The average college student shells out $1,200 annually just on textbooks. Although appalling, the sky-high sticker price has proven to be an advantage for Boston-based Boundless, which has grown to reach more than three million students and educators since advertisers started singing about last year's back to school season.
The company announced Tuesday, however, it's "not just serving students with textbooks anymore"; Boundless has "grown to serve the entire educational ecosystem."
The ed-tech startup has unveiled new software that allows individual authors to publish open textbooks anyone can access through Boundless. More than a dozen authors are already scheduled to add their textbooks to the company's library as part of the software's debut.
"Until now, there hasn't been a great way to publish educational content online," said Boundless Founder and CEO Ariel Diaz in a release. "Authors have options of PDFs, e-pubs and blogs, but none of these make the content simple to share or search."
Boundless used Catherine Schmidt-Jones, a music teacher from Champaign, Illinois, as an example of the software's potential. Her textbook, "Understanding Basic Music Theory," is now available online through Boundless.
"Before publishing my music theory modules as open resources, I was a music teacher in small-town Illinois," said Schmidt-Jones, a long-time supporter of the open education movement, in a statement. “The Internet has given me a voice as a teacher that the traditional publishing industry would not.”
Boundless started assisting educators at the end of the year when it introduced its new Teaching Platform, a tool professors can use to customize textbook content, create their own quizzes or utilize pre-built, customizable lecture slides. In the semester to follow, Boundless announced its content was available via an API, and has already started partnering with third-party platforms, like mobile- and Web-based teaching platform TopHat, to bring its affordable educational content to more students.
For students, Boundless offers access to quizzes, a "smarter" flashcard system, summarization and annotation. More importantly, however, the company cuts down textbook costs, which have risen an alarming 812 percent, surpassing the housing bubble entirely.
Tuesday's news represents a new chapter for the startup, however.
"Boundless is not only driving down the cost of education," shared Diaz in a blog post, "but changing the way educational content is created and distributed."
