University of Missouri To Use Open Source And Other Cheaper Alternatives For General Education Textbook (columbiatribune.com)

Rudi Keller, writing for Columbia Tribune: The University of Missouri will move quickly to use open source and other cheaper alternatives for general education textbooks, building on initiatives already in place, system President Mun Choi said. At an event with members of the Board of Curators, administrators, lawmakers, faculty from all four campuses and student representatives, Choi said the intent is to save money for students while providing up-to-date materials. Faculty, including graduate assistants, will be eligible for incentive payments of $1,000 to $10,000 for preparing and adopting materials that save students money, Choi said. Textbooks are sometimes overlooked as a contributor to the cost of attending college, Choi said. "We want to provide our students an opportunity to have a low cost, high-quality alternative," Choi said.

Comments

Re:fp

[Anonymous Coward]

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Intro subjects don't need constant updates!

[Anonymous Coward]

Physics 101, Chemistry 101, Calculus 101, etc. can basically be taught the same way forever (unless we come up with some dazzling new educational theories that change how to present idea to students). The material is not changing and it may never change at the introductory level. These are prime candidates for an open source or CC textbook that anyone can use. No good reason at all to buy from publishers who roll out a 'new edition' every couple years that basically just corrects errata or (more likely) just refreshes the pictures.

Re:Intro subjects don't need constant updates!

[HornWumpus]

Those are already all 'weed outs'. Let's just make sure that the open source book is GOOD.

We could just teach Physics and Calc out of 'Principia'...but the fail rate would skyrocket.

E-books

[Rick Schumann]

I've always thought that the perfect use for e-books is textbooks, especially since they can be yanked back and/or edited at will; whereas I hate them for that ability and how it's been sometimes abused when it comes to purchased literature (I prefer printed paper books, TYVM) textbooks are often updated, and textbooks are very often only good to the student for one semester, but can cost hundreds of dollars. An e-book version could eliminate all these problems, as well as the massive weight of carrying around a bunch of textbooks; students would just need a laptop (which they'd have anyway) or a tablet computer, or even just an e-book reader. E-book readers are inexpensive, and they could even be rented to students by the college bookstore. The e-book textbooks themselves could also be rented; you'd just pay for access for a given timespan. College bookstores would only really have to keep consumable materials in-stock, and could also be smaller. Win-win for everyone.

Re:E-books

[tlhIngan]

I've always thought that the perfect use for e-books is textbooks, especially since they can be yanked back and/or edited at will; whereas I hate them for that ability and how it's been sometimes abused when it comes to purchased literature (I prefer printed paper books, TYVM) textbooks are often updated, and textbooks are very often only good to the student for one semester, but can cost hundreds of dollars. An e-book version could eliminate all these problems, as well as the massive weight of carrying around a bunch of textbooks; students would just need a laptop (which they'd have anyway) or a tablet computer, or even just an e-book reader. E-book readers are inexpensive, and they could even be rented to students by the college bookstore. The e-book textbooks themselves could also be rented; you'd just pay for access for a given timespan. College bookstores would only really have to keep consumable materials in-stock, and could also be smaller. Win-win for everyone.

They do make e-Textbooks. In fact, most textbooks have e-versions already. They're not preferred because ebooks are still a lot less convenient to randomly go through than a real book. The only real advantage is it's much easier to search an ebook. But highlighting, bookmarking and flipping back and forth are just a lot less convenient than a book of post-it notes, post-it stickers, fingers and a real highlighter. It's also often much quicker to move through a real book - if you need to refer to something 100 pages ago, it's just so much quicker flipping pages than clicking the page thumb or entering a page number.

Now, that doesn't mean you can't have real paper books that are fully updatable - in many industries they print pages on looseleaf with dates and page numbers and often paginated specially so if you update a section, you just replace the old page with a new one. And perhaps once a year they print a master list of all pages and revisions to ensure your copy is completely up to date with the latest revisions of all the pages. Even better, they often add change bars so you can see what was updated.

Doesn't need to be Good, just better

[Roger W Moore]

Let's just make sure that the open source book is GOOD.

It does not have to be good it just has to be better than the books from the publishers. Many of these are of increasingly poor quality and, for physics, often have major omissions or simplifications to the point of being wrong. One of the worst examples is where a lot of books categorically state that resonance occurs exactly at the natural frequency of vibration for an oscillator and fake plots to show this over a wide range of damping.

Sadly though the open source texts I have seen are even worse. OpenStax makes all the mistakes above plus more e.g. it uses the Tacoma Narrows bridge as an example of resonance (it's actually aeroelastic flutter which is anti-damping) while ignoring London's Millenium footbridge which is an excellent example. It also came out with a series of support videos which were so full of the conceptual errors that you see students make I had to wonder if they were prepared by a struggling student instead of a faculty member.

We could just teach Physics and Calc out of 'Principia'...but the fail rate would skyrocket.

Good luck teaching first-year special relativity out of it, not to mention all the wave-like properties of light like diffraction. Even in a first-year physics course, there is a lot of physics which Newton had no clue about.

Re:Doesn't need to be Good, just better

[HornWumpus]

Tacoma narrows was resonance. Destructive aeroelastic flutter is an _example_ of resonance. There is one dweeb making a name out this pedantic distinction and guarding the wiki article, while ignoring that the wiki article on flutter describes it as a resonant phenomenon. He should be ignored, it's an example of everything wrong with wikipedia.

I've seen the god damn film, it was torquing in the second harmonic.

Re:All schools should do this.

[joelgrimes]

Hire some experts to write text books under a creative commons licence

Check

sell hard copies at cost

Check

electronic copies free as .epubs, .pdfs

Check

They have math, from pre-algebra to calculus plus statistics. Physics, chemistry, astronomy. biology, microbiology, economics, psychology, U.S. history

There are quite a few efforts along the lines of what you are suggesting, but Openstax is my favorite because they are well funded (Gates Foundation and Hewlett Foundation, among others), they produce a consistent, high-quality product, they don't try to suck you into their ecosystem - they just write and give away the textbooks.

The Open Textbook Network is also very good, but they are more curators of all free textbooks and not so much producers.

The state of higher, public education in Missouri

[lionchild]

With the political shift of Missouri to a Republican slant, while Primary Public Education in Missouri will hit 'full funding' or come close to it in the state, (which triggers other interesting, and positive events to happen,) we have seen Higher Education take a major hit in funding. They've lost $150M across the state. The University of Missouri - Columbia, the 'bright and shining star' of the UM system, has been rocked with scandals that have caused the turnover of high-level potions in the preceding years, which has caused their attendance to plummet.

With such a large loss in their budget from state funding, it's not surprising to see UM looking to not just cut, but slash costs in other areas. While not rocked by scandals, other Public Higher Education institutes are feeling the very same belt-tightening, such as the University of Central Missouri. "It used to be a college where a farm-boy could set a cow or two, and get a good education." That's a direct quote I've heard from more than one alumni, but it's far, far from the case any more.

I suspect that states like Missouri, will struggle for the next few years, with Public Higher Education. It's becoming a necessity for entry-level jobs in our Knowledge Age (opposed to the Industrial Age), where Knowledge Workers have to have stronger skill sets. States and the US will struggle in this area until we figure out it needs to become easier and more reasonable for all High School graduates to be able to attend 4-year and trade schools to make themselves fully ready for the job market.