panOpen and Willo Labs Partner to Deliver Next-Generation OER to Colleges and Universities Across North America

NEW YORK, July 23, 2019 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- panOpen, a next-generation learning platform for Open Educational Resources (OER), has partnered with Willo Labs, the leading LMS integration application, to facilitate the rapid adoption of OER for colleges and universities in North America. This partnership provides for a deep integration into virtually all Learning Management Systems in use, allowing faculty to select peer-reviewed, technology-enhanced, and supported OER courseware with ease, and without leaving the LMS environment.

Faculty can set up their courses in minutes and enjoy such features as single sign-on and gradebook syncing directly from their LMS course shell. Institutional LMS administrators likewise can now easily provision, manage, and roll out multiple OER courses with a few clicks. Institutional leaders have a straightforward solution to offer faculty interested in adopting not only turnkey OER courses in panOpen as an alternative to high-cost resources but a way to foster pedagogical innovation among faculty through working with open content.

"The demand for OER is skyrocketing," noted Willo President and Co-founder Kate McKain, "with colleges and universities seeking technology-driven solutions to scale student access, success and affordability initiatives. We are thrilled to partner with panOpen, a company that through advanced technologies, a compelling model for sustainability, and hands-on support, is making OER easy to find, access and use at-scale."

Beyond the ease with which faculty can now adopt OER, the partnership includes gradebook syncing of the assessments and learning activities within panOpen, and the ability to offer panOpen in institutional Inclusive Access programs. The integration brings the benefits to faculty of OER--dramatically reduced student educational content costs, pedagogical innovation, and content control--without the burden of integrating these resources on their own.

"The next generation of OER is about fostering communities around subject-specific content," commented panOpen Founder and CEO Brian Jacobs, "The integration of panOpen into Willo is a significant step toward this objective, by allowing faculty easy access to the libraries, tools, and features of panOpen's platform. Through this, faculty can now access not only immersive OER-based courseware but also the tools for editing, remixing, and cross-institutional collaboration that are the hallmarks of a maturing OER ecosystem."

The Willo Labs integration of panOpen will be available at the beginning of August 2019, in time for the upcoming back to school season.

About Willo Labs
Willo Labs provides a single campus connection and platform for colleges and digital materials providers to link and manage digital course materials in the learning management system (LMS). Willo Labs is connected to over 350 campus LMS's. Learn more at our website: https://www.willolabs.com/

About panOpen
Designed by educators, panOpen is a learning platform that realizes the promise of OER by providing all of the components required for its widespread use. panOpen offers interactive peer-reviewed content, customization tools, assessments, analytics, LMS integration, and a means of financially sustaining campus-based OER efforts. With panOpen, faculty adopt enhanced interactive, OER as they would a commercial textbook, with confidence in the quality and reliability of the content. panOpen preserves the virtues of OER?radically reducing textbook costs and freeing faculty from the constraints of commercial copyright?while delivering the quality, features, and ease-of-use faculty expect from their learning materials. The result has enormous implications for pedagogical practices, changing the relationships of instructors and students to their educational content. To learn more, visit http://www.panopen.com

SOURCE panOpen