Boundless was an American company, founded in 2011, which created free and low-cost

textbooks A textbook is a book containing a comprehensive compilation of content in a branch of study with the intention of explaining it. Textbooks are produced to meet the needs of educators, usually at educational institutions. Schoolbooks are textbook ...

and distributed them online. In April 2015, it was acquired by Valore. The combined company is based in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. In May 2017, it was announced that Boundless course materials would not be available after September 2017. Lumen Learning archived the Boundless collection on the Lumen platform.

History

Boundless was founded in March 2011 by Ariel Diaz, Aaron White, and Brian Balfour. The company raised $1.7 million in funding during 2011. In March 2012, the company was sued by three publishers:

Pearson Education Pearson Education is a British-owned education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well for students directly. Pearson owns educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eCollege, ...

Cengage Learning Cengage Group is an American educational content, technology, and services company for the higher education, K-12, professional, and library markets. It operates in more than 20 countries around the world.(Jun 27, 2014Global Publishing Leaders ...

, and Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group (owned by

Macmillan Publishers Macmillan Publishers (occasionally known as the Macmillan Group; formally Macmillan Publishers Ltd and Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC) is a British publishing company traditionally considered to be one of the 'Big Five' English language publi ...

). Among other allegations, the lawsuit claims that "Boundless textbooks copy the distinctive selection, arrangement, and presentation of Plaintiffs’ textbooks, along with other original text, imagery, and protected expression of Plaintiffs and their authors, all in violation of the Copyright Act." On December 17, 2013, the company announced that the lawsuit had been settled. Terms of the settlement are confidential. Boundless raised an additional $8 million in

venture capital Venture capital (often abbreviated as VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by venture capital firms or funds to startups, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which ha ...

funding in April 2012. In January 2013, the company claimed that students at over 2000 colleges in the United States were using its textbooks. It was acquired by Valore, another company in the Boston area, in April 2015. Valore was acquired by Follet, a

Westchester, Illinois Westchester is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is a western suburb of Chicago. The population was 16,892 at the 2020 census. The current Village President is Nick Steker, serving in the special role of acting president after ...

-based education-products company, in November 2016.

Products

The company's textbooks consisted of educational material taken from free and open sources. This material is often referred to as "

open educational resources Open educational resources (OER) are Instructional materials, teaching, learning, and research materials intentionally created and Free license, licensed to be free for the end user to own, share, and in most cases, modify. The term "OER" descri ...

" (OER). Some of the source material included

Wikipedia Wikipedia is a multilingual free online encyclopedia written and maintained by a community of volunteers, known as Wikipedians, through open collaboration and using a wiki-based editing system. Wikipedia is the largest and most-read refer ...

, the

Encyclopedia of Earth The ''Encyclopedia of Earth'' (abbreviated ''EoE'') is an electronic reference about the Earth, its natural environments, and their interaction with society. The ''Encyclopedia'' is described as a free, fully searchable collection of articles ...

, and government web sites. The company edited the material and arranged it to create a text in the form of an e-book. In some cases the company also provided study tools, such as

flashcard A flashcard or flash card (also known as an index card) is a card bearing information on both sides, which is intended to be used as an aid in memorization. Each flashcard bears a question on one side and an answer on the other. Flashcards are ...

s and quizzes. The company offered textbooks in over 20 subjects. The company provided two types of books. In an "open" textbook, the contents of each chapter and the arrangement of chapters were defined by the company. In its "alternative" textbooks, the material was arranged in a way that was very similar to a specific, commercially available textbook. Alternative textbooks allowed students to follow class reading and assignments that were based on a commercial text. Each chapter in its alternative texts covered the same concepts as the corresponding chapter in the similar commercial textbook, but using open education resources. In August 2013, the company began to charge a per-book fee for alternative textbooks. It continued to provide open textbooks (with fewer interactive features) for free. The company launched its "Boundless Teaching Platform" in December 2013. The teaching platform was free. According to the company, the teaching platform allowed instructors to customize the order of textbooks and monitor students' activity through the company's texts.

References

{{Wikipedia Ebook suppliers Companies established in 2011 Publishing companies established in 2011 Book publishing companies based in Massachusetts Educational technology companies of the United States Open educational resources

History

Products

See also

References