Rice pushes digital edge with virtual books, tutor initiative
Personalized learning software is latest project from nonprofit that aims to lower cost barriers to college
An education technology nonprofit at Rice University put out a new tool this month that uses data from online learning software to help students review the lessons they find especially tough.
The program, called OpenStax Tutor Beta, comes from Rice’s OpenStax, which has distributed free textbooks in subjects like biology, U.S. history and chemistry to more than 1 million students in the last five years.
OpenStax aims to lower cost barriers to higher education. Managing director Daniel Williamson spoke to the Houston Chronicle about the hefty data from online learning that can improve teaching . Excerpts of his interview with Chronicle higher education reporter Lindsay Ellis follow:
Q
Walk me through this new Tutor Beta software that you announced this month.
A
The whole idea behind OpenStax and its precursor, Connexions, was to really start looking at ways to chip away at access issues and equity issues in higher education. You can give a student a book, but that’s still just a book. Our real hope was that through the open licensing we have for our books, students and teachers could take it and personalize it and make it perfect for their course. But also, that new technologies like Tutor could start learning from students.
It would start to learn what that student needs to be most successful in their course.
Q
What does that look like for the teacher and student?
A
You as a teacher, you assign different sections or chapters of the book, and that’s then published. There’s interactive reading in the book, with videos and assessment items sprinkled through the reading. We’re following all that. We’re learning how the students interact with the content. We’ll then use a two-step assessment questions. We ask a question, and we ask students to write in their own words the answer to that question. They submit that. They’re then presented with a multiple choice question. They’re asked to choose the one that best matches the one that they provided in the text. It’s much more effective for a student to pull it out of their head rather than recognize the answer. The teacher can prescribe in the system homework or some kind of problem set, a quiz. Students go through and work through all of those.
Tutor, the engine behind this system, is learning — this student needs to revisit chapter
2.2, because it didn’t go too well. We keep track of that over time, and we present the students and teacher with this performance forecast. It’s saying, if you’re a teacher, you can go in and look at section one and say — wow, all my students are missing this concept. Maybe I need to make targeted instruction choices to revisit that.
Q
Financially, how reliant are you on revenue from OpenStax and how reliant are you on Rice as an entity?
A
All the content we produce does produce earned revenue, so we make sales on different print books. We also make money on our partnerships with (education technology) companies like Macmillan or Expert TA. Based on the print sales and on those partnership mission support fees, the content side of the house is pretty sustainable. The technology side of the house, the Tutor stuff, this is all brand new. Right now we’re heavily reliant on philanthropic support from Gates Foundation, Ann and John Doerr, and then the in-kind support we get from Rice.
Q
Philosophically, how do faculty feel about this software? A We know there’s not a one-size-fitsall solution for faculty. Even when we were just producing textbooks, we said, if this is not the right resource for your course, don’t use it. We recognize that you know your students and you know what’s going to best for your classroom. That being said, we’ve tried to build a system that’s incredibly flexible. We recognize that most people live on a continuum. Some may want the bare bones: I just need to make it easy for my students to do their homework and me to grade their homework. Others may want something that will provide them with tons and tons of data analytics as to how they’re performing and how their students are struggling. And some of them will fall somewhere between.
Q
What are some quick and easy ways for universities to improve technology in the classroom?
A
We always ask them to go to faculty who are already champions of innovation. You want to find someone who can be your exemplar: Have you seen so-and-so in the physics department? Students are really excited to go to that course. They don’t have to pay for textbooks. Then, look for quick wins. We have 24 college textbooks that you can pick up and use today, rather than start from scratch making your own materials.