Textbooks

I’m very happy to announce that BYU has just received a grant from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The pilot project will examine the deeper learning and cost savings that can be achieved when open textbooks replace traditional, expensive textbooks in public high school science classrooms. 15-20 public high school science teachers in Utah will replace their expensive, traditional textbooks with open textbooks from CK12.org for the 2010-2011 school year. Approximately 2,000 students will be impacted by the changes. Most will use printed versions of the books, while a few hundred students in one-to-one schools will use the online versions of the books on netbooks or iPads. Teachers will continue to supplement the CK12 books with additional resources and activities just as they have historically supplemented expensive, traditional textbooks. ...

Earlier this year I blogged about what I thought should go into an open textbook bill (with clarifications the next day). I’m extremely pleased that Senator Durbin has introduced a bill which closely resembles these recommendations and therefore, to my mind, is on exactly the right track. You can read Durbin’s remarks as he introduced the bill, and then study the full text of S. 1714 on GovTrack (where you can also subscribe to a feed of all bill-related activity). ...

The CBC has posted a great interview with Eric Frank of Flat World Knowledge about open textbooks. While an abbreviated version will run on the air, you can listen to (and download) the full, uncut interview online.

George Siemens has written a very thoughtful analysis of Flat World Knowledge (and the change process generally) titled Change that prevents real change. I want to respond to a few of his thoughts. FWK will succeed for the wrong reasons. It will succeed because it tweaks the existing model of textbooks just enough to disrupt publishers, but not enough to disrupt the industry as a whole. FWK is integrated into the system of education: authors, bookstores, faculty, and students. It uses existing reward metrics (recognition and a little bit of revenue for the author) and addresses the biggest complaint students have about textbooks: costs. Essentially, the existing system is used as the infrastructure for FWK model. And that’s the problem. ...

George has responded to my response to his earlier post as a comment on my recent post. It’s a great bit of thinking and writing worthy of being its own post! I respond below: My point is that openness is the virtue to be pursued (I feel silly making this statement to you – you’ve done more for this “movement” than almost anyone else has). Not sorta-openness. Or sorta-affordable openness. Full openness to download, edit, reuse, add media, etc. is the target. Settling for affordable quasi-openness may sell cheaper textbooks and may delay more foundational change. ...

If only all first releases were as good as these… Mark Horner’s Free High School Science Texts has released version 0 of its materials. Wow! I think I know what the Open High School will be using when we open next year! Hopefully Mark and his team will choose to migrate the license from the GFDL to CC By-SA now that the new version of the GFDL has made this possible. Otherwise remixing these materials is going to be a nightmare. Even if they become CC By-SA it will still be nigh unto impossible thanks to incompatibilities amongst CC’s own licenses (esp. CC By-SA and CC By-NC-SA). But we shall overcome… ...

I pulled these paragraphs from my Commission testimony in the interest of time and not blurring my central message (higher education needs to stay in step with society). I submitted this recommendation to the Commission separately, and thought you might enjoy it. I would appreciate comments / thoughts: Affordability. Part of the rising cost of higher education for students is the ever-increasing cost of textbooks - textbooks can add as much as $1000 per year to the cost of college. The National Association of College Bookstores says prices of college textbooks have risen nearly 40 percent in the past five years. In a survey of textbooks by the California Student Public Interest Research Group, new editions of textbooks cost 58 percent more than previous versions, with an average cost of over $100 per book. (Crane, 2004; Pressler, 2004). The impact of these costs is especially severe on low-income students. According to the General Accounting Office, the costs of textbooks represents 26 percent of the cost of tuition and fees at public four year schools, and almost a full three quarters of the cost of tuition and fees at 2 year public schools where low-income students are more likely to enroll (Bershears, 2005). ...