In the famous words of Malcolm X, “Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.” MyEducator firmly believes this. Unfortunately, the path to education is littered with pitfalls, one of which is the exorbitant cost of education in this day and age. MyEducator’s goal has always been to educate the world with high-quality learning materials that are simple to use and affordable, while providing excellent service for instructors, students, and authors.
Of course, MyEducator is not alone in trying to combat the cost of receiving an education. Motivated by a similar goal, OpenStax, an educational initiative of Rice University, creates high-quality, peer-reviewed, and inclusive learning experiences for all students—for free. OpenStax believes education drives individual transformation and collective progress, so they aim to increase access to education through textbooks and technology for students throughout the world.
As they say as part of OpenStax’s mission statement, “This is what opportunity should look like—open for everyone.”
And they’ve had remarkable success. According to an economist Mark Perry, “The ‘textbook bubble’ is finally starting to deflate, due to the creative destruction and competition from free/low-cost textbooks from groups like OpenStax” (AEI, 2019). What does this mean? Open education is disrupting the college textbook market; this removes financial barriers to advanced education and reduces student debt. Founder of OpenStax, Dr. Richard Baraniuk, says, “We strongly believe that knowledge should be free, open, and available to everyone to make the world a better place.” A much-needed change and a deeply desired goal for educators everywhere.
It is because of that goal—the belief that everyone should, and can, have access to knowledge—that MyEducator and OpenStax maintain an alliance. MyEducator currently hosts OpenStax textbooks for Business Ethics, College Success, Concepts of Biology, Introduction to Sociology, Introductory Statistics, Psychology, and U.S. History. And why would instructors benefit from using OpenStax specifically on the ME platform? Like all of MyEducator textbooks, these textbooks come with a number of benefits:
• Any Device, Anytime
• Customizable Assessments
• Multimedia Learning
• Highlights and Notes
• Advanced Analytics
• Searchable Glossary
• LMS Integration
Check out OpenStax’s bookstore and MyEducator’s catalog for free to low-cost textbooks that will change the lives of students! What other OpenStax textbooks would you like to see on the MyEducator platform?
Sources:
“Free Textbooks Online with No Catch.” OpenStax. Accessed January 10, 2023. https://openstax.org/.
