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

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?

[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: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.

"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.