- [Narrator] Textbook costs are up 800% since the 1960s.
And these guys are making them free.
(ding)
- [Daniel] And this has saved students
almost a billion dollars.
- [Narrator] They're also prototyping
the textbook of the future.
Intelligent digital textbooks,
that create customized questions
and can give immediate feedback while you're learning.
- [Daniel] Our ultimate goal
is to improve learning for all humans,
to think about ways we can help students learn more,
better faster.
(inspirational violin music)
- [Daniel] I went to school
and studied opera performance,
which is probably not the typical degree pathway
people would think going from opera to say,
publishing slash technology.
- [Male Speaker] You can mean just like a little,
like operatic scale.
(laughing)
(operatic singing)
(cheering)
(clapping)
- [Daniel] One of the things you do in music
is you take this complex information
and turn it into some art form that helps people
feel and emote.
And you do the same thing in education.
You take this information,
you break it down,
and you figure out how to share it
with your students so that they can actually learn.
- [Narrator] But the reality is many people
are locked out of the current education system.
- [Daniel] Because the cost of these resources
have just sky-rocketed,
you have a captive consumer model.
Textbooks are sold to the faculty member,
the faculty member then assigns it to the student,
and the student has to go buy it.
And so we looked at that and we said
this is, this is broken,
there should be a better way to do this.
At OpenStax we really set out to reimagine
how textbooks are delivered
and how education and technology is delivered
so that individuals can really own their own destiny.
- [Drew] I wouldn't be at Rice today
if it wasn't for OpenStax.
- [Narrator] This is Drew.
He found a free OpenStax economics textbook
in high school and it changed the game for him.
- [Drew] Once I realized how accessible it was,
once I realized how digestible the content was,
and the fact that I wouldn't have to pay for it,
how much of a difference that would make.
- [Tanja] I would like for you to open up your textbook
to chapter two.
My name is Tanja Conerly,
I'm a professor of sociology and I've been using OpenStax
in my classroom for over five years.
- [Daniel] The old publishing model
is you buy a physical textbook,
our model is you get a physical textbook if you want it,
download a PDF if you want it,
use it online if you want it,
get an app if you want it,
whatever way works best for you for free.
- [Tanja] Using the word innovative
is just really an understatement.
- [Narrator] And it looks like this approach
is starting to have an impact on the market.
- [Daniel] So textbook costs for the first time
in 50 years started to go down in 2015.
And a lot of economists actually
attribute this to the price pressure that
open educational resources and OpenStax
have put on the market.
When we think about all the work that we're doing,
ya' know, access is fundamental right?
Well that's step one.
Step two is to build not just free textbooks
but intelligent textbooks.
- [Narrator] OpenStax is beginning to develop
technology that provides students
with personalized questions and immediate feedback.
- [Daniel] We have a team of cognitive psychologists,
machine learning scientists,
looking at the most cutting edge new techniques
to create textbooks that learn about you
as you learn from them.
And then adapt to your individual needs and preferences
as a student.
- [Drew] You can live complete a problem
and it can see how you're doing your work,
it can analyze, ya' know,
where you can fix up this and what are the good things
that you're doing.
- [Narrator] It's artificial intelligence
applied to learning.
Another example of how OpenStax
is leading a movement for open education.
- [Daniel] Open means to me opportunity.
- [Drew] Thank you for coming today.
My name is Drew Carter.
I'm here on behalf of OpenStax.
- [Daniel] OpenEd is a national movement.
When I first came to my first OpenEd
it was maybe a 100 people and now there's thousands.
Thousands of advocates and passionate individuals
that are championing this idea of opening up access,
opening up opportunities for innovation.
- [Narrator] OpenStax' textbooks are currently
being used in more than 56% of degree granting intuitions
in the United States.
And they say this is just the beginning.
- [Daniel] These are the things that get us excited.
How do we take education,
reinvent it, and help more students succeed.
How do we help all students succeed
and making sure that they can achieve
their educational dream.
That's tremendous opportunity,
that's tremendous upside potential.
- [Crowd] OpenStax!
(cheering and clapping)
- [Narrator] Daniel and the team at OpenStax
have develop a solution to one of our country's
biggest challenges.
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