Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk started
OpenStax College to improve student access to quality online learning materials. A new
grant has the nonprofit organization ready to up the ante.
OpenStax College will use funds from the Laura and John
Arnold Foundation to double the number of titles in its free online textbook
catalog by 2015. In addition, the publisher wants to capture 10% of the college
textbook market by offering free online textbooks for 25 of the most popular
college courses, which it estimates could save students around $750 million
over the next five years.
“With student debt at an all-time high, it has never
been more important to make education more affordable,” Baraniuk said in a
release.
“Our textbooks do that—not just because they are free, but also because they
are every bit as good as books that cost $100 or more.”
OpenStax already has introductory textbooks in physics
and sociology that have been downloaded more than 70,000 times. It is set to
release two new biology books and an introductory anatomy book in the fall.
The publisher will use the grant money to add textbooks
in precalculus, chemistry, economics, U.S. history, psychology, and statistics.
OpenStax said it spends more than $500,000 to develop a textbook, using content
developers the major publishers use and hundreds of faculty reviewers to vet each
title.
“Quality is the key,” Baraniuk said. “We believe the
reason instructors have been slow to adopt open-source textbooks in the past
has been that the free options weren’t all that attractive. The rapid success
of our books over the past year bears that out. If you offer a quality book for
free, people will jump at it.”
