Thursday, September 27, 2007

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


Monday, September 24, 2007

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

Saturday, September 15, 2007

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

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

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