OpenStax Provides High-Quality OER for Texas Schools - TechNotes Blog - TCEA

"TEA has partnered with two publishers to provide high-quality OER for Texas schools. Learn more about OpenStax and their free OER materials.

Why OER?

OpenStax was created out of a desire to break down the most common barriers to education, offering free access to high-quality learning materials that are kept always up-to-date. We’re a nonprofit based at Rice University that got our start in 1999 as the Connexions project, offering an online platform where anyone could publish and share content under an open license that allows others to reuse and remix the content. Fast forward to 2012: the modern-day OpenStax was born when we published the first of what is now 29 openly licensed college textbooks on OpenStax.org. Our goal was to offer peer-reviewed, scope-and sequence-aligned college textbooks online to students for free, focusing on the highest-enrolled introductory college courses to maximize our impact. Today, OpenStax books are used by a myriad of readers, including college students at Stanford University and at Maricopa community colleges, high school students at South Houston High School and at St. Augustine’s College Preparatory School in New Jersey, EMS trainees for the State of Alaska, members of NASA’s Solar System Ambassadors program, and schools on every continent but Antartica. Our library spans disciplines in math, science, social science, and humanities – and we’re not done.

Moving OER into K-12 

OpenStax began creating textbooks with college students in mind. But along the way, we saw that high schools were adopting the textbooks for use in Advanced Placement classes. Taking our cues from the needs of these teachers, we created a line of books for AP courses as a first foray into K-12 content, working with AP consultants and high school curriculum experts to re-purpose our content to prepare high school students for the AP test. Our library of Advanced Placement books on OpenStax.org currently includes Biology for AP® Courses, Principles of Macroeconomics for AP® Courses 2e, Principles of Microeconomics for AP® Courses 2e, and College Physics for AP® Courses.

Partnership with TEA

Last year, we got an opportunity to further expand into K-12 content through our partnership with the Texas Education Agency (TEA). We received a grant to develop seven TEKS-aligned high school textbooks specifically for Texas classrooms, available for free through the TEA-maintained Texas Gateway as of last fall. (The AP books are also aligned with AP frameworks.) We worked with Texas teachers to ensure that the content was aligned with the structures and standards of Texas classrooms and included appropriate level and variety. We also developed TEKS-aligned ancillary materials to accompany the books. Texas teachers can use any of these books in their classrooms at any time, completely free...."