NEWS

ProQuest SIPX Recognized as a Way to Reduce Adoption Barriers to OER Content

Innovative technology helps universities reduce costs for students and enhance learning success

ProQuest SIPX is paving the way for higher education institutions and campus leaders to reduce students’ cost of education by leveraging increased use of open educational resources (OER) as part of the SIPX® complete course materials solution.

ProQuest SIPX has generated more than $3.6million to date in savings for students and schools across the US. A recent article from information industry analyst Outsell notes that SIPX helps to solve the problem of lower student outcomes because of prohibitively expensive curriculum resources. SIPX serves a growing need and role as Outsell points out “the increasing willingness of institutions to invest time and energy in compiling OER repositories, and to share courses they have created which use OER materials.”

Access to OER is ever more critical for institutions and SIPX not only makes it easy for instructors to understand the costs of their selected course readings, but also surfaces OER and library-subscribed resources that are free for students deeper into instructor workflows and platforms such as their native campus Learning Management Systems and bookstore coursepacks, making it easier to connect and adopt these resources.

“The viral effect is likely to kick in as this process continues, since it reduces the barriers to using OERs,” says Outsell. “If it no longer takes more time to find OERs than it does to select a textbook, and if offering free resources has proven benefits to course completion rates, then the OER argument looks increasingly persuasive”.

“A primary goal of SIPX when we built this solution was to combat the rising costs of education by making it easier for schools and teachers to create effective learning experiences with the high quality content they want to use, and reduce costs for students,” said Franny Lee (Co-Founder and General Manager of ProQuest SIPX). “We feel that bridging easier access to relevant, quality Open Educational Resources is a key factor in helping solve these cost problems being faced by higher education institutions and students.”

www.sipx.com
http://www.proquest.com