California universities to produce 50 open-source textbooks

Backers hope to offset rising cost of traditional textbooks.

Read the whole story

 

[beebee]

PTL. College texts books are a rip off.

 

[deet]

The potential for awesome here is exciting. Having state-backed support for such a project is bound to bring the existing projects into a new era of legitimacy, assuming the quality can be maintained.

But right away, I see foes in states like Texas (my own home) and the existing textbook industry. As this ball gets rolling, I'd have more than a few reservations that things would get darker before they got lighter. What happens when there's a Wikipedia-style edit war between ideological extremists? Looking forward to radical branches rewriting history and science, and the ensuing comment threads.

 

[jbouzan]

This would be absolutely fantastic to get a decently written introductory physics lab book. Perhaps biology too, the book my university used was awful.

 

[Tim Lee]

The potential for awesome here is exciting. Having state-backed support for such a project is bound to bring the existing projects into a new era of legitimacy, assuming the quality can be maintained.

But right away, I see foes in states like Texas (my own home) and the existing textbook industry. As this ball gets rolling, I'd have more than a few reservations that things would get darker before they got lighter. What happens when there's a Wikipedia-style edit war between ideological extremists? Looking forward to radical branches rewriting history and science, and the ensuing comment threads.

It doesn't sound like they're necessarily going to use an open-source *process* to produce the textbooks. They may still be written by a traditional author and produced by a traditional publisher. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the alternative.

 

[jbouzan]

The potential for awesome here is exciting. Having state-backed support for such a project is bound to bring the existing projects into a new era of legitimacy, assuming the quality can be maintained.

But right away, I see foes in states like Texas (my own home) and the existing textbook industry. As this ball gets rolling, I'd have more than a few reservations that things would get darker before they got lighter. What happens when there's a Wikipedia-style edit war between ideological extremists? Looking forward to radical branches rewriting history and science, and the ensuing comment threads.

Open source doesn't mean publicly editable. Extremists would be free to fork the book, but that doesn't mean they can change the state produced one.

 

[Modab]

The best part is that if these textbooks fail in some way (like most textbooks), some one else can pick up the pieces and fix it.

 

[lalato]

It doesn't sound like they're necessarily going to use an open-source *process* to produce the textbooks. They may still be written by a traditional author and produced by a traditional publisher. I'm not sure if that's better or worse than the alternative.

It doesn't need to use an open source process so long as the contents can be re-used and edited by someone else to fit their needs. That said, if this mythical someone then posts the newly edited document, and the document is found to be superior to the original, there is nothing stopping people from using it... or even lobbying the state to replace the original with the new document.

To me... that's definitely better than what we currently have.

 

[Jakelshark]

The potential for awesome here is exciting. Having state-backed support for such a project is bound to bring the existing projects into a new era of legitimacy, assuming the quality can be maintained.

But right away, I see foes in states like Texas (my own home) and the existing textbook industry. As this ball gets rolling, I'd have more than a few reservations that things would get darker before they got lighter. What happens when there's a Wikipedia-style edit war between ideological extremists? Looking forward to radical branches rewriting history and science, and the ensuing comment threads.

History books seem to cause the most grief (outside the creationism/ID problem in biology). Hopefully they make it so you can select which areas a teacher wants to focus on and skim the trouble sections that tend to raise the ire of parents. That and you can never have too many history lessons, so a system to facilitate focus would be appreciated.

Plus you can avoid arguments that happen in Texas ("we shouldn't include Oscar Romero because no one knows who Oscar Romero is")

 

[technomom]

So much for Apple's plan to take over the college textbook market. I wonder if they lobbied against this?

 

[PeterWimsey]

Interesting. But here's the sticking point:

SEC. 5. Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this act shall become operative
only if funding for the purposes of this act is provided in an
appropriation in the annual Budget Act or another statute, or through
federal or private funds, or through a combination of state,
federal, and private funds.

So I wonder if the appropriation will make it through? And in what amount - I'd think you'd need around $10 million or so for 50 textbooks.

 

[Jakelshark]

So much for Apple's plan to take over the college textbook market. I wonder if they lobbied against this?

Yeah, because Apple is so heavily invested in textbooks they can't afford to lose their non-existent market share /s

Apple doesn't give a shit about making textbooks, they care about the student using an iPad to read the book (which is why they invested in it in the first place). This proposal works fine with their strategy.

 

[Jakelshark]

Interesting. But here's the sticking point:

SEC. 5. Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this act shall become operative
only if funding for the purposes of this act is provided in an
appropriation in the annual Budget Act or another statute, or through
federal or private funds, or through a combination of state,
federal, and private funds.

So I wonder if the appropriation will make it through? And in what amount - I'd think you'd need around $10 million or so for 50 textbooks.

I imagine it could get some private funds donated if the state wouldn't help pay for it. It's a noble initiative and there are a lot of wealthy individuals in the state, and abroad.

 

[TurboPascal]

Leaving aside for the moment that CA is billions in debt and will soon have 4 cities filing for bankruptcy and rating agencies ready to knock them some more as well as people and companies leaving the state, this does not seem like a priority.

But, here is my question about open source text books.-- given that there have been teachers, professors and other educators (including those from CA) who have been more than happy to revise history to their politcally liking versus actual facts and given that they seem to like to decide what to teach or not teach (including some professor who wrote an editorial in the NY Times saying that math is a waste of time), who gets to vet this material?

seems like an excellent way to push whatever agenda someone has.

In Boston they try to make believe that Paul Revere never existed and in many liberal states anything to do with OFWG who founded this country never really existed. In other part of the country they do not want to teach Darwinism. Some gun grabber in CA may want to argue that the 2nd amendment does not really exist and so on it goes.

Who decides what are facts and what are not?

While it is hard to mess with math formulas and language courses, the history of events or life science courses can be very much skewed to polical ideals

 

[DannyB]

I can see it now.

<openXmlTextbook> . . . insert base64 encoded steaming pile of proprietary binary DRM encrusted gobbledygook here . . .</openXmlTextbook>

 

[pavon]

In particular the law releases the books under the CC-BY license, which allows any modification and even incorporation into proprietary works as long as attribution is given.

The creative commons licenses span the realm of completely permission (CC0) to pretty restrictive (CC-BY-ND-NC), so just saying something is covered under a creative common license doesn't really tell people anything.

 

[kaleberg]

This sounds like a great idea. It's probably not quite the Alfonsine tables that powered astronomy for a few centuries, but it is one of the great state supported initiatives. (I'll say this even if this particular program fails. The gauntlet has been dropped. Another similar initiative will succeed.)

For one thing, it frees textbooks from arbitrary delivery formats. Lots of publishers would love to get a device lock on their market. Having open format textbooks makes this impossible.

It is also great for instructors who have to specify a complete textbook rather than only the chapters of interest. A lot of my undergraduate course textbooks at MIT in the 70s were developed by the professors and copied offset onto 8.5x11 by the school's copying service, because existing textbooks were inadequate. A lot of teachers would love to be able combine various chapters and intermix their own material, examples and commentary.

Textbook prices have gone insane. Textbooks used to cost $10 - $20. Now they run from $100 - $200, often for the same material. The minimum wage is not up to $100 an hour yet. This is way out of scale, though education costs have inflated similarly. This time technology can help.

 

[Jakelshark]

Leaving aside for the moment that CA is billions in debt and will soon have 4 cities filing for bankruptcy and rating agencies ready to knock them some more as well as people and companies leaving the state, this does not seem like a priority.

But, here is my question about open source text books.-- given that there have been teachers, professors and other educators (including those from CA) who have been more than happy to revise history to their politcally liking versus actual facts and given that they seem to like to decide what to teach or not teach (including some professor who wrote an editorial in the NY Times saying that math is a waste of time), who gets to vet this material?

seems like an excellent way to push whatever agenda someone has.

In Boston they try to make believe that Paul Revere never existed and in many liberal states anything to do with OFWG who founded this country never really existed. In other part of the country they do not want to teach Darwinism. Some gun grabber in CA may want to argue that the 2nd amendment does not really exist and so on it goes.

Who decides what are facts and what are not?

While it is hard to mess with math formulas and language courses, the history of events or life science courses can be very much skewed to polical ideals

You can deal with that once there are cheap alternatives. Arguably, the price of the books is a higher priority than questionable content, inclusions, revisions, and removals.

The problem with the current market is a state like Texas basically dictates what everyone else will use (and therefore include) because they are the biggest purchasing body. There needs to be a national standard of contents, from which local communities can tailor to the needs of the students.

 

[pavon]

Leaving aside for the moment that CA is billions in debt and will soon have 4 cities filing for bankruptcy and rating agencies ready to knock them some more as well as people and companies leaving the state, this does not seem like a priority.

Once these are released, they could cut all scholarships by $500, and the students and state would both be better off financially.

But, here is my question about open source text books.-- given that there have been teachers, professors and other educators (including those from CA) who have been more than happy to revise history to their politcally liking versus actual facts and given that they seem to like to decide what to teach or not teach (including some professor who wrote an editorial in the NY Times saying that math is a waste of time), who gets to vet this material?

The books are approved by the California board of education, which already approves the commercial books that are used in schools. So this problem will be no worse (or better) than it already is.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

In particular the law releases the books under the CC-BY license, which allows any modification and even incorporation into proprietary works as long as attribution is given.

The creative commons licenses span the realm of completely permission (CC0) to pretty restrictive (CC-BY-ND-NC), so just saying something is covered under a creative common license doesn't really tell people anything.

So it's the textbook equivalent of a BSD license.

 

[AnonymousRich]

Wow.

First CA bans employers and universities from demanding facebook (and other) passwords.

Now this.

It's been a good week.

I just hope they don't lose momentum.

 

[dnjake]

"It will be interesting to see how good the resulting textbooks are. It seems unlikely that having the government issue an RFP would be a good way to develop, say, an open-source operating system"

In fact government funding made large contributions to the development of computer operating system technology, open source or otherwise. Major examples include BSD Unix and the Internet.

 

[ineluki]

I applaud this! I am attending University in Pittsburgh and the Math Dept has switched to an Open Source book for the Intro the Real Analysis course. Due to the ability to edit the book they were able to "fix" the issues that made it not match the course objectives. There is a strong desire in the Dept to get a good, cheap or open-source Calc I-III book, but they haven't found one that meets all those goals.
Hopefully this will produce something close enough for wide-scale adoption. In a Math, Engineering or Physics undergraduate degree the majority of content taught hasn't changed enough in 50-100 years to justify any $100+ textbook except for a few Upper Level courses.
Good Luck and I hope this works.

 

[craigc]

The potential for awesome here is exciting. Having state-backed support for such a project is bound to bring the existing projects into a new era of legitimacy, assuming the quality can be maintained.

But right away, I see foes in states like Texas (my own home) and the existing textbook industry. As this ball gets rolling, I'd have more than a few reservations that things would get darker before they got lighter. What happens when there's a Wikipedia-style edit war between ideological extremists? Looking forward to radical branches rewriting history and science, and the ensuing comment threads.

History books seem to cause the most grief (outside the creationism/ID problem in biology). Hopefully they make it so you can select which areas a teacher wants to focus on and skim the trouble sections that tend to raise the ire of parents. That and you can never have too many history lessons, so a system to facilitate focus would be appreciated.

Plus you can avoid arguments that happen in Texas ("we shouldn't include Oscar Romero because no one knows who Oscar Romero is")

Texas is getting a lot of grief here, perhaps somewhat deservedly; however, the Texas (or Kansas or others) textbook issues are for public middle and high schools, while this article is about college textbooks, isn't it? Universities/professors are generally free to pick their own textbooks and the state doesn't have much say in that.

 

[Jakelshark]

The potential for awesome here is exciting. Having state-backed support for such a project is bound to bring the existing projects into a new era of legitimacy, assuming the quality can be maintained.

But right away, I see foes in states like Texas (my own home) and the existing textbook industry. As this ball gets rolling, I'd have more than a few reservations that things would get darker before they got lighter. What happens when there's a Wikipedia-style edit war between ideological extremists? Looking forward to radical branches rewriting history and science, and the ensuing comment threads.

History books seem to cause the most grief (outside the creationism/ID problem in biology). Hopefully they make it so you can select which areas a teacher wants to focus on and skim the trouble sections that tend to raise the ire of parents. That and you can never have too many history lessons, so a system to facilitate focus would be appreciated.

Plus you can avoid arguments that happen in Texas ("we shouldn't include Oscar Romero because no one knows who Oscar Romero is")

Texas is getting a lot of grief here, perhaps somewhat deservedly; however, the Texas (or Kansas or others) textbook issues are for public middle and high schools, while this article is about college textbooks, isn't it? Universities/professors are generally free to pick their own textbooks and the state doesn't have much say in that.

You are correct about college level.

In my high school though, we used college textbooks for about half the curriculum. (honor student, AP classes, private school, etc..)

 

[!insane]

About 'effing time. I just spent almost $1k for a single semester of textbooks for my college child. Other than a stream of income for bookstores and authors, I can't imagine a valid reason to kill trees to educate the iPad generation.

 

[knbgnu]

Interesting. But here's the sticking point:

SEC. 5. Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this act shall become operative
only if funding for the purposes of this act is provided in an
appropriation in the annual Budget Act or another statute, or through
federal or private funds, or through a combination of state,
federal, and private funds.

So I wonder if the appropriation will make it through? And in what amount - I'd think you'd need around $10 million or so for 50 textbooks.

If we go with that estimate, then for the 234,464 students in the UofC system, it'd break even at $43 of savings per student. Even a single freshmen book can manage that.

 

[notoriousKTR]

Authors/Publishers with their yearly revisions, then labeling it as a new edition should be fined and banned. I am pretty sure the Law of Physics, Mathematics theorems, English grammar, etc. don't change so drastically to deem a new edition every year. We all know they just shuffle couple chapters and add a couple new problems/paragraphs. Because publishers control supply, they wipe out stock of old editions, forcing colleges to take up the newer editions.

 

[deet]

Texas is getting a lot of grief here, perhaps somewhat deservedly; however, the Texas (or Kansas or others) textbook issues are for public middle and high schools, while this article is about college textbooks, isn't it? Universities/professors are generally free to pick their own textbooks and the state doesn't have much say in that.

Yes, I was projecting forward a bit. It's always news around here when there's a textbook dispute at the board of education, and the story always goes that what Texas decides to buy determines what the publishers put on offer for the rest of the country.

I'm reminded of the way Wal-mart's purchasing power shapes what vendors produce for other retailers.

So the thought process is something like: open-source college textbooks emerge as a thing, Texas gets its hands on the idea and starts steering the messages in the open-source textbooks used in Texas, this or that fork becomes the defacto standard (a la ubuntu), the fork's publisher gets the nod for other textbooks on down the line in exchange for cooperating with politicians, drama ensues.

 

[Wheels Of Confusion]

Interesting. But here's the sticking point:

SEC. 5. Sections 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this act shall become operative
only if funding for the purposes of this act is provided in an
appropriation in the annual Budget Act or another statute, or through
federal or private funds, or through a combination of state,
federal, and private funds.

So I wonder if the appropriation will make it through? And in what amount - I'd think you'd need around $10 million or so for 50 textbooks.

If we go with that estimate, then for the 234,464 students in the UofC system, it'd break even at $43 of savings per student. Even a single freshmen book can manage that.

According to the CC blog:

Access to affordable textbooks is extremely important for students, as textbook costs continue to rise at four times the rate of inflation, sometimes surpassing the cost of tuition at some community colleges. So, in addition to making the digital textbooks available to students free of cost, the legislation requires that print copies of textbooks will cost about $20.

So they can either be free e-books, or print copies capped at $20. Remarkably easy to save at least $43 that way.

 

[BkMak]

The potential for awesome here is exciting. Having state-backed support for such a project is bound to bring the existing projects into a new era of legitimacy, assuming the quality can be maintained.

But right away, I see foes in states like Texas (my own home) and the existing textbook industry. As this ball gets rolling, I'd have more than a few reservations that things would get darker before they got lighter. What happens when there's a Wikipedia-style edit war between ideological extremists? Looking forward to radical branches rewriting history and science, and the ensuing comment threads.

Open source doesn't mean publicly editable. Extremists would be free to fork the book, but that doesn't mean they can change the state produced one.

Pretty sure most religions frown on forking books. You are only supposed to fork your spouse.

 

[The Cappy]

So much for Apple's plan to take over the college textbook market. I wonder if they lobbied against this?

Thanks for trolling. Come back again real soon. *cough*

 

[jollyllama2]

I applaud this! I am attending University in Pittsburgh and the Math Dept has switched to an Open Source book for the Intro the Real Analysis course. Due to the ability to edit the book they were able to "fix" the issues that made it not match the course objectives. There is a strong desire in the Dept to get a good, cheap or open-source Calc I-III book, but they haven't found one that meets all those goals.
Hopefully this will produce something close enough for wide-scale adoption. In a Math, Engineering or Physics undergraduate degree the majority of content taught hasn't changed enough in 50-100 years to justify any $100+ textbook except for a few Upper Level courses.
Good Luck and I hope this works.

Nice!

I still have my old Rudin book... it has zero practical value for me at this point, but I can't bring myself to part with a $200 book.

 

[ArtInvent]

If this is truly open source, then the creation and first iterations are just that, first iterations. Most often open source projects start out as the product of a very few individuals, even working in secret. Once out though, they are editable. The books can be continually refined by just about anyone, as with the Wikipedia model.

Of course there will be the challenges that wiki media often encounter - edit wars, etc. But Wikipedia survives this kind of challenge and thrive. There will eventually be forking and various versions of the same textbook, but the individual college professors and curriculum committees will be able to choose the most fitting version and contribute to and change that in any way they see fit.

I think if we give open source textbooks a level playing field and the process is intelligently managed, they will simply prove to be superior to those authored by just a small set of people. It's certainly worth a shot even if it fails.

 

[PhoenixAndThor]

Personally, I want to know why something like this hasn't already happened in multiple states. It shouldn't just be restricted to colleges and universities, they should expand it to cover lower grade schools as well. One of my biggest gripes about the US education system is the textbooks. It was bad enough back in the 5th grade when I got stuck with a Biology book that was full of stains, inappropriate drawings, scribbled over text, and had almost an entire chapter missing. Fast forward to my time in college, and I had to deal with expensive books that explained something like SQL from an M$ or Apple only perspective. Then when I wanted to get rid of them, the book store would only buy back the book for about 30% of the price I paid for it, or nothing at all if a new edition of the book came out (which happened too often). We need better alternatives like books described in this article. Furthermore, I should point out that the books aren't really so much "open source" as they are "libre" or "copyleft". Assuming that they build the text books with CSS and HTML (thats right, make them web pages), then I don't see why Apple or any of the other tech giants would really care about all this, as the books would be universally available on most devices, including their own products. The next step would be to ralley against the major textbook publishers with massive mobs of angry villagers sporting torches and pitchforks

 

[conficio]

Who decides what are facts and what are not?

While it is hard to mess with math formulas and language courses, the history of events or life science courses can be very much skewed to polical ideals

Don't worry, each college and or school board still makes the decision which text book to use. But with cost pressure they can use one that is open source, as well as use an open source one and cut, edit controversial sections to their liking. Although under the right Creative Commons license that would be very transparent, so that any interested party (wether a student who wants to see the cut/edited portions, or a political activist parent that wants to make a stink) has access to the original.

I'd also think for print runs an edited version will come a bit more expensive to students than a widely used standard version. But for eBooks the cost is solely in the editing and some server storage and bandwith to download.

 

[tedsofbeverlyhills]

As long as a professor doesn't collect and grade chapter homework (not gonna happen) for math/science there is no reason to buy textbooks. Plenty free info to go around at khanacademy.org

 

[danielravennest]

"It will be interesting to see how good the resulting textbooks are"

You can take a look at the existing open-source textbooks on Wikibooks to see how good they are:

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

(In fact, they could be used as a starting point for Cali, if they don't have something better to start with).

The one I have been writing is there also, though I rate it at 2/3 done, so don't expect it to be polished:

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Space_Tran ... ng_Methods

From my personal experience, I would say one person *can* write a textbook, but you would get a better product with more people involved. Making nice illustrations takes a lot of time, so that is one area where paid help can make a difference.

 

[josefski]

It seems unlikely that having the government issue an RFP would be a good way to develop, say, an open-source operating system.

This highlights an interesting phenomenon that I experience as a teacher. Most privately produced educational material is at best marginal in quality. The only teaching strategies and content that I've ever had any real success with have been borrowed from what I see other teachers doing or come from college classes taught by psychologists. They're all essentially open source. The government issues general guidelines and then an entire community of teachers collaborates to create approaches that work. This is different than the government mandating the content. It's also different than having a private company supply the content. I don't know why the approach doesn't work for software in general; it's an interesting question.

I'd like to see a government mandate a set of guidelines for an open source online framework for delivering course content to students. There's no reason anyone should be paying for that kind of service. That way we could build a "best practice" scope and sequence tied to every course that teachers can adapt and deliver.

In my dreams.

 

[alohadave]

In Boston they try to make believe that Paul Revere never existed

Wut? Care to expand on that.