My name is Anna Vershynina, I’m an Assistant Professor of Mathematics at the University of Houston (UH). UH is a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI), and it is one of only three Tier One public research universities in the nation with this designation and the only such institution in Texas. Moreover, the UH serves working middle-class students, most of which are working long hours to put themselves through college.
I strongly believe that education is a right not a privilege, and should be free and only limited by students’ interests and abilities, not their finances. To this end, I only use OER in my classes. Last semester I was teaching Advanced Linear Algebra. A textbook from Lyryx was the most comprehensive and clear, and had the best choices for the topics I found. When I found out that it also came with so many perks, such as online homework, practice problems, and teaching slides, I immediately started advertising it on my department. The first question I was asked every time was “How much is it?” It took a while to convince everyone that it was free for the students, free for the instructor, and free for the university. In fact, it’s not only free for the department, it reduces our costs by not having a grader assigned to the class, since the system grades all homework assignments automatically. The next question that always came was “Then why aren’t we using it already?”
I don’t know about the others, but I definitely will be using Lyryx in the future. I have even requested to teach linear algebra again next year, so I can use the system.