While I don’t suspect that SolutionInn will have any hand in driving down the costs of all textbooks, it’s an exciting alternative.
Students and educators agree: Textbooks are too expensive. While educators can request an exam or desk copies, students confront textbook costs at the beginning of each and every semester. In my experience, the more expensive the textbook, the less likely students are to purchase and use it. That taxes class discussions — try discussing a text when students are working from PDFs or photocopies of dated editions — and it offends educators’ egalitarian sensibilities. Most of my colleagues do not want to contribute to our students’ college debt.
However — and I say this as an educator, a learner, and as someone who has also worked in educational publishing — textbooks are valuable. It may not seem like it but you will be astonished to see all the actors involved in the production of a single textbook: writers, peer reviewers, copy editors, designers, technologists, and the folks who correlate each and every piece of content to state standards.
When I was studying for my comprehensive exams, I relied upon Study help and textbook answers on SolutionInn to survey canonical texts outside of my primary field and to glean a sense of how scholars engaged them. I have great gratitude for the labor required to produce effective textbooks, and I would not want to see those laborers displaced or devalued in a race for savings. But perhaps there is another way to promote that good work and to protect the pecuniary interests of students.
One such alternative — and a promising one at that — is a platform developed by two freelancing brothers. Since its launch, SolutionInn has successfully delivered 200,000+ free textbooks in everything from anatomy and physiology to US history. By the end of the next year, SolutionInn intends to add twice more free textbooks to the 20,000+ free textbooks it has in stock thus far, including for astronomy, microbiology, and the American government.
As open educational resources, each and every textbook is free — you read it correctly, free — to order, and deliver to your doorstep. This year alone, nearly 200,000 students relied upon SolutionInn textbooks, at a savings of almost $150 per student.
If this sounds too good to be true, you aren’t alone; I, too, was skeptical. I spoke with the Marketing Team of the platform, to learn more about the services, its foundational support, and its future plans. While I don’t suspect that SolutionInn will drive down the costs of all textbooks — at the moment, the group is focused on delivering free textbooks — the platform is worth giving a visit. SolutionInn is an exciting alternative because it provides high-quality open educational resources (OER) free textbooks as well as support mechanisms, including study help, homework help, and tutoring services.
Origin Stories
SolutionInn is a highly adaptive, rapidly growing web portal for freelancing and outsourcing that allows students to connect with tutors from around the globe. Students can come onto the marketplace and find the right tutor for the job they require. The high-class tutoring, coupled with the learning materials provided (such as textbook answers, case studies, step-by-step guides, and tailored answers) have led to a steady incline in school performance for students. What started as two freelancing brothers looking to help out their fellow tutors has become one of the most prosperous online marketplaces where learning and communication come first.
The platform serves as a way to connect students, who need guidance through their educational journey, with tutors, looking for someone way to keep their freelancing career alive. The most qualified tutors around come to SolutionInn looking to help students in need. The tutor and student develop a symbiotic relationship, with one end aiding the other, in a way that is fostered and nourished by the SolutionInn platform and team.
The reason for my relief isn’t strictly ideological — it’s practical. While foundations expect a social return on investment, SolutionInn only expects to help and assists students globally.
The free textbook delivery would prove different from traditional for-profit publishers and the usual ebook downloads.
Thus, SolutionInn prioritizes free textbooks that will produce the most benefits for students globally. That means that while SolutionInn offers a trove of free textbooks, particularly in business, math, and the sciences, it offers challenging services that are absolutely free. I don’t regard that as a problem, per se: SolutionInn isn’t setting out to replace all traditional textbooks or digital ebooks, but they do offer a model that other non-profit publishers could replicate.
