panOpen and VitalSource Announce Agreement to Distribute OER-Courseware
For the first time, a courseware platform dedicated to high-quality Open Educational Resources is available to thousands of VitalSource partner institutions in more than 200 countries.
NEW YORK, July 9, 2020 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- panOpen and VitalSource® today announced a distribution agreement to deliver panOpen OER-based courseware across the network of VitalSource higher education institutions and partners.
The new relationship gives VitalSource users access to a dedicated OER courseware platform, and one that participates in VitalSource's rapidly-growing Inclusive Access programs.
panOpen courseware includes interactive formative and summative assessments, teaching slides, videos, flashcards, student study tools (such as highlighting, note-taking, and classroom note sharing), and deep-linking Learning Management System integration (LMS), with single sign-on and gradebook synching. Faculty adopters can also auto-generate the courseware within their LMS classroom shell, without a need to visit the panOpen website.
Dr. Michael Hale, Vice President of Education, North America, for VitalSource said, "Whether the classes are onsite, remote, or blended, the need for flexible, interactive content that is accessible, affordable, and available immediately has never been greater. When choosing OER-dedicated courseware providers, we know all OER is not created equal and want to join forces with the very best providers in the field. panOpen shares VitalSource's commitment to providing high-quality, accessible content at the best value for students, and we are pleased to include them in our library of leading resources."
"The turn toward remote digital learning is occurring as institutional and student budgets are severely strained, exacerbating issues concerning equity of access to educational resources," commented Brian Jacobs, CEO & Founder of panOpen. "At the same time, there is a great need to empower faculty through control and localization of content--to represent marginalized communities within the course materials themselves--in order to bolster dialogue on race, ethnicities, and socioeconomic disenfranchisement."
This relationship follows the recent announcement of a groundbreaking open project in introductory sociology, A Sociology Experiment, involving 17 of the leading scholars and teachers in the discipline. A Sociology Experiment will be available through VitalSource.
Likewise, the panOpen-developed course in Texas Government, an OER project developed across multiple colleges and universities in Texas, will be available through this relationship, as will the many interactive and immersive versions of textbooks developed at Rice University's OpenStax College, a panOpen OER publishing partner.
ABOUT VITALSOURCE
VitalSource is the leading education technology solutions provider committed to helping partners create, deliver, and distribute affordable, accessible, and impactful learning experiences worldwide. As a recognized innovator in the digital course materials market, VitalSource is best known for partnering with more than 1,000 publishers and resellers to deliver extraordinary learning experiences to millions of active users globally– and today we're also powering new, cutting-edge technologies designed to optimize teaching and learning for maximum results. Learn more at https://get.vitalsource.com and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
ABOUT PANOPEN
Designed by educators, panOpen is a courseware platform that realizes the promise of OER by providing all of the components required for its widespread use. panOpen offers complete peer-reviewed content, customization tools, assessments, analytics, LMS integration, and a means of financially sustaining campus-based OER efforts. With panOpen, faculty adopt enhanced interactive OER as they would a commercial textbook, with confidence in the quality and reliability of the content. panOpen preserves the virtues of OER—radically reducing textbook costs and freeing faculty from the constraints of commercial copyright—while delivering the quality, features, and ease-of-use faculty expect from their learning materials. The result has enormous implications for pedagogical practices, changing the relationships of instructors and students to their educational content. To learn more, visit http://www.panopen.com @panOpen
SOURCE panOpen
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