Momentum report - December 30, 2007

As we approach the end of 2007, we look back on a year of progress, but still much has to be achieved to make this project successful.

• We have several books in production stage, which mainly means converting them to the look and feel of the library by applying styles, putting the chapters together as book, and creating a pdf. Expect to see several releases in early 2008.
• Release 4 of Information Systems will appear in a few days. You will also note that with each release, we now publish release notes to advise of changes. Release notes are common in the software business, and as that is a model for much of our thinking, we have instituted that practice.
• The Chronicle of Higher Education printed an excellent article on the project in its November 19 issue. Take a look at it via the “In the News” page on the website. We had two good contacts for additional publicity. One from the Voice of America is out and also available on the “In the News” page. The other, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, published a report on the project on December 30, also linked to at "In the News." We also had several expressions of interest from potential editors in chief for additions to the library, on topics ranging from medicine to philosophy and tourism. Finally, we were contacted by the Global Learning Portal and USAID and had a good conversation which we are confident will lead to a collaboration agreement.
• The Voice of America publicity resulted in our receiving volunteers for translating texts into Chinese and Vietnamese, as well as other expressions of interest.
• Don and Rick had a conversation with QAB member Ike Williams and his associate, Paul Sennot. They will draft a letter of agreement for EICs and chapter editors to clarify copyright issues. Ike and Paul will also draft a standard letter for authors to send to publishers to have copyrights returned for existing texts not being marketed.
  Such texts will be added to the library after they have been updated and run through the Global Text Quality review process.
• Rick met with several of the chapter editors of Information Systems at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) in Montreal. As usual, he came away with some good ideas on advancing the project.
• During ICIS, Ted Stohr of the Stevens Institute of Technology chaired the first meeting of SIG on ICT in Global Development (SIG GLOBDEV). The Global Text Project has been adopted as a project by the SIG.
• Rick has spoken to several people on building a GIS to provide details of volunteers, adopters, universities, etc. He and Don and will review the situation soon before taking action.
• We are in the trial stages of using Sajan's software for translations. Sajan is making some modifications to enable the use of Open Document Format.
• Don gave a talk at a PhD seminar at the University of Colorado at Denver and Health Sciences Center. As a result, Dr. Arlen Meyers volunteered to be EIC of a book on Bioentrepreneurship, and Dr. Mike Mannino will contribute his database book. Dr. Meyers introduced Don to the Dean of the School of Public Health, and Don has a meeting set up for late January to discuss the project.

We both wish you well for 2008.

Cheers Rick and Don

Momentum report - November 12 2007

I apologize for the lack of a report in October. We were busy preparing for the Quality Assurance Board meeting and getting the Information Systems in shape. Since we last reported the following has happened.

• The second meeting of the Quality Assurance Board was held near the Munich Airport in the last week of October. The minutes of the meeting will be published soon.

• Information Systems has been released. See http://ocp.uni-passau.de/drupal/. We had some problems getting Drupal to create a quality pdf so the decision was made to put the book together using OpenOffice. The first edition has already undergone several releases to improve quality, and another release will be made soon. We treat books like software and release patches to correct errors or add material.
• Pilots of Information Systems are underway at the Addis Adaba University in Ethiopia and Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University in Indonesia. As part of the project, Peter Sclavos, a University of Georgia undergraduate, has worked with me to establish procedures for the operation of Student Quality Circles (SQCs), who will provide feedback for improving individual chapters. More details are on the project's Web site.
• Initial drafts of chapters for Business Fundamentals have started to come in. Reviews have been started and, as of this date, one chapter has been completely reviewed. Don estimates that a realistic date for completion is now late March or early April 2008.
• Don was a panel member at a symposium on Intellectual Property and the Trend Towards Openness held in Cambridge, MA on October 10. It was co-sponsored by the RSA and the British Consulate.
• I was a keynote speaker on the Global Text Project at the International Association for Computer Information Systems in Vancouver in early October.
  
• John Taylor " Ike" Williams, a partner in Fish & Richardson, PC, the oldest IP firm in the US, has joined the Quality Assurance Board.
• I spoke on the project at the Fourth Annual Conference of Learning International Networks Consortium (LINC), a meeting organized by MIT at the Dead Sea in Jordan. This was a good opportunity to make some important contacts, particularly in the Arabic academic community, and I met some senior scholars from Jordanian and Egyptian universities who are most willing to help with the project.
• Martin Dougimas, the lead developer of Moodle, an open source course management system, spoke at the LINC conference, and we are now looking at how Moodle can fit into the general scheme of the project. Interestingly, Doug and I both grew up in Western Australia and were educated in Perth.
• We are refining the process by which we turn submitted chapters into books to increase the efficiency of the process so we can scale the project. We are still very much in the learning mode on how to streamline the system, which is really the intent of this phase, proof-of-concept, of the project.
• Anders Gronstedt and Clarke Caywood have agreed to co-edit Integrated marketing and communications. The goal is to cover the introductory level classes of the rapidly converging fields of marketing , marketing communications and corporate communications. Anders is President of the Gronstedt Group and Clarke is the Director of the Graduate Program in Public Relations at the Medill Graduate School at Northwestern University.
• Doug Broadbent has signed up to be editor-in-chief of a chemistry book. He has extensive academic and industrial experience gain over a long career and now holds a visiting professorship at Bishop's University in Quebec, Canada
  

Rick

Students Protest Textbook Prices in Colorado

According to an article by Erika Gonzalez in this morning's Rocky Mountain news, the concern about textbook inflation has finally reached Colorado. Maybe it's been here for awhile, but under my radar screen. Anyway, more than a thousand students on the Auraria campus (Metro State College, CU-Denver, and Community College of Denver) rallied to protest textbook cost inflation. As you've been reading on this blog for awhile, there is concern about the issue and students want something done. Andrew Bateman, the student government leader at Metro State was quoted in the article as saying "It would be nice to know how long they're keeping a book in circulation, because if the next book is coming out in five months, it's essentially worthless because a student can't sell it back". Here's the link to the article: "Hundreds protest textbook prices".
-Don

Civil War at Harvard over Textbook Costs

Eye-opening article in yesterday's Boston Globe re: student concerns over the textbook cost issue at Harvard,with a headline that reads: " In Harvard Square, a war over words". The first paragraph says that "A battle over book prices is raging in Harvard Square between student leaders and the Harvard Coop, the book store created by students 125 years ago to cut down on costs." Take a look.

For me, one of the most interesting parts of the article was the number of states that are introducing legislation in attempts to give students some relief: "Prices of college texts have spiked so severely across the country that since January, 86 bills to make them more affordable have been filed in 27 states, including Massachusetts, according to a national college bookstore group. College students on average spend $700 to $1,000 a year on textbooks, according to a May 2007 report by a congressional advisory committee, which also recommended various solutions to reduce prices, including creating online book databases easily accessible to students".

Is this a sea change or what?

-Don

Two Proposed Bills to Help with Textbook Costs in California

The September 24 edition of Inside Higher Education had the following story on two bills wending their way to Governor Arnold Schwartzenegger's desk:

"Competing bills to deal with student complaints about textbook prices have arrived on the governor’s desk in California, the Los Angeles Times reported. Both bills would require more disclosure about changes made from one edition to another, but one bill (backed by student groups) would require more than the other (backed by publishers)". If you click on the LA Times link you'll get the entire story. The Guv is to make his decision on whether or not to sign either bill by October 12.

- Don

Global Text Momentum Report - September 15, 2007

We have had another month of steady development.

• Progress continues on the two proof of concept books. Information Systems, while not yet complete, is far enough along that substantial parts of it will soon be in pilot test in classrooms at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University in Indonesia. Business Fundamentals has four chapters in review and work continues on the remaining fourteen chapters. It is planned to be ready for the classroom in early 2008.


• Some modifications to the editor of the Drupal content management system (CMS) should be completed by the end of the month. Assisted by students at the University of Georgia, we have developed stylesheets for authors and will be linking these with Drupal's editor. The goal is to have consistent style names across chapter development and editing.


• Thanks to an introduction from friends at 3M Corporation, where our colleague Roberto Evaristo is Manager of Global Knowledge Management, Sajan http://marketing.sajan.com has agreed to assist the project through the provision of translation support software.


• A team of students at the University of Denver (DU), led by PhD student Rahul Choudaha, created the following databases: (1) contact persons at three to four universities in each fourteen developing economies, and (2) over 1000 book titles relevant to the first two years of undergraduate education on 38 academic disciplines. A condensed list of business books is posted on the Business Books page of the website. Please review the list and volunteer as an editor-in-chief, or refer us to a qualified colleague, active or emeritus.


• The students at DU also developed a communications and promotions plan that we will be evaluating and executing in the coming weeks.


• We added a list of universities participating in the project to the Community page of the Web site. It’s an impressive list. If you are participating in content creation in any way and your school’s name is not there, please let us know.


• Mark Huber of the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia is using one of his classes this semester to develop a detailed outline for a project management text.


• Ted Stohr of Stevens Institute of Technology has initiated creation of a Special Interest Group (SIG) of the Association for Information Systems focused on Information and Communications Technology (ICT) in Global Development. The Global Text Project will be an active participant in this SIG.


• We have the following speaking engagements on the calendar:
• A keynote speech at the 47th Annual Information Association for Computer Information Systems in Vancouver on October 5 (Rick)


• A panel presentation on Intellectual Property in a Digital World, sponsored by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, hosted by the British Consulate, on October 10. (Don)


• We have had a paper on the Global Text Project accepted for The Fourth Annual Conference of Learning International Network Consortium in Jordan in October. (Rick will present)

Cheers,

- Don

A Refreshing New Take on Academic Research

The AACSB recently released a report on the Impact of Research. Click on the link to download a copy. The contents of the report are summarized nicely in this article from Economist.com, which might be a good place to start. Briefly, the report urges business school faculty to put more emphasis in their research on issues that have practical value in the real world, e.g. for practicing managers and/or for the public good. One of the issues we have been facing in the Global Text Project is how to incent volunteers when their time is limited and their contributions don't "count" for tenure and promotion. The recommendations in the AACSB report would go a long way towards helping. For example, quoting from the Economist.com, "The most controversial recommendation in AACSB's draft report (which was sent round to administrators for their comment) is that the schools be required to demonstrate the value of their faculties' research not simply by listing its citations in journals, but by demonstrating the impact it has in the workaday world". Let's hope the recommendations are adopted.

- Don

Interesting Possibility for Remote Printing of Books

IHT Tech News has an article about a new service HP created that could be used as an additional method of distributing Global Text books. It's called Cloudprint, and it's free. Basically, pdf documents are uploaded to an HP server. They can then be downloaded on demand from a cellphone and directed to a printer for printing locally. All users will need to download text is a cellphone, an access code, and a local printer. More details are available in the article. Seems to have possibilities for overcoming some of the Internet infrastructure issues in developing economies. There's lots of cellphones available there.

- Don

Global Text Momentum Report - August 13, 2007

We have moved forward on several fronts during the last few weeks. Important developments include:

• While teaching in Paris, Rick made contact with UNESCO. July was not a good time for visiting UNESCO because many people were on vacation, but we now have a link, and we can start to build a relationship with UNESCO as a result of the initial meeting.
  
• We have now worked for more than a month with Drupal, the content management system (CMS) recommended by Franz Lehner, our CTO, and Michael Scholz, one of his doctoral students. Books in English and Spanish are being uploaded. Michael is very adept as solving issues that we raise very quickly and Drupal has many of the features we need. The test site is http://ocp.uni-passau.de/drupal/
• Craig Piercy, a faculty member at the University of Georgia, and one of my undergraduate students, Kendal Lewis, are working on developing cascading style sheets (CSS) for use with printing books and displaying them on the screen. We will also develop a set of style sheets for authors so that the uploading of files to Drupal is efficient.
• Craig is also going to assign his Internet Technology class, part of a Masters of Internet Technology program, the task of outlining and starting a book on Internet technology.
  
• Don and I, while attending the Americas Conference on Information Systems last week, met with Ted Stohr of the Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey. Ted has agreed to be Editor-in-Chief of the Global Text Case Collection. In addition, we will be able to seed the collection with cases from Communications of the Association for Information Systems (CAIS). We can also use tutorials from CAIS to start the Global Text Tutorials Library. Anyone want to volunteer to be Editor-in-Chief?
• Please check out the Web site for some new content:
  * An article on Global Text in the August issue of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA) Journal and two podcasts on the In the News page.
  * A listing of participating universities on the Community page.
• Don has received commitments for completion from all chapter editors Business Fundamentals, and some chapter reviewers have been lined up. If you would like to volunteer to review a chapter, please get in touch with Don.
• We expect the first release of Information Systems to be available within four weeks.
• Don and I visited with three large corporate foundations in July and came away with some good ideas on how to frame a case for corporate sponsorships.
  
  

~ Rick

Telecom Billionaire Establishes Low-Cost Laptop Program for Mexican Children

That's the headline on a news story from a posting on today's Philanthropy News Digest. Here's a couple of quotes along with a link to its source, which adds some additional perspectives:

"Saying that digital education holds the key to a better future for Mexico's poor, Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim has pledged to donate 250,000 low-cost laptops to the country's children by the end of the year and as many as a million in 2008, the Associated Press reports".

"With an estimated cost of $250 to $300 per machine, Slim would have to put up as much as $300 million for a million laptops, though he expects the costs to continue to fall. His plan initially would put the laptops in schools and libraries, where they would be lent out like books, he said, before eventually being given outright to students. In addition, his companies would help set up wireless networks for students to connect to the Internet".

"Slim, whose fortune may already have surpassed that of Bill Gates, said his goal is to build about a hundred "early stimulation" preschools within four years to give poor Mexican children training in math, language, and computers to improve their opportunities later in life. "The best investment one can make," he said, "is to reduce poverty."

I love it.

- Don

Student Engagement in the Learning Process

One of the most important aspects of Global Text is the way that it can enhance student engagement in the learning process. Rick saw the value of this in his early experiments with having his students write the XML textbook, one of the inspirations behind Global Text.

With our two proof of concept texts, some chapter editors have had their students draft chapter topics, and soliciting contributions from students who use the texts has been part of our model from the beginning. That's why we liked this announcement from the AACSB, the accrediting body for business schools world-wide, taking a fresh look at what constitutes good faculty research. It's from today's issue of Inside Higher Education:

"AACSB International: the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, has released for comment a report calling for the accreditation process for business schools to evaluate whether faculty research improves the learning process. The report expresses the concern that accreditors have noted the volume of research, but not whether it is making business schools better from an educational standpoint".

One of the issues we've been wrestling with is faculty incentives to contribute to Global Text, given the somewhat restrictive (and out-of-date) definitions of what constitutes "acceptable" scholarship. The AACSB reports addresses this issue in many ways, and seeks to broaden the definition of scholarship to include contributions to projects like Global Text. Here's an example taken from Recommendation #2 of the report:

"But what if AACSB went a step further to require business schools, if applicable to their mission, to demonstrate that they have faculty systems that support and reward practice-oriented or pedagogical contributions in addition to basic research published in refereed journal articles?"

Ahhhh. Music to my ears!

- Don

Global Text Momentum Report - July 12, 2007

We decided to prepare a monthly report on the major project initiatives and their status. Part of the reason for doing this is to keep you, the members of the Global Text Community, informed on what’s going on and also to solicit your help and ideas. If you have comments on anything we discuss, please add them to the blog. We’ve turned on the RSS feed so you can now be notified any time the blog is updated if you subscribe to the feed.

Here’s a report on the status of the project as of July 12, 2007:

• The two proof of concept books are well underway. Information Systems has four chapters reviewed and ready to publish, five chapters under review, and several authors have promised that they will finish their chapters soon. Rick anticipates that the bulk of the book will be ready for pilot testing by September 1 and that the final chapters will be added before the end of the year. Business Fundamentals has two chapters substantially completed, and most authors have committed to completion dates. Some reviewers have been lined up. Don anticipates it will be ready for use in early 2008.


• Work is proceeding on the content management system (CMS) under the direction of Franz Lehner, the project’s CTO. The general approach being pursued is an architecture that permits chapter editors to write using their favorite word processor and to upload the file to the master library. The system will support gathering suggested modifications and updates from the classroom. Once approved by chapter editors, changes will be added to the master library. This approach to the first version of a chapter will fit more closely, as we have discovered, with the way authors prefer to work.


• A number of texts has been donated to the Global text library, and we will start loading these once we have the platform for the master library established. Some books will go through a review process before inclusion in the library.


• The University of Concepción (Chile) has some 350 texts that its faculty have written with support from the university. Professor Andres Sepulveda has secured the approval of the Rector of the University to place one of these books in the library and plans to seek approval from faculty colleagues to donate others as well. Like other Global Text books, they will be licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. Some of the books will likely be suitable candidates for translation into other languages.


• We have the following speaking engagements on the calendar:
  
  
  
  • A panel presentation at the Americas Conference on Information Systems in Keystone, Colorado on August 11. (Rick and Don)
  
  
  • A keynote speech at the 47th Annual Information Association for Computer Information Systems in Vancouver on October 5 (Rick)
  
  
  • A panel presentation on IP in a Digital World, sponsored by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA) in Boston, Massachusetts on October 10. (Rick and Don)


• We put some students at the Universities of Denver and Georgia to work this summer. The DU students are focusing on developing a marketing and communications plan. We need to know more about the potential users of the texts, where they are, who to contact, and what their highest priority needs are. Our Quality Assurance Board recommended that we develop a “bookshelf” with the titles of the 1000 books and display it on the website so volunteers can see what is needed. The DU students are undertaking this task as well.


• The UGA students are working on smoothing out chapters in Information Systems and making them ready for publication.


• We are talking with corporations and foundations, in person, to help us frame a business case that will be appealing to them to support scaling the project. We are also talking with university deans about widening the definition of scholarly work to include projects like Global Text. Faculty time is always at a premium and having chapters “count” towards promotion and tenure would make it easier for faculty to participate. Finally, it could be the case that a university would be willing to step up and be the principle sponsor of a section of the bookshelf. And, perhaps a sponsoring university could get funds from a local foundation or corporation to underwrite the effort. Please keep your eyes open for opportunities.

Cheers,

Rick and Don

Textbook Costs: This one is hard to fathom

I live in the foothills west of Denver, Colorado. Not far from where we live is another foothills community, Evergreen. The gross per capita income in Evergreen is $36,654 (remember the gross per capita income in Uganda is $280). The local paper recently had an item describing how a local foundation raised money to buy textbooks and technology for Evergreen High School (EHS) that could not be met by the school's budget. Here's a couple of quotes:

"You tend to think that in a district this big, with all the resources it has, the schools would have the best tools available," says Evergreen resident Greg Romberg. "But the high school needs a lot of things that just aren’t in the budget. The Evergreen High School Foundation was started to pay for the things the district can’t pay for." "Things like $8,500 worth of up-to-date chemistry textbooks to replace the rapidly aging fleet currently in use."

"We saw that many of the things they wanted funds for were worthwhile, but there wasn’t enough money," Romberg says. "We started asking if there should be a foundation to pick up the slack. Like Mike Carter said at the time, ‘You shouldn’t be teaching out of science books that are as old as the freshman class.’ "

If it's like that in Evergreen, what do you suppose it's like in poor school districts in the richest country in the world (not to mention in Uganda)?

Here's a link to the full story: EHS foundation excels in freshman year

-Don

Global Text's Focus

As noted in a previous post, we occasionally get questions on why we're focused on the developing world, and why we're focused on universities instead of K-12. It's not because we think there's not a problem with the cost of textbooks in the US and other developed countries, or with K-12. There is. Our focus is on developing countries because that's where the need is greatest, and on universities because that's where we can most readily engage the community.

There was a couple of recent items in the New York Times that reinforce our focus:

The first is a May 20 article entitled "Africa's Storied Colleges: Jammed and Crumbling". It's a long article, and worth reading. Here's a quote from it:

"Africa's best universities, the grand institutions that educated a revolutionary generation of nation builders and statesmen, doctors and engineers, writers and intellectuals, are collapsing. It is partly a self-inflicted crisis of mismanagement and neglect, but it is also a result of international development policies that for decades have favored basic education over higher learning even as a population explosion propels more young people than ever toward the already strained institutions.

The decrepitude is forcing the best and brightest from countries across Africa to seek their education and fortunes abroad and depriving dozens of nations of the homegrown expertise that could lift millions out of poverty".

And here's a letter to the editor, published on May 27, commenting on the story:

"To the Editor:

The rapidly deteriorating -- even chaotic -- conditions illustrated in ''Africa's Storied Colleges, Jammed and Crumbling'' (front page, May 20) are one legacy of an international development agenda that continues to relegate higher education in Africa to second-class status.

To be certain, most African societies are badly in need of increased literacy and training in basic skills. But donors must not fall prey to false choices between investing in grade schools and supporting higher education. To do so would be like building a ladder only halfway to its destination.

Africans themselves are determined to break out of the cycle of poverty and instability. For them, developing better universities is an important route toward deepening democratization, reforming public policy and building civil society.

Only when Africa has entrepreneurs, scholars, scientists, educators and public officials who can grapple with its problems will the continent be securely on the road to lasting progress.

Vibrant universities engaged in innovative and often daring reform, like those supported by a partnership comprising Carnegie Corporation, the Ford, Hewlett, Kresge, MacArthur, Mellon and Rockefeller foundations, are helping to produce this new generation of leaders.

Vartan Gregorian
President
Carnegie Corporation of New York
New York, May 21, 2007"

What Global Text is trying do do is help build that ladder all the way to its destination.

-Don

Volunteering on time

A dilemma for the modern world is that the people who have critical knowledge and expertise have many demands on their time, and many of these same people want to help the less fortunate. Endeavors such as the Global Text Project face this fundamental problem.

Don and I have presented the idea for the Global Text Project to, I estimate, well over a thousand people, and we always receive a highly enthusiastic response. Many people want to help and agree to take on chapter writing and book editing.

We find, however, that our volunteers don't always deliver on time. Of course, this is nothing new for anyone who has been involved in academic book editing. Academics, like most people with a high level of expertise, are very busy and usually over committed. As one friend commented, "In the academic world, an opportunity of lifetime comes along every day," and we accept too many of these opportunities. The Global Text Project is the opportunity of a lifetime for students in the developing world. Free textbooks support education, which is a chance for a better life for many people.

If we can't get chapters written in a timely fashion, then it is difficult for the Global Text Project to meet its goal, in a reasonable time frame, of making textbooks freely available.

I would appreciate any ideas on how we can increase the timeliness with which chapters are completed. Are there incentives we can provide? Should we create different expectations? Should we monitor chapter editors more closely?

Your comments are most welcome.

Cheers

Rick

More on the Cost of Traditional Textbooks

"Make Textbooks Affordable" is one of several initiatives of The Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRG). The Make Textbooks Affordable site contains a rich source of news, resources, and even possible solutions to the high cost of textbooks. Dave Rosenfeld is the campaign coordinator. Dave's analysis of a May 2007 report by the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, sponsored by US Department of Education, is worth a read. (The report's title is "Turn the Page - Making Textbooks More Affordable" and contains a total of 95 pages).

Quoting from the section of Dave's analysis most related to the Global text Project:

"There are many 21st Century Technologies that are dramatically less expensive and more flexible than traditionally licensed books. The report correctly identifies many of the alternatives to high-priced textbooks. It is our view that many of these options represent the single greatest path to real competition in the textbooks market, a view recently endorsed by the New York Times and examined in more depth in our recent report, Textbooks for the 21^st Century.

"We believe that in the Internet age, there’s little reason for the cost of a textbook to be so high. There are hundreds of thousands of professors able and willing to create learning content and the argument that royalties are needed is a myth; very few professors who publish ever see royalties; the incentive to publish is predominantly for reputation building, not financial enhancement.

"There are a few models for providing this content, we believe that the most viable have two key principles:

• The content is peer-reviewed or otherwise evaluated by faculty and housed on a university or faculty-sanctioned site. This is the model for Rice University Press, Connexions, California State University’s MERLOT program, and the Global Text Project.
• Second, that the content is Creative Commons licensed or equivalent. This is an alternative licensing system that content providers may use to allow their work to be more openly utilized by others with less restriction. This licensing program retains many of the most powerful publishing incentives (recognition and attribution among peers).

"This is not just about “online” vs. “paper” textbooks. The content that most of these repositories offer can be used in both digital and print only formats, depending on the proclivities of the faculty and students who use them. What is unique is that the offerings are much less expensive than traditional textbooks".

Please take a look when you have some time.

-Don

Textbook Costs in the US

Concern over the cost of textbooks in the US is heating up and is an issue that is not going to go away. Good evidence of this is the AP story story on AOL News "Tough Problem: High textbook Costs". Here's a couple of quotes from the article, by Brian Bakst:

"In Minnesota, legislators are considering more tightly regulating the textbook publishing industry and requiring professors to be more cost-conscious in choosing course materials. At least a dozen other statehouses, from California to Connecticut, are taking up the issue.

"This is the hidden cost to higher education," said Democratic Rep. Frank Moe, the Minnesota's bill sponsor, who also teaches at Bemidji State University. "Reasonable profit makes sense. But the margins they are making on these textbooks is just absurd." Another quote I like is:

"The textbook industry pulls in more than $6.5 billion a year at college bookstores, and college books which have tripled in price since 1986. The industry estimates four-year college students spend $644 annually on books; a 2005 government report put the figure at about $900 per year, but that figure includes supplies, too.

At one legislative hearing in Minnesota, student leaders displayed a shrink-wrapped bundle of materials for a single Spanish course. The tab: $193".

The whole article is worth a read. Initiatives like the Global Text Project can help solve this "tough problem".

A change of blogs

As you might expect of the descendants of Scots, we are quite keen to save money. We have moved the Global Text Project to Google's free Blogger. All the old posts have been moved and the original date of the posting noted.

-Don and Rick

Open Access and the Evil Empire (2007.02.03)

As readers of this blog well know, making intellectual property freely available over the Internet is what the Global Text Project is all about. When you look at the "open" movement, it has three major aspects: First came open source, (e.g. Linux); next came open content (e.g. Wikipedia) and, finally, open access. Open access, according to Wikipedia (naturally), means "free on-line access to digital scholarly material". You may not know this, but university library subscriptions to scholarly journals can cost many thousands of dollars. Thus, like textbooks, they are not accessible to all who might benefit from having access to them, particularly students and professors in developing countries. The Wikipedia article is quite well-done if you'd like to learn more.

Now we learn that the Association of American Publishers has hired a "pit-bull" PR firm to make the case to the public that open access is bad for us. Read the entire article in the January 24, 2007 on-line edition of Nature. According to the article, the PR firm's name is Denzenhall Resources. One of its previous clients was Jeff Skilling of Enron fame. We hope for similar success with their new client.

-Don

Computers for Ethiopia—and much more (2007.01.21)

Not surprisingly, the Global Text Project attracts many who are interested in helping their fellow global citizens. On Friday, I had the opportunity to meet Solomon Negash, one of the many fine people involved in the Global Text Project. After some 20 years in industry, Solomon is now an assistant professor in the Computer Science and Information Systems department at Kennesaw State University, which is 32 kms (20 miles) north of Atlanta.

Ethiopia, Solomon's home country, has 71 million people, a per capita income of USD160, and 95,000 computers according the to World Bank. In 2001, Solomon started the Bethany Negash Memorial Foundation, a non-profit, "to promote the diffusion of education that supports economic self-sufficiency in Africa, starting with Ethiopia."

The foundation has shipped three containers of computers to Ethiopia, a total of 1,200 computers. The main targets are schools and colleges. Solomon has instituted a cost recovery process to recoup all the costs associated with shipping the computers, including customs and VAT. He expects that this project will be self sustaining by the end of 2007.Solomon has volunteered to pilot the adoption of the Information Systems text in Ethiopia in the latter half of 2007, be the editor-in-chief for a Systems Analysis and Design text, and pilot a project for converting Ethiopian K-12 texts to the Global Text library.One can only be greatly impressed by Solomon's generosity of time, energy, and thought.

Rick

How About K-12? (2007.01.07)

Since Rick and I began talking about Global Text, we always found that people loved the idea, but frequently noted that an even greater need was for free textbooks for K-12 students, and not only in developing countries, but also in poor school districts in the US As just one example, when I described Global Text to the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning on my campus, she commented on the K-12 need in the Denver Public Schools. She said that many textbooks were badly out of date, and there are not even enough of them so that every student had one to take home at night to do their homework.

While noting the K-12 need, our ties are with the higher ed community, and since the community develops the content, we could see how we could engage the higher ed community in writing texts, but it would be harder for us to engage the K-12 community. We also noted that others are focused on the K-12 problem, both here and abroad.

Having said that, we have had conversations with potential partners in the K-12 community, who do have the requisite ties to the K-12 academic community and concern for the problem, world-wide. As one example, I had a long conversation last week with a K-12 academic administrator who is on the board of a foundation that focuses on helping K-12 schools in sub-Saharan Africa. He told me about a middle school in rural Ethiopia they helped build. One of the ways they continue to support this particular school is to round up surplus textbooks in the US and ship them to the school. While this is helpful, it has two downsides: 1) the texts are often out-of-date, and 2) the process is expensive. He could see how Global Text offers a better model: Current, high-quality texts that are free. This man has the necessary ties to the K-12 community and the ability to engage them. We left it that he will contact the school in Ethiopia to find a subject where the need is greatest, and then recruit a group of academics to create a text using the Global Text model. If this comes to fruition, it could serve as a model for extending Global Text to K-12, with their foundation perhaps buying Sony eReaders for the students. They like the Sony eReader as a potential repository for textbooks in the right locations (and so do I).


-Don

Rick Watson Receives AIS Fellows Award (2006.12.27)

Rick received an AISFellows Award at the recent International Conference on Information Systems. "The AIS Fellows Award recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the development and maintenance of the international community of InformationSystems academics". Here is the wording of Rick's award:

"Dr. Richard Watson is the J. Rex Fuqua Distinguished Chair for Internet Strategy, Director of the Center for Information Systems Leadership, and Interim Head of MIS in the Terry College at the University of Georgia. He has published more than 100 journal articles and written texts on electronic commerce and data management. His work has been accepted by leading academic and practitioner journals and has been translated into several languages. He has given invited seminars in more than 20 countries.

Dr. Watson has served as President of AIS, co-conference chair for ICIS in 2004, and as a senior editor for MIS Quarterly. While a senior editor for MIS Quarterly, he established its Review section.

In 2001, John Wiley & Sons appointed Dr. Watson as its consulting editor for its net-enhanced organization (NEO) series. He is a visiting professor at Agder University College in Norway and Fudan University in China. He is also an honorary advisor to the Neusoft Institute for Information, China.

With Don McCubbrey, Dr. Watson is co-leading the Global Text Project. The goal of the project is to create 1,000 open content texts for university students in the developing world, and the first book will be an introductory Information Systems text.

Dr. Watson received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, where he studied on a Fulbright award, and his MBA from Monash University in Australia. In addition he holds a Diploma in Computation and a Bachelor of Science in mathematics from the University of Western Australia".

Congratulations, Rick, on this well deserved recognition from your colleagues!


-Don

Cranking the numbers (2006.11.30)

Are there enough resources to create 1,000 texts?

There are about 8 million professors in the world according to the World Bank's statistics. Let's assume each book has 20 chapters. Therefore, we need 20,000 professors to each volunteer to write one chapter. In other words, 1 in every 400 professors needs to write one chapter, or 0.25% of the world's professors must volunteer. Clearly, there should be more than enough altruistic professors who have the discretionary time to each write a single chapter.

Furthermore, professors can engage their students in writing a chapter, or a book, because their work is for the benefit of world's community of 132 million university students.

The resources are there, so the next question is how to create the infrastructure to engage tens of thousands of professors and their students in this massive collective global endeavor.

Rick

Sustainability (2006.11.14)

There is almost universal recognition that global warming is occuring, and some organizations are taking steps to create sustainable enterprises as a means of reducing their energy usage and costs. According to the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, sustainability is conserving an ecological balance by avoiding depletion of natural resources.

Don and I had the good fortune to hear recently Ray Anderson, Chairman and Founder of Interface, give a keynote address on his reinvention of Interface as a green business. You can read the story in his book, Mid-Course Correction: Toward a Sustainable Enterprise: The Interface Model.

As a consequence of Anderson's inspiring talk, I propose that every book in the Global Text series should, where appropriate, have a chapter on sustainability. It is very appropriate for a project that is global in scope and goals to advance the cause of sustainability. I have taken action by asking Peter Sclavos, a University of Georgia freshman assisting the Global Text Project, to help me write a chapter for the Information Systems book on sustainability.

Global warming and sustainability are everyone's problems, and we should all look to find some way of contributing to reducing global warming and creating a sustainable society. For my part, I've driven a Toyota Prius for the last two years and shifted to a mainly vegetarian diet. However, as someone who travels by air about once a month, I need to do some carbon trading. I am looking for ways to plant trees that will cover my carbon expenditures.

Rick

Applying business fundamentals (2006.10.16)

Business benefits society in two ways. Directly, business creates jobs. Indirectly, business develops technology to manage the creation, marketing, and distribution of goods and services. It is the application of the latter that we address in this brief discussion of the Global Text Project, whose vision is to develop 1,000 university texts for students in the developing world.

If the Global Text Project is to fulfill its vision, it needs to develop a brand and production, marketing, and distribution systems. It is no different from a traditional business in this respect and thus needs to apply exactly the same business principles if it is to be an agent of change.

Branding
Brands inform consumers about the characteristics of a product and reduce search costs. There are a number of projects creating open content for university students and potential adopters have to find these sites and then judge the quality of their products. Global Text must create a brand that stands for credible authoritative books that have strong editorial control. Each chapter will be under the control of a topic expert who will insure that the chapter is complete and screen all contributions before acceptance. By promoting the brand and what it means, Global Text, will provide a central repository where suitable texts can be found.

Production
Creating books is a production process, and Global Text needs to build a simple to use system that enables many to participate in the creation of a book. The technology needs to be author supportive so that potential contributors are not daunted by their lack of technical knowledge. Building this production system must address fundamentally the same issues facing any organization fashioning a web-based customer service system.

Marketing and distribution
All companies need to ensure that customers learn about and can get access to their products. In a global economy, distribution systems are wide and deep (e.g., a fast food chain or a parcel delivery firm), and Global Text needs a similar system. We will need to create a marketing network to get the word out about the books. For example, if we release a biology book how do we make every biology professor in the developing world aware of its existence within a few weeks? In our case, the marketing and distribution systems must be both Internet based in order to keep costs manageable.

Management team
As well as finding volunteers to edit and contribute to books, Global Text also needs to find within its volunteer community the skills necessary to build and manage a brand, create and manage an Internet-based production system (e.g., a wiki extended to meet the needs of texts), establish a marketing and distribution network. These volunteers will most probably come from within business schools or the business community, where one finds the knowledge and experience to run global enterprises.

The world's businesses have developed the expertise and talent to meet consumers' needs and wants. These same talents are required whether needs and wants are for music players or free texts. The Global Text Project is fundamentally a business, albeit one without a profit motive, and it needs to apply business thinking to meet a fundamental need for educating the leaders of the world's developing economies.

Rick

Reaction to Textbook Costs in the US (2006.10.14)

The Wall Street Journal printed an article entitled "Efforts Mount to Cut Costs of Textbooks" on September 28. If you do a Google search on the headline the first link that comes up is from the WSJ. It takes you to a page that tells you the article is restricted to subscribers. No big deal for me, I'm a subscriber, but it might be a problem for others. On the other hand, if you just scroll down a bit on the Google site, you come to a reprint of the article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Click on that link and you get the article. Strange.

Anyway, it's a pretty good article about what some states in the US are doing to reduce the high cost of textbooks. For example, quoting from a sidebar in the article:

• "A new Virginia law addresses the bundling of textbooks with other materials
• Washington State requires bookstores to inform faculty of the costs and frequency of revisions
• Illinois is reviewing the feasibility of textbook-rental programs"

There's lots more. And thinking about business models.............

Don

More Publicity for Global Text (2006.09.04)

The University of Georgia's Office of Public Affairs sent out a news release on the Global Text project on September 1st. It was picked up by UPI, as well as by several other media outlets around the world. To our great pleasure, most of them are based in developing countries in Africa and Asia. Please log on to the Global Text Website at http://globaltext.org and click on the "In the press" tab for a complete list. In addition, Rick has been kept busy over the weekend responding to queries and offers of assistance from experts in several domains, ranging from agriculture to classical mechanics, higher education, open economics, and plant anatomy, as well as other IT and business-related topics.

Rick would have written this post, but he's been busy responding to the new contributors and the media.

Don

Insights from Alvin Toffler (2006.08.26)

The FT had an interesting article on Alvin Toffler's "big notion of the moment". It's in the August 19/20 edition, by Nathan Gardels, and bears the title "He has seen the future". Of course, we all know that Alvin Toffler and his wife Heidi saw the future quite clearly some 36 years ago when they published Future Shock, followed a few years later by The Third Wave. The thing that struck me about the FT piece was Toffler's comment that "new technologies are enabling the radical fusion of the producer and consumer into the "prosumer". And that, of course, is what the Global Text project is all about. The consumers of texts are the ones who are creating and maintaining them. Toffler goes on to say that "Even in the US, institutions out of synch with each other are caught in a "clash of speeds" between the old system and the new. Standardized education is among the slowest institutions to adapt. If you were a cop monitoring the speed of cars going by, you would clock the car of business, which changes rapidly under competitive pressures, at 100mph. But the car of education, which is supposedly preparing the young for the future, is only going at 10mph". Global Text will help get education up to speed by enabling prosumers to keep text content current. (One can only wonder if traditional businesses serving the education community will adapt.) By way of illustration, Rick Watson noted that "Wikipedia’s opening two sentences for Pluto when accessed on August 25, 2006 reads: Pluto is a dwarf planet in the solar system. It was classified as a planet until it was determined on August 24, 2006 that it is not a true planet". Now that's going 100mph!

Don