Macmillan Learning Launches Intellus Open Courses, an Enriched OER Course Solution

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At $14.99 per student, Intellus Open Courses offer educators the ability to deliver flexible, affordable course materials to students

Macmillan Learning announced the upcoming release of Intellus Open Courses, which feature open educational resources (OER) expertly curated by Macmillan Learning subject matter experts and Macmillan Learning’s editorial team, using the Intellus Learning platform. Each course includes a rich package of instructor supplements and on-demand support. Intellus Open Courses make it easy for faculty to find, adopt, and use the highest quality OER resources and deliver a customizable, affordable course to students. Intellus Open Courses enhance open textbooks by sourcing high-quality openly licensed content from a variety of sources and coupling content with editorially-driven pedagogy.

"Each Intellus Open Course contains content from open eBooks, under the Creative Commons Attribution license, and instructor resources like PowerPoint slides and test bank questions, as well as other open assets including YouTube videos, optional institutional library content, primary source documents, and more. Our subject matter experts use the power of the Intellus Learning platform to locate the best open content available from the leading OER content providers and package them into a turnkey courses for use by instructors," stated Renee Altier, Vice President of Institutional Strategy.

In addition to the expertly curated OER content, Intellus Open Courses include a suite of support services, including learning management system integration, on-demand training and implementation support, instructor supplements, and customization tools. Instructors can access Intellus Learning to customize, reuse, remix, and redistribute their open course content. Licensing data is available for each content item so instructors know which open resources can be modified as well. Instructors can also leverage Intellus Learning's cornerstone engagement analytics at any time to optimize courses to meet learning objectives.

“I adopted the Intellus Open Course for my American Government course because I was impressed with the additional assets and capabilities they've built, which make it more than simply an open textbook. With the added features and analytics that the Intellus platform provides, we will not only decrease the cost of course resources for our students, but also positively impact learning without starting completely from scratch,” said Jessica Scarffe, Associate Professor at Allan Hancock College.

Sixteen Intellus Open Courses will be launching this spring in general education courses, such as American government, sociology, economics, pre-algebra, psychology, and chemistry, with the first courses going live for review and testing at the beginning of February 2018. Intellus Open Courses support fees are $14.99 per student, per course, and provide ongoing services for instructors and students that include LMS integration, customization tools and services, technical support, and course maintenance. Institutions can license Intellus Open Course and the Intellus Learning platform for students. Alternatively, students can pay course support fees directly through the Macmillan Learning student store. Additionally, recognizing the spirit of open education, students will be able to access and retain all OER material included in Intellus Open Courses on our website.

Charles Linsmeier, Vice President, Editorial, at Macmillan Learning noted, “Importantly, adopters of Intellus Open Courses are not limited to a publisher-provided curriculum. Instead, adopters of Intellus Open Courses are encouraged to make these courses their own by taking advantage of the easy-to-use, search and discovery tools for free and open content that Intellus Learning provides.”

Intellus Open Courses are part of Macmillan Learning’s commitment to deliver high-quality content at an affordable price for students. Intellus Learning empowers faculty to deliver affordable course solutions with the support and ease of implementation that faculty have come to expect from Macmillan.

Read the full press release here.