As part of his teaching career, Biss became the first classical musician to partner with Coursera. Together they created Exploring Beethoven's Piano Sonatas, a free video course on several of Beethoven's most famous sonatas. The course has reached more than 150,000 students in more than 185 countries. He will continue to add lectures until he covers all the sonatas. Throughout his career, Biss has been particularly noted for his immersive focus on single composers. In 2011, on Beethoven's birthday, he released the eBook Beethoven's Shadow, a 19,000-word meditation on the art of performing Beethoven's piano sonatas. Biss was the first classical musician to be commissioned to write a Kindle eBook. In January 2012, the record label Onyx released the first of Biss's recordings of Beethoven's piano sonatas. It was the first of nine discs to be released over as many years. Biss dedicated his 2012–13 season to Robert Schumann, declaring himself "a fanatic for every note Schumann wrote." The project was titled "Schumann: Under the Influence" and explored Schumann's influences and his legacy. Biss performed a series of concerts internationally with pieces by Schumann's predecessors such as Mozart, Beethoven, and Purcell, and composers who have been influenced by his music such as Leoš Janáček, Alban Berg and contemporary composers György Kurtág and Timo Andres. As part of the project, Biss wrote the Kindle Single eBook A Pianist Under the Influence. The work explains Biss's lifelong, intense, multi-layered relationship with Schumann's music and was excerpted in Slate. Biss also released an album of Schumann and Dvořák with Elias String Quartet. Biss is also an advocate for new music. He has commissioned pieces including Lunaire Variations by David Ludwig, Interlude II by Leon Kirchner, Wonderer by Lewis Spratlan, and Three Pieces for Piano and a concerto by Bernard Rands, which he premiered with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He has also premiered a piano quintet by William Bolcom. In 2016 Biss launched Beethoven/5, for which the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra is commissioning five composers to write new piano concertos, each inspired by one of Beethoven's five piano concertos. Biss premiered "The Blind Banister" by Timo Andres, which was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Music, "City Stanzas" by Sally Beamish, Il sogno di Stradella by Salvatore Sciarrino, "Watermark" by Caroline Shaw, and Gneixendorfer Musik - eine Winterreise by Brett Dean. Biss has begun examining, both in concert and academically, the concept