Global Text Project – Wiki Textbooks

Grooves writes, "A new initiative spearheaded by a University of Georgia professor aims to produce a library of 1,000 wiki textbooks by tapping the collaborative power of wiki. Inspiration for the project came from a computer science course that wrote its own textbook on XML when no suitable commercial offerings were available. From the article: 'The Global Text Project will work a bit differently from most wikis. Each chapter of each book will be overseen by an academic with knowledge of that field. Although the site will allow anyone to make changes, these will not become "official" until an editor signs off on them.' Textbooks free as in speech, and beer? Sign me up."

Comments

Good

[PrinceAshitaka]

I am looing forward to this. While MIT's attempts to open up thier classes on the internet seemed novel, it was not the resource I was hoping it would be. I was hoping it would be a good reference place when I needed to remember something from my college days as all my textbooks from college are buried in storage. This shows promise but I will reserve my judgement for it's usefullness for now.

Re:Good

[gwjenkins]

Can I put in a vote for Highschool textbooks as well as University. There is one wikibook so far that looks particularly good for students http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Algebra_I_in_Simple_E nglish. Clear, highschool level textbooks would be just fantastic. Cheers.

Wicked!

[Chaffar]

Inspiration for the project came from a computer science course that wrote its own textbook on XML when no suitable commercial offerings were available

A course that writes its own textbooks? Sweeet...

Re:Wicked!

[dk-software-engineer]

You spelled "wikied" wrong.

With OLPC/CM1

[Anonymous Coward]

Will this work with the One Laptop Per Child program (OLPC)? I thought I had heard that the OLPC planned to use wiki technology for books as one of its goals. A major need of that program is free, open, but accurate and factual content, not just technology.

Its been done

[Anonymous Coward]

Connexions - online textbook repository. All XML-ized.

http://cnx.org/

And the Google Techtalk:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6852287090 518403675&q=http%3A%2F%2Fcnx.org%2F

Re:Its been done

[legoburner]

The reason nobody has heard of it is probably the evil college bookstore cartel. They will break your hands with hammers if they find out you have been using free textbooks instead of the ones they sell. Not to mention what happens to professors that dont require a textbook which costs at least $50 for a course... let's just say they are not usually teaching by the summer semester.

Re:Its been done

[interiot]

That's right. Wikimedia foundation also tried to start up a wikiproject to increase gas mileage in cars, but the auto industry quietly put the kebash on that too.

Re:Its been done

[StupendousMan]

I am a university professor. I don't require my students to purchase textbooks for the introductory physics courses I teach. I provide my complete lecture notes online, and permit students to use older textbooks if they wish; after all, the material we're covering hasn't changed in the past few hundred years, so _any_ textbook they can find will serve as a useful reference.

I write my own homework problems so that my students won't have to purchase a textbook simply for that purpose.

The bookstore hasn't broken my hands, nor has the university reprimanded me. We've just started a new fall quarter this week, and I'm still teaching.

So, in brief, your statement is not correct.

Re:Its been done

[The Spoonman]

As others have pointed out, you are the exception, rather than the norm. I believe you might even find you're the exception at RIT, too. While I attended UR, I had many friends at RIT who shared similar circumstances. Specifically, we had professors who insisted on specific versions of books only. The next to worst were those who didn't let you know what the requirements were until the first class, so in most cases you had to RUN to the bookstore after class in hopes of catching one of the few used books that were available. The worst, for whom I reserve a special place in hell, are those who insisted you purchase THEIR book....and then it wasn't used in the class.

Re:Its been done

[bcrowell]

The reason nobody has heard of it is probably the evil college bookstore cartel.
I think it's a bit of a stretch to blame college bookstores for this. They're mostly nonprofit. It's the publishers who are really being evil.

They will break your hands with hammers if they find out you have been using free textbooks instead of the ones they sell.
I'm currently typing this with two unbroken hands, after 9 years of using free textbooks in my physics classes.

There are already hundreds of free college textbooks on the web:

• theassayer.org (a catalog of free books in general, not just textbooks; accepts user-submitted reviews)
• textbookrevolution.org (a site specifically devoted to free textbooks)
• libertytextbooks.org (a selection of high-quality free textbooks)

Wikibooks was originally envisioned as a project that would have textbooks as its main raison d'etre, but IMO it's failed at that goal. Although there are quite a few textbooks at the wikibooks site, almost none of them are of high enough quality to be widely adopted for classroom use. I don't think that's particularly surprising, because the wiki method is simply unsuited to the task of writing textbooks. The killer app for wikibooks right now seems to be books about video games.

wiki process

[joe094287523459087]

i would hate to see how they determine what's "notable."

the wikipedia encyclopedia is ok for science topics but for all the cultural/historical entries, it's like the worst of MySpace combined with the most boring blogs. half the admins there pound anyone who disagrees with them into the ground by using the "rules" and the senior staff arbitarily make secret decisions w/o any oversight. so i don't trust wikianything any more.

speak the wikitruth! http://www.wikitruth.info/

Re:wiki process

[rtb61]

Pay a lot of people enough (not necessarily all that much) and they will any write kind of crap you like and swear that every word is the whole truth and nothing but the truth, in any kind of public forum you choose.

Hell, they are a lot of people who will do it for free just to get their 15 minutes of fame.

The first thing I do to try a validate what is and is not the truth is search for vested interests (who paid whom and whether they are continuing to do so).

I have sadly found that the greater the amount of money involved the more likely you are to get lied to and that basically free tends to be a far better source of truthiness.

Re:wiki process

[Colin Smith]

Do you know who edits your text books? I mean, there's a name, but how do you know they're competent, unbiased? How do you even know the name is real? Wikipedia is no different, the veracity of information you receive fom any source should be questioned. The difference with wikis is that this particular problem is evident rather than hidden.

Re:wiki process

[Colin Smith]

generally people in the textbook industry have to at least have some kind of quality in their product. they are, after all, selling textbooks.

Really. And you personally have evidence that all sold textbooks are accurate? Ford sold the Pinto, a car which exploded if you looked at it wrong, the Mercedes E class has about 30% of them go wrong despite being a "quality" car, far behind much cheaper Hondas. Tell me again about the price of something and it's quality.

someone who has never heard of marine biology can edit the entry on the octopus because they feel like it.

And someone who feels passionately about the subject, has spent their life working the field of marine biology can edit the entry on the octopus just as easily.

Re:wiki process

[HuguesT]

Wikipedia works on the principle that sociopaths are few.

Anyone can edit the marine biology to put random stuff in it, but chances are the main author(s) will notice and rectify it quickly. This gets old quickly for would-be defacers. At the same time quite a few people working in marine biology might contribute to the page and correct errors.

In the textbook industry, there is some kind of quality control but it's done by a tiny panel of about one or two people. Usually textbooks are written by between 1 and 4 authors. This is not very many. If a reader notices an error it's unlikely to be corrected quickly.

So yeah, you can compare textbooks and wikis, and it's not all in the favour of textbooks.

wikibooks - 2003

[Colin Smith]

Wiki based educational books on just about everything.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Too early to say

[arun_s]

While the idea is interesting, the project is still in its early stages (only 3 books are available, 2 are incomplete).
Wikibooks has progressed farther, but as TFA notes, this one operates on slightly stricter policies that might be useful for academic books.

Wikibooks? Wikiversity?

[interiot]

Why not join forces with Wikibooks or Wikiversity? Though as long as GlobalText is licensed in GFDL (they don't seem to say anywhere on their site?), then the projects will help each other out anyway.

License

[Ed Thomson]

The project will create open content electronic textbooks that will be freely available from a Web site. Distribution will also be possible via paper, CD, or DVD. Our goal initially is to focus on content development and Web distribution, and we will work with relevant authorities to facilitate dissemination by other means when bandwidth is unavailable or inadequate.

The major difference between this project and wikibooks is the licensing. The Global Text Project looks like all the content will be given away free but the project is at the mercy of the project leaders. At least with wikibooks I know the content is safe as it is all under the GNU Free Documentation License or compatiable license (such as public domain).

Editorial POV

[HikingStick]

As a part time tech prof, I believe this to be a worthwhile endeavor. My early reservation, however, is regarding the editorial framework. If each chapter has a different editor, it may be difficult to develop a common voice for the entire WikiText. Also, single editors (vs. an editorial review team with a chief editor) would limit the editorial perspective, increasing the liklihood that the materials would convey the editor's personal biases to a greater degree (it's inevitable for any work, but most in the academic world are not reviewed by a single set of eyes). This latter concern would be somewhat mitigated by the Wiki format, since regular revisions may be suggested, but that leads me to one final concern...

Unless the WikiTexts are printed for use, or updated on a limited schedule, there is the possibility that students may study different versions, making assessment (based on assigned reading) more difficult. [I would hope the content would not change to such a degree as to invalidate previous versions, but it is a possibility.]

I will watch expectantly (and hopefully contribute) as this develops...

Moo

[Chacham]

Class, wait a momnet, as i revert your textbooks to the previous edit...

Where do I sign up?

[Rob T Firefly]

I'd like to be the one to doodle futuristic cars in all the margins.

Teacher-specific Version Control

[G4from128k]

I would hope that this wiki would have tools to let a teacher "lock-in" a version of the text for use during the term. It would be frustrating to discover that midway through the term that the wiki changed material in some chapter -- adding material the teacher had not plan to cover or removing material that they had. I could even see some teachers preferring to retain a particular version of the text for a couple of years if they had invested heavily in teaching plans that were specific to that version.

The ultimate tool would let teachers mix and match chapters -- picking different versions from different years to suit their tastes.

The point is that once a wiki transitions from casual/random access (e.g. wikipedia) to one of methodical use, then the user needs more say in versions or some way to retain their favored version.

In the long run...

[God of Lemmings]

I think that this could produce textbooks that have content not directly influenced by governments, religions, and corporations. There is likely to be some level of resistance in certain places depending on the subject, but the overall result should be positive.

This ain't Wikipedia - this is real knowledge

[DiamondGeezer]

From the article: 'The Global Text Project will work a bit differently from most wikis. Each chapter of each book will be overseen by an academic with knowledge of that field.

This is excellent.

Free knowledge written by experts. Sweet.

Re:This ain't Wikipedia - this is real knowledge

[dayhiker]

But the experts have to participate. Professors generally review textbooks for money or academic credit. Plus, folks in academia do not like wiki's in the first place, and will not give scholarly credit for promotions/tenure for this work (too bad, it is worthwhile). It seems to me full online textbooks written by a small group of professors or experts seems more likely to reverse the high cost of textbooks. There is a good start at www.textbookrevolution.org with this idea.

Homework just got easy

[dintech]

1) Do homework without reading textbook 2) Change wiki 3) Hand in 'correct' homework 4) ??? 5) Profit

Finished Goods.

[twitter]

how would you reference the texts? Would the editors have finalized 'editions' that go into an uneditable archive mode, and only the 'latest' editions are wiki-able?

Yes. Wikibooks makes PDFs for "completed" texts.

That would at least be managable from a referencing point of view, but would detract a bit of the credibility from the 'work in progress' copies.

If only dead tree publishers had that kind of credibility for text books. The rate of minor and meaningless changes to create new "editions" is outrageous. I'm looking forward to wikibooks being an island of stability in the academic publishing world.

Re:Wikibooks? Wikiversity?

[maxwell demon]

But what about starting the work on Wikibooks, and then after there's enough material, make an "academic version" where the academics go over the whole text, correct any mistakes there may be, and (besides adding those improvements on Wikibooks) publish that separately (which they of course are allowed to do under the GFDL). The separate version would have the advantage of stability, and you could be sure that academics have approved all of it. I think this way you would get the best of both worlds.

That was a bad joke.

[twitter]

"Broken hands" and "fired teachers" comments are joke comments made to disrupt useful conversation about the real failings of paper texts and the academic publishers. While some greed heads at my University might have a cow at the thought of anyone giving away their precious "intellectual property", the vast majority of professors remember that part of their mission is education. Collaborative, electronic textbooks are sure to overtake traditional publications in the same way free software has overtaken non free. In the end, wiki texts are just a more efficient way to do the job.

I like you class notes. Have you seen or thought about using them as the basis for a wikibook?

Wiki edit on Green's Theorem

[autophile]

The number of integrals in Green's Theorem has tripled over the past year.

--Rob

Okay ...

[ggvaidya]

I can't tell if you're an elephant enthusiast, or if you're making a very subtle reference to the story of the blind men and the elephant ...

Ah, the joys of making random inferences late at night ... !