Rice digital textbook pioneer to speak at CES 2014

Jeff Falk
713-348-6775
jfalk@rice.edu

Jade Boyd
713-348-6778
jadeboyd@rice.edu

Rice digital textbook pioneer to speak at CES 2014
Baraniuk available to discuss rapid adoption of free online textbooks 

HOUSTON — (Jan. 6, 2014) — Rice University digital textbook pioneer Richard Baraniuk is available for media interviews about the ways that free online textbooks and “venture philanthropy” are changing higher education by increasing access and lowering costs. He will speak Thursday at TransformingEDU, a one-day summit meeting about educational technology at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Baraniuk is Rice’s Victor E. Cameron Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and founder of Rice’s free textbook publisher, OpenStax College.

RICHARD BARANIUK

Baraniuk will join a panel of experts at 9:50 a.m. at the Las Vegas Convention Center North Hall Room N256 to discuss “The Next Edition of Digital Textbooks and Courseware.” The panel will address what is — and isn’t — working in the digital textbook arena, and they will address how digital textbooks are being adopted at all levels — from individual instructors and departmental textbook committees to university system administrators and state education officials. For more information, see http://transformingedu.com/2014-agenda/.

OpenStax College uses a “venture philanthropy” funding model in which foundations underwrite the costs of producing high-quality textbooks that are published online free for all college students and instructors. OpenStax College’s catalog includes titles for introductory physics, sociology, statistics, anatomy and physiology, and both majors and nonmajors biology. In less than two years, educators teaching some 55,000 students at more than 400 community colleges, four-year colleges and research universities have adopted the books and saved students more than $5 million.

In 1999, Baraniuk founded one of the world’s first “open education” projects, Rice’s Connexions, which delivers free, remixable educational content to millions of users each month in more than 200 countries.

For his education projects, Baraniuk has received the Eta Kappa Nu C. Holmes MacDonald National Outstanding Teaching Award, the Tech Museum Laureate Award, the Internet Pioneer Award from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, the World Technology Network Education Award and the IEEE Signal Processing Society Education Award. He was selected in 2007 as one of Edutopia Magazine’s Daring Dozen Education Innovators.

To schedule an interview with Baraniuk, contact Jeff Falk, associate director of national media relations, at 713-348-6775 or jfalk@rice.edu.

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Related materials:

OpenStax in the news:

OpenStax releases 6th free textbook
Campus Technology
http://bit.ly/19tHnKK

Business models and funding models for open access e-books
Rice’s OpenStax initiative is mentioned in an article about business models for open-access publishing.
Ed Tech Times
http://bit.ly/1jqfOWB

The bill that could save college students $1,200 a year
The Atlantic
http://bit.ly/1dLp7QP

College textbooks are ridiculously expensive. Two senators are trying to change that.
Rice’s OpenStax program is mentioned as one alternative to the steady rise in college textbook costs.
The National Journal
http://bit.ly/IoJm9a

Affordable college ‘open textbooks’ for all
Rice University’s OpenStax College is mentioned in an article written by U.S. Rep. Ruben Hinojosa.
The Monitor (McAllen, Texas)
http://bit.ly/IngcWT

Did the college textbook bubble burst?
http://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/2013/10/10/college-textbooks-next-bubble-to-burst/

Video:

To see a video produced last year about OpenStax, click here or on the image.

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