Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (2024)

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (1)
Log in/Register

Request Demo Course

MEET LYRYX LEARNING

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (3)

1996

Technology Evolution

Claude Laflamme and Keith Nicholson, Professors of Mathematics at the University of Calgary, identified the potential for online homework to offer authentic subject questions, immediate grading and formative feedback. What began as a research project developed into educational software that provided students with immediate, personalized feedback on their assignments, similar to the way traditional assignments are marked by experienced instructors.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (4)

2000

Lyryx Learning

Lyryx Learning is established to further develop its educational software and make it available to other institutions. The key principled defined in these early days was to create affordable educational materials and high quality online homework, both to support instructors and to guide students’ learning.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (5)

2001

Lyryx Partnership

Lyryx branches into other subject areas in Business and Economics. Partnering with McGraw-Hill Ryerson in Canada (now McGraw Hill Education) to provide content and sales channels for these new subject areas, Lyryx continues to focus on creating high quality interactive materials and online homework.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (6)

2006

Open Textbook Evolution

Lyryx partners with other publishers and educational businesses in the United States and Canada, continuing to provide quality online homework solutions to partners’ educational products. This leads to a collaboration with one of the first open textbook publishers providing products with Creative Commons open licenses.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (7)

2011

Exclusive Products

Lyryx launches its own independent online homework products supporting mathematics courses in Linear Algebra.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (8)

2013

Exclusive Products

Recognizing the value that Open Educational Resources (OER) offers for content development and potential savings to students, Lyryx commits to developing high quality educational resources and services under the new “Lyryx with Open Texts” brand name. Lyryx with Open Texts launches full-service OER for Mathematics, Macroeconomics, and Microeconomics introductory courses.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (9)

2016

Steady Growth

In the Fall 2016 semester alone, Lyryx is supporting over 10,000 students using OERs, a 25% increase in just one year. Lyryx continue to expand its library of open textbooks into both Business & Economics and Mathematics & Statistics areas, seeking authors in these and other subject areas.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (10)

2017

Intermediate Accounting

OER Expansion

Expanding its partnership with Athabasca University, Lyryx is developing intermediate accounting open texts to be released for Fall 2017.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (11)

2018

Another OER Release

In conjunction with W. Keith Nicholson, Lyryx releases “Linear Algebra with Applications” as an open textbook. Lyryx continues to furhter expand its offering and support instructors and students across Canada and the United States.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (12)

2019

Counting on Accounting

With the successful completion of a U.S. GAAP adaptation of their Introduction to Financial Accounting, Lyryx released online assessment for OpenStax’s Principles of Accounting (Financial & Managerial) open textbooks.

A small group of passionate people making a big impact to access and affordability in higher education.

Claude Laflamme

Founder and President

Claude Laflamme is a professor of Mathematics at the University of Calgary. Besides remaining active in research, Claude is a dedicated instructor and has been involved in software development projects for many years. Thus, it was natural to blend this expertise in creating tools to better support an ever increasing number of students; from which Lyryx was eventually born. In addition to these pursuits, Claude is an avid backcountry skier and mountain biker.

Tamsyn Murnaghan

Managing Director

Prior to joining Lyryx, Tamsyn developed her operations, client experience and marketing skills in diverse business environments. She is a highly driven leader and principals a number of departments within the organization. Armed with BMgt and MA (Leadership) degrees, Tamsyn is focused on driving continuous improvement in all facets of the business. Outside of the office, she manages her home team of two boys (and husband) and enjoys playing on a number of sports teams

W. Keith Nicholson

Editorial Advisor and Board Member

Keith Nicholson is also a professor of Mathematics at the University of Calgary, recognized within the Mathematics field both as an academic and a technical writer. It is the latter skills that brought him to partner with Dr. Laflamme in developing content for an online Linear Algebra project that paved the road for Lyryx and collaboration with McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Keith continues to serve on the board of directors.

William Todor

Business Advisor and Board Member

William D. Todor began his studies in Chemical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, obtained an MBA from the University of British Columbia and Ph.D in Organizational Behavior from the University of California, Irvine. William served as a professor in the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University for 26 years focusing his research on leadership and employee turnover. Ryerson. Keith continues to serve on the board of directors.

Bruce Bauslaugh

Board Member (formerly Chief Technical Officer)

With a Ph.D. in Mathematics, Bruce Bauslaugh joined Lyryx from his earlier position as a computer science instructor at Mount Royal College. With his strong mathematical background and deep knowledge in computer systems and algorithms, Bruce designed and implemented a powerful engine to deliver and support Lyryx products; in particular, providing the most authentic assessment in the business.

Now retired, Bruce remains an integral part of the Lyryx team by serving on the board of directors.

HELP

Contact us

Support

FAQ

LYRYX

News

Webinars

Careers

POLICIES

Legal

Security

License

© 2022, LYRYX LEARNING INC.

Access & Affordability in Higher Education | Advocates for change (2024)

FAQs

What is affordability in higher education? ›

• For families, affordability can be defined as the ability to purchase needed/appropriate education and have sufficient resources to enjoy at least the minimum consumption of other essential goods and services.

What is the problem in affordability in education? ›

State financial aid programs are focused mostly on tuition, so students must cover costs that add up to thousands of dollars. And these costs are rising: taken together, housing, transportation, and book costs have increased 24 percent since 2012.

What are the access issues in higher education? ›

There are many barriers to achieving universal access, including poverty, crisis and emergency, high tuition fees, exclusive entrance examinations, geographic mobility, and some forms of discrimination. One of the reasons some students are not in HEI is that their families cannot pay for their education.

How to improve access to higher education? ›

In response, colleges and universities can work to address the problem of access to higher education through a holistic, proactive approach.
  1. Diversify Recruiting Efforts. ...
  2. Increasing Student Advisem*nt. ...
  3. Recognizing Earned Credit in Policy. ...
  4. Recognizing Unconscious Bias in the Transfer Evaluation Process.
Aug 15, 2022

Why should higher education be affordable? ›

Making college affordable for more students can potentially increase access and lower barriers to completion, which could help close the projected degree gap by 2030, and at the same time promote more equitable access to and success in college.

Why is affordable higher education important? ›

Affordable higher education would provide our society with a better educated workforce, which in turn could help our economy grow. The United States of America is by far the richest country in the world; we could easily fund higher education, as we do for grades 1-12, if so we wanted to.

What is the affordability of higher education in the US? ›

For the average student in our sample, in 2020-21 (the latest year with complete data,) NCAN finds that: Just 31% of public four-year colleges and universities were affordable. The average affordability gap, or amount of unmet financial need, at four-year institutions was $2,256.

What factors may be affecting the cost of higher education? ›

9 Factors that could impact your college tuition costs
  • Federal financial aid. Most students need some kind of financial aid to help cover their tuition. ...
  • Type of school. ...
  • Residency status. ...
  • Modality. ...
  • Program type. ...
  • Military service. ...
  • Scholarships. ...
  • Employer tuition assistance.

What are the financial barriers to higher education? ›

Over Half of Americans Believe Tuition Is the Biggest Financial Barrier to College. The financial challenges posed by the rising cost of tuition (54%), student debt (48%), and living expenses (30%) top the list of main reasons Americans believe people are choosing not to pursue a college degree.

Why is access to higher education important? ›

Higher education enables individuals to expand their knowledge and skills, clearly express their thoughts both orally and in writing, grasp abstract concepts and theories, and increase their understanding of the world and their community.

What is access in higher education? ›

Access to higher education has been defined as availability of sufficient number of institutions across the serviced region to adequately fulfil the demand from that region. Equity means equal opportunity to all sections of the society to participate in higher education.

What is the inequality in access to higher education? ›

Inequalities related to parents' income and those related to their occupation or education complement each other. At a given level of SES or parental degree, the higher the income, the higher the proportion of individuals accessing higher education and vice versa.

Why is access to education an issue? ›

Without equal opportunities to obtain an education, they will not be able to participate equally in jobs, in voting, and in other crucial areas of life. And when students are not able to learn together, this harms their ability to work together and live and engage with one another later in life.

Is college becoming more accessible? ›

In California we've reimagined college to make it accessible to everyone – including the least advantaged, including working adults, and including non-traditional students.

How does higher education improve society? ›

College graduates have lower smoking rates, more positive perceptions of personal health, and lower incarceration rates than individuals who have not graduated from college. Higher levels of education are correlated with higher levels of civic participation, including volunteer work, voting, and blood donation.

What is the explanation of affordability? ›

Meaning of affordability in English

the state of being cheap enough for people to be able to buy: Automobile affordability fell slightly in the second quarter of the year.

What is affordability in simple words? ›

Affordability is a quality of being inexpensive. Because of the affordability of the apples at the orchard, we went ahead and bought a whole bushel. The adjective affordability describes things you can afford to pay for because they don't cost too much.

What does affordability status mean? ›

Essentially affordability means what can you afford. Lenders will want to take a look at your monthly incomings and outgoings to see whether you can reasonably afford to meet repayments.

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Article information

Author: Lidia Grady

Last Updated:

Views: 6560

Rating: 4.4 / 5 (65 voted)

Reviews: 80% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Lidia Grady

Birthday: 1992-01-22

Address: Suite 493 356 Dale Fall, New Wanda, RI 52485

Phone: +29914464387516

Job: Customer Engineer

Hobby: Cryptography, Writing, Dowsing, Stand-up comedy, Calligraphy, Web surfing, Ghost hunting

Introduction: My name is Lidia Grady, I am a thankful, fine, glamorous, lucky, lively, pleasant, shiny person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.