We’re proud to announce that we’re partnering with Rice University’s OpenStax to vastly expand our instructional material in math and English. OpenStax is one of the world’s largest publishers of open educational resources (OER) and fourth largest publisher of educational content. Since 2012, Rice University has been publishing a library of free textbooks through its OpenStax initiative. This library now includes 42 textbooks used in more than 60% of US colleges and universities in math, science, English and history.
As an OpenStax Ally, we’re now excited to help accelerate the adoption of these market-leading OER materials at the K12 level. The integration of OpenStax content will increase the amount of lessons and questions by nearly 5x to more than 150 lessons and 5000 questions per course. The new material is coming to Piqosity’s math and English courses beginning in spring 2023.
This spring Piqosity will also launch some great features to better leverage all of this new content.
Cross-Course Microtopics
Microtopics will be a new, fourth level of hierarchy in Piqosity’s curriculum-aligned courses. The new structure will be course > topic > subtopic > microtopic. This new content level will enable a higher level of specificity in lessons and practice. Microtopics will also be cross-course and include pre-requisites, so that Piqosity can better identify when and where concepts are introduced and build upon each other. For example, a microtopic introduced in fifth grade math will be linked all the way through pre-calculus.
Remediation with PVT
Piqosity Virtual Tutor (PVT) will take advantage of the new cross-course microtopics by automatically identifying a student’s weaknesses in pre-requisites. For example, a student preparing for the ACT might be having trouble with advanced word problems in math. Piqosity identifies that the student’s issue ultimately lies with their understanding of fractions at the sixth grade level. Even though the student should have mastered this topic five years earlier, PVT is able to identify this weakness and recommend remedial practice.
A Mission to Pique Curiosity
Piqosity and OpenStax are aligned in our goals to democratize education publishing and improve student learning outcomes. Our partnership with OpenStax is just the beginning of many more to come. Not only will Piqosity’s courses include OpenStax content and Piqosity original material, any qualified educator is able to upload and share their lessons and practice questions—all of which will be automatically peer normed and personalized with our virtual tutor.
Piqosity is an OpenStax Ally. We join OpenStax in the mission to improve access to affordable educational materials by providing additional resources for OpenStax books. OpenStax is committed to providing free, peer-reviewed textbook content and offering multiple options for educators who need additional resources for their course.
Leave A Comment