BLOG | New Platform Enables Faculty and Instructional Designers to Discover and Use Affordable, High-Quality Content David Kim October 14, 2015

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 14, 2015

New Platform Enables Faculty and Instructional Designers to Discover and Use Affordable, High-Quality Content

Powerful curation tools catalog institutional resources, including OER, to make free and low-cost content available to students

LOS ALTOS, CALIF. (October 14, 2015) — Intellus Learning, formerly known as Ace Learning Company, announced today the launch of a new platform designed to help faculty discover, review and use the abundant digital resources, including Open Educational Resources (OER), that are available within their colleges and universities. Instructional designers can use the platform to more quickly discover content and track its use in order to accelerate and improve course development—and reduce the cost of materials for students.

Because Intellus Learning has fully integrated with leading LMS providers, the platform also offers rich analytics to help faculty and institutional leaders understand how students use and engage with content. Over the past year, Intellus Learning has worked with twenty-four institutions and systems, including a California State University campus, Indiana University and Western Governors University.

“The average annual cost of materials for full-time students is now over $1,000. Intellus Learning is helping faculty at one of our leading campuses better utilize Open Educational Resources (OER) and digital library resources with the goal of improving the affordability of education for our students,” said Gerry Hanley, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Academic Technology Services at California State University, who oversees the system’s Affordable Learning Solutions initiative. “By providing greater visibility into most content resources, we can support faculty in their course development process and increase the real-time data available to instructional designers and faculty.”

In 2012, the 3,793 academic libraries in the U.S. spent over $1.5 billion on electronic serial subscriptions and on e-books, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics. During the same year, those libraries had 253 million e-books. However, student surveys continue to find that cost and affordability are a major reason why students do not purchase assigned course materials.

“Despite billions in investment to create free, digital resources, much of the high quality OER available and existing institutional licensed content is underutilized on campuses globally,” said David Kim, Intellus Learning Founder and CEO. “We hope to unlock these investments by helping institutions and faculty easily access existing assets, evaluate what works, and personalize the learning process to increase college completion with an eye towards affordability long-term.”

Michael Horn, coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns with Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, has also joined the company as an Advisor.

“Using real-time feedback, Intellus is bringing state-of-the-art technology to bear on the instructional design process to foster continuous improvement and a more affordable and successful student pathway,” said Horn. “This is just the beginning of the transformational changes that will impact the industry longer-term.”

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About Intellus Learning (www.intelluslearning.com): Intellus Learning supports great teaching and learning in higher education with intelligent analytics that help faculty and institutions select the best content for each learner. Through its curation and management platform, Intellus Learning helps align institutional investments with course-level learning objectives to improve transparency and reduce redundancy. Intellus Learning brings faculty insights and student preferences to the forefront of institutional decision making, creating an environment that prioritizes value. Follow Intellus Learning on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Media Contact: Ted Eismeier, ted@whiteboardadvisors.com