New company Lumen Learning is aiming to teach educational institutions how to use open education resources (OER) in place of traditional textbooks, according to co-founder David Wiley.
“OER represent huge untapped value for both higher education and secondary education to eliminate textbook costs and the hurdle they represent to students,” Wiley said in the announcement.
Lumen works with educational institutions to help them develop low-cost, OER-based alternatives to their traditional textbooks. They develop OER products for general education courses at both the K–12 and college levels. Lumen helps educators benefit from OER by guiding and training faculty, measuring results and continuously improving the quality of the resources.
Wiley and Lumen co-founder Kim Thanos developed the Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative in 2012 to eliminate textbook costs for 10 institutions and 10,000 students. The pair decided to start Lumen Learning in order to scale their efforts and offer open education resources to a broader market.
Thanos, Lumen’s CEO, says that the company’s methodologies have already proven effective after the initial Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. “It works,” she said in the release. “Now our mission is to scale this success and help thousands more institutions bring the promise of OER to their students.”
In a recent survey of students and instructors, OER textbooks were praised for their high quality and low cost. A majority of the students surveyed—52 percent—preferred the online format over traditional printed texts. Only 17 percent liked the online format less. A full 95 percent of the university faculty surveyed said they would consider using open textbooks if they are of the same quality as their printed counterparts.
Some universities are currently trying out the OER model in place of traditional textbooks. Rice University’s OpenStax College, for instance, partnered with Wiley Publishing to produce its biology textbooks in OER format. OpenStax claims that its first two OER textbooks have already saved students $1 million. The textbooks are peer-reviewed and written by professional content developers.
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