Showing #OpenGratitude for: OpenStax

This is another post in my series of posts showing gratitude and appreciation for members of the open education community.

Today I’m going to focus on OpenStax. From their website:

OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University, and it’s our mission to improve student access to education. Our first openly licensed college textbook was published in 2012, and our library since scaled to more than 20 books for college and AP courses used by hundreds of thousands of students. Our adaptive learning technology, designed to improve learning outcomes through personalized educational paths, is being piloted in college courses across the country. Through our partnerships with philanthropic foundations and our alliance with other educational resource companies, OpenStax is breaking down the most common barriers to learning and empowering students and instructors to succeed.

OpenStax creates great open textbooks – 27 of them to be precise. They estimate their materials have been used by 3.5 million students across over 4600 schools, saving them over $340M. They have a high impact Institutional Partnership Program that drives adoption on their partner campuses. Their broader community outreach is also awesome. They’re one of the oldest organizations in open education and have thoughtfully – and successfully – adapted their approach to the work over the years. They’ve pioneered interesting sustainability models through their partnerships with a wide range of for-profits and their value-added adaptive learning technology. They’ve built a broad coalition of foundations that support their work. It’s difficult to find an OER initiative that doesn’t make use of their materials. For all these reasons and more, I’m grateful for OpenStax and all the wonderful things they do for the open education community. Share some love for OpenStax in the comments below.