2. Barbara Illowsky, PhD
Professor, Mathematics & Statistics
De Anza College
Co-author, Introductory Statistics
OEConsortium 2014 Educator ACE Award
@DrBSI illowskybarbara@fhda.edu
Mark Santee
Vice President, Product & Marketing
WebAssign
msantee@webassign.net
3. The bottom line:
savings over 7 years
One course, one OER text, one college:
Estimated student savings of
$3,000,000+
• Elementary Statistics using Collaborative Statistics at De Anza College since
2008-09 academic year
• Elementary Statistics using Introductory Statistics at De Anza College since
January 2014
6. Student benefits
• Features that an author cannot easily
contribute
• Increased support
• More flexibility
• Options to participate or not
• Still a low cost
• and …..
10. What is WebAssign
• Flexible, customizable online instructional system
• Powerful online tools enable teachers to deploy
assignments, assess student performance, and enrich
the teaching and learning experience
• Reaches 1.5M students at 2,300 institutions each year
11. Who is WebAssign
• Founded by Dr. John Risley, physics education specialist
and professor in the Dept. of Physics at NC State
University
• More than 15 years of experience delivering education
technology solutions
• Reincorporated in 2012 as employee-owned benefit
company, dedicated to enhancing education
14. • Distribute
• Remix
• Tweak
• Build upon
• Commercial use allowed
• Only attribution required
Partnership Benefits to OpenStax College
Why Partner?
15. Why Do Digital Partnerships Matter?
Materials Decisions in Courses: College Physics Courses
• 307 4-Year Universities, Representing 210,704 Students
TWM Research, Fall 2014
20. Contributions to Sustainability
Reinvested
into new OER
materials
Reinvested into:
• Additional High-
Quality
Supplemental
Content
• New Application
Functionality
• Support of new
OER materials
At openstax we believe that we are creating foundational knowledge that no one should own and because of that all of our books carry a CC-BY license.
As you all know, this allows anyone or organization permission to reuse the content even for commercial purposes.
So, WebAssign is legally allowed to take and use our content without entering into a partnership with us.
However, we know that the open ecosystem can not just be a taking system, and that in order for Open Content to flourish we need non-profits and for-profits to work together to improve access, improve learning, and establish a sustainable model for coorperation.
At the CNX conference last year, Jason Pickavance from SLCC said
“OER is free like a puppy is free”
That’s true. And as the population of users of OpenStax adopters has increased the support required has also grown.
Luckily
At OpenStax we are really targeting massive uptake of open textbooks, not just one or two adoptions but thousands of adoptions. In fact at OpenStax we are targeting reach 10% market share across all of our titles.
However, we are fighting against the sales forces from traditional publishers like pearson, cengage, and others. And as a lean non-profit, we don’t have a sales force.
Luckily, WebAssign does have a sales force, and as they are going around promoting OpenStax books, they are helping to build awareness. THIS IS INVALUABLE.
OpenStax partners with WebAssign in 4 different disciplines Physics, Math, Chemistry and Statistics.
Under the terms of our partnership, WebAssign is permitted to use the content of these book in their homework management solution.
In addition, we permit WebAssign to use our logos, covers and other marks. This is not something we allow for organization that do not partner with us.
Finally we participate in marketing activities with WebAssign, including hosting joint webinars, presenting at domain specific academic conferences, and also prominent featuring in on our website and our own marketing materials.
Actual student reach: 5,692 students in Fall 2014, compared to 55K for traditional publishers.