Univ. of Minnesota Compiles Database of Peer-Reviewed, Open-Access Textbooks

First time accepted submitter BigVig209 writes "Univ. of MN is cataloging open-access textbooks and enticing faculty to review the texts by offering $500 per review. From the article: 'The project is meant to address two faculty critiques of open-source texts: they are hard to locate and they are of indeterminate quality. By building up a peer-reviewed collection of textbooks, available to instructors anywhere, Minnesota officials hope to provide some of the same quality control that historically has come from publishers of traditional textbooks.'"

Comments

At risk proposal

[Grayhand]

There is only one sacred thing to the US government, corporate profits. You can accurately determine their reaction to any proposal based on whether it benefits corporations or not. The point is if it's seen to harm corporate profits then expect government funding to get cut. Open sourced doesn't make the rich richer so expect the government to be against it. Government of the people and by the people died 200 years ago. Now we have government of the corporations and by the corporations. Oil companies are consulted on the clean air act so what is they likelihood of the government supporting open sourced text books? Don't hold your breath.

Re:At risk proposal

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Duh, how do you think people would be employeed or government would get taxes if corporates did not have profits?

This may come as a shock to you, but there are many possible economic-political systems, of which rapacious corporatist plutocracy is only one.

Re:At risk proposal

[azalin]

No one said companies should not profit from their work. This is more along the lines of "we do not thinks your work is worth the price you charge" and or "we think we can do this a lot cheaper than you can". Like deciding you'd rather set up your own IT department instead of paying an other company to do it for. The analogy get's even closer if you get your IT department to write some software to replace one you have been paying large license fees for. Cost / benefit analysis - capitalism at it's finest.

Re:At risk proposal

[dkleinsc]

We don't have to imagine an answer to that: Look at the early northern United States, where lots of the economic activity was based around independent farmers and craftsmen.

Re:At risk proposal

[Baloroth]

You do realize the University of Minnesota is a public (i.e. government funded) institution, so in answer to your post: actually, we can expect implicit government sponsorship of open source textbooks right now, since that is, you know, exactly what is happening.

And it isn't a tiny university either: it's one of the biggest in the US (fourth largest, actually) and is moderately well respected, for a public university, so this isn't some fly-by-night desperate-to-save money kind of place (not any more so than your average university, although granted pretty much of them like to save money).

Re:I want some of that action.

[bmo]

You signed a form saying that you would actually review and give criticism.

Demonstrate you deserve the $500 and that you read the book or be arrested for attempted fraud.

--
BMO

What about schools?

[horza]

It would be good to have a set of peer reviewed books that covers education all the way up to 16 years old. Maths, languages, etc. This way no child will have to pay for books ever again. Children can get a Nook loaded with every book they will ever need the day they start school, so advanced students are able read ahead. A developing country could then simply localise a selection to create its own curriculum. Those deciding which modules to do can read the books they will be studying for that subject before choosing. Children moving country can download the new set in advance and familiarise themselves so they don't start their new school at a disadvantage.

So many countries are bitching about ThePirateBay which is an international repository of arts and culture, but can't be bothered to create an international repository of where people can learn basic reading, writing and math skills.

Phillip.

Re:What about schools?

[Anonymous Coward]

And where does the money to create, update and maintain these books come from? I think that's the point, we can have free textbooks and could have had them for the cost of printing, but somebody ultimately needs to pay for their creation, evaluation and the various other costs involved.

I'd love to have free things too, but some things are way too time intensive to expect people to create for free. This isn't software, it's substantially harder to crowd source it than it is software and a lot harder to decide whether or not it's working. You can't throw it through a compiler and see if it works properly.

Re:What about schools?

[ThatsMyNick]

The Govt, and inturn your taxes? Creating, updating, and maintaining text books does not cost as much as the publishers want you to believe. A small organization, that can be tasked to receive feedback from teachers and parents, and can update textbooks is pretty good. Hell, make it a prestigious organization, run by top teachers (not administrators, the ones that actually teach), and offer special perks to these members, and you dont even spend much on it.

Re:What about schools?

[Anonymous Coward]

How is writing a grade school maths textbook harder than writing the linux kernel?

the latter is massively time intensive yet people have done it for free already.

people can and have written maths books and released them for free:

http://www.opensourcemath.org/books/

Re:What about schools?

[bcrowell]

This is a great idea, but may be difficult to put into practice. Here in California, then-gov. Schwarzenegger tried to do essentially what you're describing with the Free Digital Textbook Initiative. I was involved in that as an author. AFAICT, the FDTI was a complete failure. State senator Darrell Steinberg is trying to do something similar, but I don't know if it will work any better this time around: [1], [2]. I think there are a number of fundamental problems. One is that textbook selection in K-12 education in the US tends to be extremely bureaucratic and top-down, and it's virtually impossible to change that overnight, as Schwarzenegger tried to do. It's completely different from higher education, where the assumption is that professors can choose whatever text they like as a matter of academic freedom. My experience is with writing free physics textbooks. They're written for college students, but have also been adopted by a bunch of high schools. However, almost all of the high school adoptions have been from private schools, mainly Catholic schools.

There is also a huge financial incentive for the non-free textbook publishers to maintain their positions in the market. The really enthusiastic supporters were hardware manufacturers. For them it looked like a huge opportunity, because they thought they could sell a ton of computers to schools in order to give students access to the electronic books.

Re:What about schools?

[__aaltlg1547]

From the government, which currently pays textbook publishers to make them.

Have University math departments make math texts for grade sxhools. University history departments can make history texts, etc.

The projects could be cooperative among the state governments. And since there would be no profit motive to keep obsolescing old texts you wouldn't have so much churn or so many errors.

Textbooks are Buggy Whips

[retroworks]

They need to think outside the box. Professors may only a assign a chapter or two of a textbook as it is (one of the bones I had to pick about buying some in business school). Wikipedia is being built paragraph by paragraph with a kind of "open source" peer review. Khan Academy, RepairFAQ.org, and IFIXIT.org are other instructional models. I was relieved when Raytheon (military sales) exited the USA school textbook market (sold out DC Heath in 1995) and am not sure I want their textbooks back, by the way.

"same quality control"?!?

[djchristensen]

I hope the open access books don't have the same quality control as from traditional publishers. My daughter's in high school and has some pretty atrocious text books. In her AP history class, the teacher dislikes the book so much (for organizational and content reasons) that she has supplied alternative materials as much as possible, mostly at her own expense. She still has to "teach the book" to meet state requirements, but that doesn't mean the text is beyond reproach (and perhaps just the opposite, given the politicized lobby-driven nature of text book selection these days; I live in Texas so it's a bit of a sore point with me).

I think the Wikipedia-style crowd-sourced approach holds tremendous promise, especially if there is an active feedback mechanism where kids and parents can be involved as well as educators. The power of many, many people each providing a little bit of the work is staggering and inspiring. As long as the publishing lobby doesn't buy any protective legislation, this is an experiment I'm looking forward to.

Re:I want some of that action.

[dkleinsc]

It depends: If you defraud big businesses, rich people, or government, you're in trouble. If you defraud people with no power inside big business or government, then you can get a cabinet post.