Last week Apple made a rather significant iPad / iBooks / textbooks announcement. Several people have asked whether it is a net win or net loss for advocates of open textbooks specifically and affordability generally. From my perspective, the announcement is an outright win for advocates of affordability and open textbooks. Here’s why.

It’s fairly clear from the Jobs biography and the publishers’ behavior that the original plan was: (1) Apple would hire some rockstar PhDs who would write textbooks (2) Apple would own the textbooks, and (3) Apple would give away the books for free in order to sell more iPads.

This apparently kindled a great fear in the publishers, who consequently agreed to create video- and multimedia-rich, moderately interactive textbooks and sell them for only $14.99.

Now, if video-based, multimedia-rich, interactive textbooks are only worth $14.99 to the big publishers, what are relatively static, text-based books with a few photos worth to them? Answer: The Apple event was the big publishers’ public announcement that they are ceding the traditional textbook market to OER creators and others. Oh, they’ll continue to try to sell the books, but only in the way that a basketball team down 35 points plays out the last three minutes of the game. OER creators have won the “race to the bottom” on the price of open textbooks. As we have shown in Utah, when you don’t have to pay an IP royalty high school-level open textbooks can be printed and shipped at ridiculously low cost – $5 per book last fall and $4 per book this coming fall. And given the statewide announcement in Utah yesterday, plus Reuven’s bill in Washington, etc., we can now “call it” in the same way that elections are called after sufficient trends are evident in the data: 2012 is the year big K-12 publishers gave up on traditional textbooks.

For a number of years, the big publishers have used the price-as-proxy-for-quality argument that says “you get what you pay for” to fight the insurgence of open textbooks. However, when they’re selling their own top-of-the-line multimedia books for under $15, they cut this argument out from under themselves.

But aren’t $15 publisher books a threat to open textbooks (if their primary benefit is low cost)? Not at all, for three reasons. First, the new iBooks system is apparently architected to require the school / district / state to purchase a new copy of each book for each child. $15 x the 7 year cycle on which we replace textbooks in Utah and the $15 book is actually significantly more expensive than (over 130% the price of) the $80 books our schools use now. Second, did I mention you need a $500 iPad to use the book on? Third, low cost is only one of many benefits of open textbooks.

The iBooks Author EULA also works in favor of open textbooks. If you want to sell your iBooks Author created book, the only channel you are allowed to sell it through is the iBookstore. Period. The slow rate of purchase of $500 iPads in budget-strapped schools, combined with the sales channel lock-in, combined with Apple capping prices at $14.99, combined with Apple taking a cut of your revenue when you sell through their store will be enough to make many commercial outfits think twice about distributing their books for the iPad at all. However, if you give your book away for free, say, under a CC license, then you can distribute it for free through the iBookstore and any other channels you wish. The iBooks Author EULA actually creates a very strange commercial-book-hostile / open-book-friendly environment.

Anyway, all this to say that the Apple announcement is great news for open textbook advocates. The publishers have validated our argument that very inexpensive books can still be high quality by pricing their own books under $15, but they have still managed to price themselves out of the market through their protectionism (forced repurchase every year) and lock-in on the $500 iPad platform. The whole thing is a capital w Win for open textbooks advocates and everyone else who cares about affordability.

Something very exciting happened today.

The Utah State Office of Education announced that (1) it will be supporting the development of Utah-specific open textbooks for all secondary language arts, mathematics, and science courses, and (2) that the USOE recommends that all schools across the state consider these open textbooks for adoption in their secondary language arts, mathematics, and science courses for this fall (2012). The math and science books will be remixes of CK-12 materials (as per our existing pilot program), while the Language Arts books will be produced locally. The Hewlett Foundation is providing partial funding.

Yep.

This potentially impacts all 275,000 6th-12th graders in the state of Utah. The cost savings will be astronomical, but I don’t have exact figures yet. More on that in the days to come. My team and I will continue to research the impact on learning outcomes and the actual cost savings associated with the move, as we have with the pilot program the past two years.

The full text of the release is below. This is a historic day for Utah students, schools, and taxpayers. It’s also a historic day for open education. Congratulations to everyone involved.

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January 25, 2012

For Immediate Release

Contact:
Sydnee Dickson, Teaching and Learning director
801-538-7739 :: sydnee.dickson@schools.utah.gov

Utah State Office of Education to Create Open Textbooks

SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah State of Office of Education (USOE) today announced it will develop and support open textbooks in the key curriculum areas of secondary language arts, science, and mathematics. USOE will encourage districts and schools throughout the state to consider adopting these textbooks for use beginning this fall.

Open textbooks are textbooks written and synthesized by experts, vetted by peers, and made available online for free access, downloading, and use by anyone. Open textbooks can also be printed through print-on-demand or other printing services for settings in which online use is impossible or impractical. In earlier pilot programs, open textbooks have been printed and provided to more than 3,800 Utah high school science students at a cost of about $5 per book, compared to an average cost of about $80 for a typical high school science textbook.

“Utah’s open textbooks are a great use of technology,” said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Larry K. Shumway. “Texts get into classrooms quickly and can be updated as needed rather than on a publishing schedule – something that’s particularly important in science. The open textbook also adds to Utah’s reputation as the most cost-efficient school system in the country. This is a fantastic way to get the latest textbooks into the hands of Utah’s nearly 600,000 public school students.”

“We’re thrilled that the State of Utah is encouraging school districts to consider adopting open textbooks,” said Barbara Chow, Education Programs director at The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which helped fund the project. “At a time when education budgets are under increasing stress, digital technology in the form of open textbooks now offers the potential to save school systems millions of dollars.”

Later this spring the Utah State Office of Education will invite all districts and charter schools across the state to attend informational meetings and professional development designed to help open textbook adoptions succeed.

The decision to pursue open textbooks at scale comes after two years of successful open textbook pilots led by David Wiley of Brigham Young University’s David O. McKay School of Education. Each pilot was conducted by the BYU-Public School Partnership in partnership with the Utah State Office of Education. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation provided funding. Mathematics and science textbooks will be based on books originally published by the CK12 Foundation, a not-for-profit organization based in California founded with the mission to produce free and open source K-12 materials aligned to state curriculum.

In new research soon to be published in the International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning, Wiley and his colleagues found that Utah high school students learn the same amount of science in classes using the $5 open textbooks as they do in classes using the $80 traditional textbooks.