101 Partners with OpenStax to Deliver More Affordable and Engaging Course Materials for College STEM Students

NEW YORK, March 14, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- 101 Edu, Inc. today announced a partnership with OpenStax to deliver more affordable course materials for college STEM students and offer increased flexibility for course instructors.

101 Edu, which develops Chem101, the next-generation active learning platform for chemistry courses, will begin to offer OpenStax Chemistry and Chemistry: Atoms First free textbooks alongside its Chem101 product. The combined offering will give chemistry instructors freedom from traditional textbook bundles, allow them to significantly reduce student course costs, and benefit from the best classroom engagement tools on the market.

Chemistry instructors use Chem101 to engage their students in real-time during lecture with over 2,000 interactive problem-solving exercises. Unlike traditional tools that rely on generic question types, students respond in Chem101 on their personal devices by drawing a molecular structure, writing a chemical name or formula, or performing dimensional analysis. Instructors receive a convenient dashboard of common student mistakes that makes it easy to form class discussions. The platform also offers automated, answer-specific feedback, which encourages students to give problems another try, and addresses the misconceptions that an instructor might not be able to remediate in class.

Chem101 has been adopted by faculty at over 50 campuses across the U.S. including Carnegie Mellon University, Temple University, and University of California Irvine. In a pilot focused on bonding and structure topics, a 200% improvement in student learning gains was measured and 40% of students reported an increased interest in chemistry.

"All across the country, from small colleges to large universities, chemistry instructors love using Chem101 to engage students during lecture and provide them new ways to learn, visualize, and interact with science. This new partnership with OpenStax will give our customers more choice for their course materials and will drive down student costs," said Dr. Justin B. Weinberg, Co-founder and CEO of 101. "We're just getting started and couldn't be more excited about our vision for the STEM classroom."

"Chem101 makes another great addition to our OpenStax technology partners," said David Harris, Editor-in-Chief of OpenStax. "The platform's problems and exercises are aligned to both of our chemistry texts and it makes incorporating active learning in lecture extremely easy for instructors. Chem101 also blends powerful visualization with high-quality assessments, which faculty are always looking for in the classroom."

About 101 and OpenStax

Founded in 2014 by Justin Weinberg and Igor Belyayev, 101 Edu develops the next-generation active learning platform for college STEM courses. The company's chemistry product, Chem101, offers rich, discipline-specific assessment tools that provide students new ways to learn, visualize, and interact with science. For more information about 101 and Chem101, please visit http://www.101edu.co

OpenStax is a nonprofit based at Rice University with a mission to improve student access to education. OpenStax's library of over 20 openly licensed textbooks for college and AP courses are used by hundreds of thousands of students. For more information about OpenStax, please visit http://www.openstax.org

SOURCE 101