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
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3 comments:
The word that comes to mind is "accountability." From that well known secondary source Wikipedia, "accountability is defined as 'A is accountable to B when A is obliged to inform B about A's (past or future) actions and decisions, to justify them, and to suffer punishment in the case of eventual misconduct.'" The article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accountability) cites Stone, Dwivedi, and Jabbra's taxonomy of accountability: moral, administrative, political, managerial, market, legal/judicial, constituency relation, and professional.
If we accept these categories for the moment, here we're dealing with a fuzzy overlap of (at least) moral, administrative, market, and professional accountability. The road to non-performance is paved with good intentions, as I know by personal experience of my very minor contributions to GTP, some done, some still undone months after my commitment to them.
All right. What we need is accountability, both to the GTP project's leaders and to the GTP community at large.
Speaking only for myself, I can tell you what would get me off my duff to complete my commitments in timely fashion: some sort of very public performance dashboard that clearly shows all project stakeholders, and the world at large
0) who I am really, no aliases
1) precisely what I have committed to do
2) when I committed to deliver the goods
3) whether I have delivered as promised
4) whether what I delivered was considered worthwhile by those whose responsibility it is to make such evaluations.
This would make me count the cost before committing to a GTP task, and would strongly encourage me to get the thing done on time. I do not want to be the one about whom it is said "this person began to build, but was unable to finish, and is therefore holding up the entire project because of personal slackness."
I suspect that most of us GTP volunteers are motivated much more by peer opinion than by many other considerations.
Good question, as I believe the problem is compounded when chapter editors (equally) have problems motivating those participants who volunteered to contribute to complete their sections in a timely fashion. Ultimately, they may have to finish the chapter themselves, which then short-changes the strength of the chapter as a whole in the end.
I don't necessarily have any easy answers for you, as my only solution with the GTP was persistence, persistence, persistence to motivate others. Accountability might be a solution, but the challenge there is it's more a of stick then a carrot. What's the the "carrot" for encouraging folks to get things done in a timely fashion, other than the reward of the job done well itself (which, I add, should be enough, but as we have seen, isn't necessarily sufficient motivation for everyone)?
What models can we leverage from other parts of the open-source community use? For coders, what's their incentive to complete the new Linux kernel on time?
-david bray
http://ssrn.com/author=745562
I personally believe that there are many ofrces interacting to make this goal a very difficult one to achieve. Text books are large pieces of work, they must be authoritative and written with extreme care. This particular frature renders all the models applied in Free and Open Source Software development practically useless.
F/OSS is based on the creation of small contributions, which may be very "quick and dirty" in the begining, but then evolve to achieve higher levels of quality. In text books, the smallest chunk of work is a chapter (I am not sure whether it will be practical to cut this chunk down further). Writing a text book chapter is not a piece of cake, it requires committment and hard work. Secondly, you can not release a text book that is "quick and dirty", because very simply, no one will use. Bear in mind that we are facing the competition of established, commercially produced text books.
My second point is the use of the reputation device. People (or most of them) would like to associate with reputable, high-profile projects. When the project achieves a reasonable reputation, the cycle becomes self-reinforcing: more authors get attracted to contribute, enhanced reputation in return and so forth.
A reasonable approach in my view is to try to persuade authors of already published (or about to be released) text books to release their works under the GTP. Most of those will have already established their credentials, and do not worry much about their tenure. It may seem difficult at first, but many authors would actually be receptive to the project's aims and objectives. This will enhance the project's reputation and make it one that others want to contribute to and associate with.
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