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As OER Grows Up, Advocates Stress More Than Just Low Cost

Edsurge

For the first time ever, the federal government put forward funds to support initiatives around open educational resources, and recent studies show that faculty attitudes towards using and adapting these openly-licensed learning materials are steadily improving. But fans of OER are increasingly facing a problem.

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Wiley to Acquire Knewton’s Assets, Marking an End to an Expensive Startup Journey

Edsurge

In the second eye-raising deal for the higher-ed publishing industry in as many weeks, Wiley, a major textbook publisher, has agreed to acquire the assets of Knewton, a provider of digital courseware and adaptive-learning technologies. Knewton’s Alta, by contrast, is tapping into openly-licensed, or OER, materials.

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Hitting Reset, Knewton Tries New Strategy: Competing With Textbook Publishers

Edsurge

And even before the management change, the company had quietly started building a huge library of courses bolted to its adaptive engine. The secret to its swift entry into publishing was OER (open education resources). Knewton’s pitch is that its mix of OER and an adaptive-learning system will set it apart.

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Showing #OpenGratitude for: OpenStax

Iterating Toward Openness

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. It’s difficult to find an OER initiative that doesn’t make use of their materials.

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Michelson Runway Announces 5 Higher-Ed Startups in Inaugural Cohort

Edsurge

Here are the five companies in the 2016 cohort: Lrnr : An adaptive-learning platform that uses open educational resources (OER). In the next couple of months it will continue building its technology and adding to its library of content. Educators can customize courses and monitor student progress.

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With Adaptive Tech, Students Are Saving Money and Learning More

Edsurge

We also replaced the $150 textbook we were using with open education resources (OER). Watkins: A challenge has been to ensure that all students have the technical tools to successfully use the adaptive technology. In addition, our libraries operate a laptop loan program that allows students to “check out” computers.

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Can US Higher Education Publishers Leverage a Subscription Model

Kitaboo on EdTech

But how do they compete with resources like MOOCs and OERs that have made high quality course content from respected university professors available for free? When students started migrating towards used textbooks, rentals, MOOCs and OER due to the high prices of printed textbooks, it affected the revenues of traditional book publishers.

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