OpenStax, Rice’s educational technology initiative, has added more of its textbooks and new features for instructors to OpenStax Tutor, an online reading and homework platform designed to engage all students.
OpenStax’s “Anatomy and Physiology” and “Psychology 2e” textbooks are now available in OpenStax Tutor. The group also added “Entrepreneurship” and “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” a resource for Advanced Placement U.S. History courses, to the platform.
Also, new features released for the spring 2021 semester will allow educators to further customize their students’ learning experience within OpenStax Tutor. This includes the ability to create and assign homework questions alongside the platform’s personalized assessments.
These additions are part of larger plans for OpenStax to expand its offerings, supporting more educators with course delivery tools and providing every student with affordable and equitable learning experiences. Last fall, OpenStax announced plans to double the number of free, openly licensed textbooks in its library as part of its ongoing mission to remove education barriers for millions of students.
OpenStax textbooks have helped millions of students save over $1 billion in course material costs, with 4 million students using OpenStax this school year. By expanding its library to nearly 90 titles, OpenStax officials believe it can reach 10 million student-seats over the next five years.
“Emergency remote and hybrid schooling brought on by the pandemic have shown just how necessary equity-minded, high-impact educational resources and learning tools are,” said Daniel Williamson, managing director of OpenStax. “OpenStax was on a growth trajectory before COVID-19 and with demand for our resources increasing each week, our team is hard at work developing new textbooks and tools to help teachers continue to teach and students to learn.”
OpenStax Tutor is one of many OpenStax offerings the organization will prioritize for further development and expansion in 2021.
About OpenStax
OpenStax is committed to improving access to quality learning materials. As an ed tech initiative that is part of Rice University and supported by philanthropic foundations, OpenStax provides free college and Advanced Placement textbooks that are developed and peer-reviewed by educators, as well as low cost, personalized courseware that helps students learn. For more information, visit http://OpenStax.org.