ProQuest SIPX Teams with OpenStax and OpenSUNY to Boost Access to Open Educational Resources
MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, April 7, 2016 – As part of its continuing commitment to support Open Educational Resources (OER), ProQuest is making OER content more discoverable and visible to instructors through SIPX and Summon. OpenSUNY OER textbooks are now indexed and available in Summon, and soon the full catalogue of OpenStax OER content will be as well – and connected into SIPX’s course materials technology. As a result, improved visibility of these open resources in campus Learning Management System environments will make adoption easier for instructors.
Additionally, through these partnerships, ProQuest, OpenStax and OpenSUNY are introducing more options to help reduce course materials costs for students. “This partnership with OpenStax and OpenSUNY lets us provide more quality, free textbooks to schools and increase visibility of this content,” said Franny Lee, Co-Founder and General Manager of ProQuest SIPX. “We’re always thrilled to add relevant curriculum materials through ProQuest, and we continue to strive for improving access to quality, affordable higher education for all.”
OpenStax is a nonprofit organization dedicated to developing student access to quality learning materials. “OpenStax is committed to improving access to educational materials for all. Our partnership with ProQuest SIPX is another step toward making our content as accessible as possible, particularly at the institutional level,” said Richard Baraniuk, founder and director of OpenStax and Rice’s Victor E. Cameron Professor of Engineering.
About ProQuest SIPX (www.sipx.com)
A growing leader in digital content and online education, ProQuest SIPX provides proven cost-saving and scalable technology to manage and share course materials under the SIPX® and ProQuest® brands. Developed from a Stanford University research project, the system draws together open access and OER materials, comprehensive publisher content and library holdings into an intuitive interface that allows faculty or support staff to set up and share course readings with students.
Through SIPX, course materials become cost-efficient, easy and transparent, with individual user contexts that permit free or reduced-cost access based on factors like library subscription affiliations or a student's geography. The solution supports seamless integrations with Learning Management Systems, library course reserves services, bookstores and copyshops, coursepacks, distance education, continuing studies and global open online courses/MOOCs. Analytics created for instructors and libraries cover student engagement and campus course material needs, as well as new opportunities for sharing school- and instructor-owned content.
Students and schools have saved more than $4.6 million to date using the ProQuest SIPX. Reported results include:
- An average savings of 39 percent for students on course materials;
- Over 50 percent savings for library reserves and institution-pay permissions budgets;
- Increased productivity and more visibility in LMS/teaching environments for campus curriculum services to support more courses;
- Copyright-compliance for the university; and
- Flexibility to support faculty's preferred teaching platforms.
About OpenStax (www.openstaxcollege.org)
OpenStax College is a nonprofit organization committed to improving student access to quality learning materials. Our free textbooks are developed and peer-reviewed by educators to ensure they are readable, accurate, and meet the scope and sequence requirements of an instructor’s course. Through our partnerships with companies and foundations committed to reducing costs for students, OpenStax College is working to improve access to higher education for all.
OpenStax College is an initiative of Rice University and is made possible through the generous support of several philanthropic foundations.
About ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company’s products are a gateway to the world’s knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.
The company’s cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest®, Bowker®, Coutts® information services, Dialog®, ebrary®, EBL™, and SIPX® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon® discovery service, the RefWorks® citation and reference management platform, MyiLibrary® ebook platform, the Pivot® research development tool and Intota™. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.