panOpen

As an academic from Cornell University, Brian Jacobs directly experienced the inefficiencies of the textbooks industry. He also saw that the web provided an extraordinary means to address these inefficiencies. After founding and running for 12 years the online bookstore and textbooks marketplace Akademos, Brian decided to launch panOpen — a platform that promotes the widespread adoption of open educational resources (OERs).

Openly sourced learning materials are part of a systematic rethinking in the way educational institutions produce and share the knowledge of a discipline. They dramatically lower costs and increase flexibility, but their widespread adoption requires the right institutional framework. panOpen provides the tools and services that schools need to adopt OERs effectively, allowing open source content to realize its promise as a truly disruptive force in the market for educational content. panOpen aligns the economic and operational interests of all the stakeholders—faculty, administrators, and students—and creates a foundation for increasing student academic success.

At panOpen, we focus on four critical areas:

1. ACCESS — dramatically reducing the cost of educational materials
2. FLEXIBILITY— enabling faculty to edit, share, adapt and customize their content
3. STUDENT ANALYTICS — allowing faculty to monitor student engagement and progress
4. FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY — creating a revenue sharing mechanism that compensates and recognizes all the stakeholders