OpenStax at Rice University will announce a groundbreaking nationwide research collaboration of unprecedented scale and scope that aims to enable transformational learning and education research on how students learn across all educational levels. A news conference to introduce the project will be held at 10:30 a.m. CST, Wednesday, April 24 at Rice’s Ion innovation hub.

Led by OpenStax, the world’s largest publisher of free, open education resources, the multi-institution project will support a large-scale education research hub that will safely enable research on how students learn best in different contexts and over time, with a goal of informing tools, practices, and policies to help make teaching and learning more effective for tens of millions of students. 

The project is the largest federal research grant in Rice’s history and represents

the National Science’s Foundation’s largest single investment in research and development infrastructure for education at a national scale.

What: Rice OpenStax federal grant announcement

Who: Reginald DesRoches, Rice president; James Moore, assistant director for the directorate for STEM education at the National Science Foundation; Richard Baraniuk, Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering, founder and director of OpenStax and principal investigator for the grant; and Amy Dittmar, Rice provost.

When: Wednesday, April 24, 10:30 a.m. News media are welcome to set up at 10:10 a.m.

Where: The Ion, Rice’s innovation hub, 4201 Main St.

News media who would like to attend must RSVP to Avery Franklin, media relations specialist at Rice, at [email protected] or 713-348-6327.

Media should park in the Red Parking Lot across the street from the Ion. To access, enter 4203 Fannin St. into your GPS for directions directly to the lot. This lot is for guest and event parking. Parking is free for the first three hours. For further directions and parking information, see https://iondistrict.com/visit/getting-here.