DANTES fact sheet, and MIT OpenCourseWare for targeted reinforcement. Note: Modern States does NOT offer a voucher course for DSST exams (CLEP-only program); active-duty military and eligible veterans test free via DANTES.
By Alex Stone·13 min read·Last fact-checked October 2026
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Free study resources for DSST Organizational Behavior include BCcampus/OpenTextBC Organizational Behavior textbook (the standout), OpenStax OB, Saylor Academy BUS208 and PSYCH101, the DANTES fact sheet, Coursera audit-mode OB courses, Harvard Business Review's free articles on OB topics, and Khan Academy psychology. Note: Modern States does not offer a voucher course for DSST exams (CLEP-only program); active-duty military test free via DANTES.
Why the free-resource picture for this DSST is different
Two structural facts shape the free-resource landscape for this exam, and both differ from a typical CLEP.
First, there is no Modern States voucher for this DSST. Modern States offers free CLEP courses bundled with a $97 College Board exam voucher, but that program is CLEP-only. Adult learners who arrived at credit-by-exam through Modern States for CLEP hit a wall on this one. Budget the $100 DSST exam fee separately, or use DANTES funding if you qualify.
Second, DSST exams are free for active-duty military, reserves, and many veterans through the DANTES program. Service members sit for this exam at no cost at a participating military test center. The prep-quality question still matters: what you study with determines whether you pass.
The good news on content quality is that Organizational Behavior sits at the intersection of introductory psychology, management, and HR. That overlap means the free landscape is unusually rich: free OB textbooks, free intro-psychology courses, free management courses, and free business-school video libraries all carry pieces of the exam outline. A working professional with a few weekends of focused reading can build a complete prep on free resources alone.
I took this exam for my degree at Thomas Edison State University, where it filled the PSY 361 slot. Most of what I needed was attaching named theory labels to scenarios I already understood from working life, and the free resources below support that exact work. The exam scores on the 200-to-500 DSST scale with a passing score of 400.
BCcampus / OpenTextBC Organizational Behavior: the standout
Frequently asked questions
Can I pass DSST Organizational Behavior with only free resources?+
For most working adults and many returning students, yes. BCcampus covers every named theory the exam tests, Saylor BUS208 adds structured pacing, the DANTES fact sheet calibrates question style, and Khan Academy plus HBR fill gaps. The free-only path is weaker on exam-style drill volume and full-length scored practice; even so, a careful free-heavy prep passes for most readers if you grade weak content areas honestly and re-study.
Why doesn't Modern States cover this DSST?+
Modern States is funded to expand access to CLEP credit specifically and partners with the College Board (which administers CLEP). DSST exams are administered by Prometric on behalf of DANTES, a different organization, and no equivalent voucher program exists. Service members get DSST fees covered through DANTES; civilians pay the $100 fee out of pocket.
Is the DANTES military funding worth pursuing if I'm eligible?+
Yes. The DSST exam fee is $100, and DANTES covers it in full for active-duty military, reserves, and many veterans. Eligibility varies by branch and benefit. Combined with the free prep resources on this page, total out-of-pocket on this credit can be zero.
Alex Stone founded Flying Prep after earning her bachelor's degree from Thomas Edison State University using 27 CLEP and DSST exams to test out of 99 credits. She built Flying Prep to help working adults and returning students take the same path.
BCcampus's Organizational Behavior textbook is the strongest single free resource for this exam, and it is not close. It is a complete, peer-reviewed, college-level OB textbook released under an open license, structured around the same content areas the DSST tests: individual processes (motivation, perception, attitudes, personality), group processes (teams, communication, conflict, leadership), organizational processes (culture, structure, decision-making), and change and development.
Every named theory the exam tests is covered: Maslow's hierarchy, Alderfer's ERG, Herzberg's two-factor, McClelland's needs, expectancy and equity theory, Vroom-Yetton, Hersey-Blanchard situational leadership, path-goal, transactional vs transformational, Schein's three-level culture model, the Competing Values Framework, Lewin's change model, Kotter's eight steps. The match to the exam outline is closer than most paid resources.
The weakness is volume. A complete OB textbook runs hundreds of pages, and the exam tests recognition of finite named theories rather than the surrounding application detail. Curate aggressively: read the named-theory boxes and the chapter summaries; skim the case studies and application sections unless you want the reinforcement.
Use it for: primary content reference for every named theory the exam tests.
Time budget: 8 to 12 hours.
OpenStax Organizational Behavior: the strong second free textbook
OpenStax Organizational Behavior is a second free, peer-reviewed OB textbook from the OpenStax project. The content coverage is similar to BCcampus: the same named theories, the same four content areas, comparable depth. OpenStax tends to be slightly more current on contemporary OB topics (emotional intelligence, diversity and inclusion, virtual teams) and BCcampus tends to be slightly more concise on the classical theory layer.
Pick one as your primary textbook spine and use the other only for clarification on a specific theory where the first explanation did not click. Reading both cover to cover is a poor use of time; the redundancy is roughly 80 percent.
Use it for: alternative spine, or clarification on a specific theory.
Time budget: 0 to 2 hours as a secondary reference, or 8 to 12 hours if used as primary.
Two complete free textbooks plus the free Saylor course path. The DSST OB free landscape is unusually strong.
Saylor Academy BUS208 Principles of Management: structured course with quizzes
Saylor Academy BUS208 Principles of Management is a free, structured course organized into units with readings, embedded videos, and unit quizzes. The course is built around the four management functions (planning, organizing, leading, controlling) and covers OB-adjacent content under the leading function: motivation theories, leadership, group dynamics, communication, organizational culture.
The match to the DSST outline is good on the management-application angle. The course gives you a structured sequence with quizzes, which is hard to replicate from a textbook alone. The Saylor certificate does not count for college credit (the DSST itself is the credit pathway), but the quizzes give recognition-style practice for free.
The weakness is angle. BUS208 covers OB from the management practitioner's perspective ("how do I motivate my team?") rather than from the OB-as-applied-psychology perspective ("what does Maslow's hierarchy predict about why this employee disengaged?"). DSST Organizational Behavior leans toward the second framing. Pair Saylor with BCcampus or OpenStax for the psychology-foundations layer that BUS208 underweights.
Use it for: structured pacing and quiz practice if you prefer a course format.
Time budget: 8 to 12 hours as primary spine, or 3 to 5 hours for selected units.
Saylor Academy PSYCH101 Introduction to Psychology: covers the individual-processes layer
Saylor Academy PSYCH101 Introduction to Psychology covers general psychology foundations. Individual-processes content on the OB exam (Maslow, Big Five, perception, emotion, attitude formation, conditioning) maps directly onto material in an intro psych course.
For a reader without a psychology background, PSYCH101 units on motivation, personality, social psychology, and perception are a strong free foundation for roughly one-third of the OB exam. Cherry-pick the relevant units; sensation, memory, neuroscience, and developmental psych sit outside exam scope.
Use it for: the individual-processes content area, especially if you have no prior psychology coursework.
Time budget: 3 to 5 hours on selected units.
Coursera audit-mode OB courses: university lectures for free
Coursera hosts several university OB-related courses that are auditable for free. Audit mode gives you access to lectures and most readings; graded assignments and the completion certificate sit behind a paywall.
Two courses are most useful for DSST prep:
University of Pennsylvania, "Foundations of Modern Business" (part of the Wharton Foundation Series). Includes OB content on motivation, leadership, and organizational design at strong instructional quality. Audit access gives video lectures across the relevant modules.
University of Michigan, "Inspiring and Motivating Individuals" (part of the Leading People and Teams specialization). Focused specifically on the motivation and leadership content that carries about a third of the DSST exam. Scott DeRue's lectures are notably good on translating named theory to manager practice.
The strength is instructional quality. University faculty teaching the named theories you need to recognize, in video form, is a strong supplement for readers who learn better from lecture than from textbook. Coursera trains recognition; you still need a separate practice protocol for question-format calibration.
The DANTES DSST Organizational Behavior fact sheet is the official source from the people who run DSST. It contains the published content outline with percentage weights, recommended textbook references, and a small set of sample questions in the actual DSST question style.
Every other resource is interpreted; the DANTES fact sheet is the test makers telling you what the exam covers and how questions are phrased. The weakness is volume: roughly a dozen sample items.
Use it for: one calibration pass early in prep and a second pass one to two days before the exam. Print the content outline as a checklist.
Time budget: 45 minutes total across two passes.
Harvard Business Review free articles on OB topics
Harvard Business Review publishes two free articles per month plus an always-free "Ideas" section. Three names recur and are worth searching for:
John Kotter on change management. "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" is the source of the eight-stage model.
Edgar Schein on organizational culture. The three-level model (artifacts, espoused values, basic assumptions) is exam-tested.
Daniel Goleman on emotional intelligence. "What Makes a Leader" is the canonical source on EI in leadership.
Reading the named thinker explain her or his own framework anchors recognition better than textbook summaries.
Time budget: 1 to 2 hours on targeted articles.
Khan Academy Psychology: free video psychology foundations
Khan Academy hosts a free social-sciences psychology track organized around the MCAT. OB-relevant videos cover Maslow, self-determination, classical and operant conditioning, attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error, conformity research (Asch, Milgram), group polarization, and groupthink.
Videos are short (most under 10 minutes), which makes Khan ideal for filling specific gaps after a textbook read identifies what is weak. Skim the playlist; skip MCAT-specific medical framing.
Time budget: 1 to 3 hours on selected videos.
MIT OpenCourseWare Sloan OB and negotiation courses
MIT OpenCourseWare publishes Sloan course materials including 15.668 People and Organizations and 15.665 Power and Negotiation. Sloan faculty teach OB at a level above the DSST exam, so depth exceeds what you need.
Use OCW only for targeted reinforcement on a topic you already understand and want to see at deeper resolution.
Time budget: 0 to 2 hours, on demand.
Quizlet flashcard decks: variable quality, useful when curated
A search for "DSST Organizational Behavior" on Quizlet returns user-created flashcard decks of varying quality. Spaced-repetition mode efficiently drills named-theory recognition (Maslow vs. Alderfer, expectancy vs. equity, transactional vs. transformational).
The weakness is quality control. Common errors I see on this exam: Maslow's hierarchy confused with Herzberg's two-factor model, Vroom's expectancy theory mislabeled as a content theory rather than a process theory, transformational leadership conflated with charismatic leadership. A wrong definition memorized hard costs you points twice (once on the named-theory question, once on the application question that depends on knowing the named theory).
Cross-check the first 15 to 20 cards of any deck against BCcampus or OpenStax before relying on it. If two or three errors appear in the first 20 cards, pick a different deck.
Time budget: 3 to 5 hours paired with cross-checking.
Why Modern States does not help here
Modern States is a non-profit that offers free online prep courses paired with a $97 voucher covering the College Board CLEP exam fee. For CLEP, it is one of the most valuable single moves a self-funded learner can make.
The program does not currently cover DSST exams. There is no Modern States course for DSST Organizational Behavior and no DSST voucher path. Adult learners who came to credit-by-exam through the CLEP-and-Modern-States route should expect to budget the $100 DSST exam fee out of pocket if they are not eligible for DANTES funding.
This changes the cost calculus. A CLEP exam taken through the Modern States voucher route is effectively free once you account for the time spent clicking through the qualifying assessment. A DSST exam in the same situation costs $100. If you have multiple DSSTs planned and you are paying out of pocket, that adds up.
DANTES military funding: free DSST for eligible service members and veterans
The DANTES program funds DSST exam fees for active-duty military, reserves, National Guard members, eligible spouses, and many veterans through specific education benefits. Eligibility shifts by branch and policy; check the DANTES eligibility page for current rules.
For an eligible service member, this exam is free, and the right prep stack is the same as for civilian readers: BCcampus or OpenStax plus Saylor BUS208 plus the DANTES fact sheet plus a structured practice question bank.
What to skip
A few free-resource categories show up high in search results and are not worth the time:
Generic "DSST Organizational Behavior study guide" PDFs from aggregator sites. Copy-paste content, often out of date, sometimes mixing this exam's outline with other OB-adjacent exams.
Free aggregator practice-question banks not built for DSST. Not calibrated to the current outline, frequent answer-key errors, no explanations.
LinkedIn Learning "free trial" courses. Solid content but the free month auto-bills; set a calendar reminder for day 28 if you use it.
AI-summary "cheat sheets" that conflate the named theories. They blur similar frameworks (Maslow with Herzberg, expectancy with goal-setting). Build your own summary from BCcampus.
Generic motivational and leadership videos on YouTube. Useless for the exam, which tests named-theory recognition rather than general leadership wisdom.
The Modern States course. No course exists for this DSST.
How to combine free resources into a complete plan
The Flying Prep approach for this exam pairs free resources for the content layer with structured practice for exam-style drill. Free resources carry a much larger share of the prep for OB than for most exams in our catalog. Working professionals and active-duty military readers with DANTES funding can run almost the entire prep on free resources and pass.
The paid layer adds drilled exam-style multiple-choice questions across all four content areas, with explanations on wrong answers, plus full-length practice exams scored on the 200-to-500 DSST scale (passing 400). That is what Flying Prep DSST Organizational Behavior is built to do: pick up where free content leaves off, calibrate you to DSST question style, and give you a real estimate of where you stand before sitting for the exam.
Lock in team development, conflict modes, trait, behavioral, contingency, transformational leadership.
4. Organizational processes and change
6 to 9
BCcampus culture/structure/decision-making/change chapters; HBR Schein and Kotter articles
Lock in Schein, Competing Values, mechanistic vs organic, Lewin, Kotter's eight steps.
5. Reinforcement and named-theory drill
4 to 7
Khan Academy; HBR Goleman; Quizlet (curated against BCcampus)
Anchor weak concepts; drill named-theory recognition until automatic.
6. Second calibration pass
0.5
DANTES sample questions
Confirm question-style intuition.
7. Exam-style drill
3 to 5
Flying Prep practice bank
Multiple-choice across all content areas; review every wrong answer.
8. Full-length practice
1 to 2
Flying Prep practice exam
Two-hour scored run on the 200-to-500 DSST scale; review weak areas.
Phases 1 through 6 run almost entirely on free resources. Phases 7 and 8 are where exam-style drill volume with explanations and full-length scoring benefit from a structured practice source.
For universal DSST test-day mechanics (ID requirements, on-screen timer, score reporting, retake policy), see how DSST exams actually work. If you are fitting prep around a full-time job, the working-adults version of this plan maps the same sequence onto evening and weekend blocks.
Comparison table
Resource
Format
Content focus
Strength
Weakness
Role in plan
BCcampus OpenTextBC OB
Free open textbook
All four content areas, every named theory
Closest free match to exam outline
Textbook-length; requires curation
Primary content spine
OpenStax OB
Free open textbook
All four content areas
Comparable to BCcampus; pick one
Redundant with BCcampus
Alt primary or clarification
Saylor BUS208
Free course with quizzes
Management functions, OB-applied
Structured pacing; unit quizzes
Management angle vs psychology angle
Pacing supplement
Saylor PSYCH101
Free course
Psychology foundations
Strong on individual-processes content
Breadth outside exam scope
Targeted units on motivation, personality
Coursera audit mode (UPenn, UMich)
University video lectures
Motivation, leadership
Wharton and Michigan instructor quality
No certificate without paying
Lecture supplement
DANTES fact sheet
Free official document
Content outline; sample questions
Calibrated by test makers
Tiny sample set
One-time calibration pass
Harvard Business Review
Free articles
Kotter on change, Schein on culture, Goleman on EI
Original thinkers in their own voice
Opinion-driven; not exam-aligned
Memorability anchor
Khan Academy psychology
Short videos
Motivation, social psychology, group dynamics
Concise; well-paced
MCAT framing in places
Targeted gap-filling
MIT OpenCourseWare
Lecture notes, syllabi
Graduate-quality OB and negotiation
Depth on selected topics
Exceeds DSST scope
Reinforcement on demand
Quizlet decks
Flashcards
Named-theory drill
Volume; spaced repetition
Variable quality; many have errors
Drill after cross-checking
Modern States
n/a for DSST
n/a
n/a
No course exists for this exam
Not applicable
DANTES military funding
Cost coverage
Exam fee for eligible readers
Eliminates registration cost
Eligibility varies
Cost path, not content
Should I use BCcampus or OpenStax as my main textbook?
+
Either works. Content overlap is roughly 80 percent, both are free, both cover every named theory. BCcampus is slightly more concise on classical theory; OpenStax is slightly more current on contemporary topics like virtual teams. Pick the one whose writing style fits you.
Are Quizlet flashcard decks safe to use?+
Yes, with caveats. Use Quizlet after BCcampus or Saylor has given you the framework vocabulary, never before. Cross-check the first 15 to 20 cards against BCcampus; if errors appear, pick a different deck. Once clean, spaced repetition efficiently drills recognition.
Do I need a paid textbook for this exam?+
No. Robbins and Judge is the canonical paid OB textbook and a real upgrade for readers who learn best from a single integrated source, but BCcampus or OpenStax plus Saylor BUS208 plus selected PSYCH101 units covers the same content at the depth the DSST tests.
Which free resource is best for the leadership section?+
The University of Michigan Coursera course "Inspiring and Motivating Individuals" in audit mode, plus the leadership chapter of BCcampus, plus Goleman's HBR article on emotional intelligence. Leadership is roughly 15 to 20 percent of the exam; three sources build recognition density for the harder distractor pairs.
How long does free-resource-only prep take versus paid prep?+
Plan for 30 to 45 hours on the free path if you are starting cold, versus 25 to 35 hours with a structured practice bank handling the final drill phases. The trade is time for money.
Organizational change and development (Lewin's three-stage model, Kotter's eight steps, action research, OD interventions, the psychology of resistance) are part of the ~25 percent remainder of the exam. This guide drills the change models plus the psychological-mechanism layer (Schein's three forces at unfreezing, learning-vs-survival anxiety, Maslach burnout) that distinguishes the OB framing from the management-application angle on CLEP Principles of Management.
