Global Text at the University of Concepcion

We just published a small note on the newspaper of University of Concepción (Chile), PANORAMA, describing the Global Text Project. This is one of the first steps we are taking to give more publicity of our project in the local community.

Currently there is one book in the Global Text project, it is "Introducción a la Mecánica y el Calor" (Introduction to Mechanics and Heat, a Physics 101 book), written by Prof. Juan Inzunza of the Geophysics Deparment. We recently requested the approval of the University to give a Creative Commons licensing to another book from Prof. Alberto Foppiano, who had developed a very useful book of exercises for Physics (electricity and magnetism, Physics 202 level). Hopefully this will become soon the 2nd book in Spanish contributed to the community

Momentum report - 2008.08.30

• Don hosted Cesar Guerrero, the Sony executive in charge of strategic marketing of Sony’s reader to the education market, at the University of Denver for two days in late May. Cesar held informal get acquainted meetings with faculty from the Daniels College of Business, the Morgridge College of Education, Arts and Humanities, Penrose Library, the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the University Bookstore. Arrangements were made for a classroom pilot run of the Sony Reader in the fall using the Global Text IS book.
• Rick gave a presentation on Global Text at the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) conference in Oslo on June 9. As a result, he was invited to repeat his talk at a plenary session at the joint AACSB/EFMD Conference to be held in Barcelona this November. He also met Howard Davies, who has subsequently had students work on a book on Business in China. Howard is an associate dean at Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
• Rick, Don, Franz, and Mike Dowling (representing the Quality Assurance Board) met with Simon Sommer of the Jacobs Foundation in Zurich on June 13 to report progress on the project.
• Don gave a presentation on the project at the 21st Bled Electronic Commerce Project in Bled, Slovenia on June 16th. He received commitments for books from long-time academic colleagues from Australia.
• Rick and Don traveled to Palo Alto on June 30 to meet with representatives from the Hewlett Foundation. Aaron Ciszek, from the University of Denver’s Institutional Advancement office, arranged the meeting. Hewlett has been an active supporter of Open Educational Resources initiatives for some time. We were introduced to faculty from the De Anza Foothills Community College, which is playing a prominent role in the open content textbook space. We also met with involved faculty at De Anza on this trip. Finally, as a result of these meetings, Don plans to attend the Open Educational Resources Conference at Utah State University in late September.
• We are in final stages of arranging for our first corporate-sponsored textbook, a Principles of Accounting text. Many thanks to our long-time colleague and Global text Project advisor, Tom Clark, for making this possible. Tom is President of Strategy Associates, LLC in Denver, former Dean of the Ourso College of Business at Louisiana State University, and a productive IS academic.
• We have signed Memoranda of Understandings with the Alternative Media Access Center (AMAC) at the University of Georgia and the Merlot African Network (MAN). AMAC is charged with "removing barriers and providing access to knowledge for individuals with physical, sensory, and learning print-related disabilities." We will meet with AMAC personnel on a regular basis to find opportunities to cooperate. AMAC has provided us with access to its high speed scanner on several occasions. MAN is "a networked partnerships between African and US educational institutions affiliated with the Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching (MERLOT) and leading Global eLearning Providers with development programs targeting Sub-Saharan Africa." We will work with MAN to creating awareness of our texts and also identify required educational material.
• We are in the process of upgrading to O3Spaces professional for the distributed management of documents.
• A proposal to establish the Arabic Center for the Global Text Project in partnership with Birzeit University is under consideration by a major foundation.

- Don and Rick

My Internship

Hello, I’m LaKwanzaa Walton. I am 17 years old and currently a senior at Clarke Central High school. I am also a participant of the Young Dawgs program. The Young Dawgs program is part of the school-to-career program. It allows high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to do an internship with UGA in the career field of their choice. My career choice is Marketing/ Business. Since I was younger, I have always had an interest in this field. I am excited and very eager to learn as much as I possibly can during this internship. I look forward to working hard on this project and gaining all of the knowledge I possibly can.

Fast-paced fall semester, introducing GTS and new intern

School has started here at University of Georgia and the Global Text Project is quickly taking on new aspects and adding new faces. This summer we discussed the idea of starting a student organization that will develop public relations on campus and in the community by providing volunteer support to the project. Since the semester started, that organization has launched and we call it the Global Text Society.

The idea behind creating a group organization is to give the Global Text Project an identity here at UGA, to support the project through volunteerism and establish an organization that can be re-created with similar objectives at other universities as well as to develop awareness in our target market, the developing economies. The organization will operate as student-run club on campus. We already have 12 enthusiastic members, three of whom have established themselves as officers. Currently, the Society is planning to meet weekly. We will keep everyone updated on the projects and goals that the Society will work towards. Personally, I think the Society will be a powerful support system for the project and smart way to grow through networking.

Not only are we adding the Society to the project, we also added an intern to our team, Lakwanzaa Walton. She will be working with me and helping me prepare books for publication. Carrying on the tradition, I have asked her to write a blog introducing herself.

Cost of Textbooks Covered in US Higher Education Act

The Higher Education Act was passed in both houses of the US Congress and is expected to be signed into law today. It includes several provisions related to help reduce the cost of textbooks. They are covered in an analysis on the maketextbooksaffordable site and are similar in many respects to state laws we have discussed in previous posts. Here's a summary from maketextbooksaffordable:

"The textbooks section has three main provisions:
1. Requires publishers to disclose textbook pricing and revision information to faculty
2. Requires publishers to offer textbooks and supplemental materials “unbundled” (separately)
3. Asks colleges to provide the list of assigned textbooks (incl. ISBNs and prices) for each
course when students are registering for classes".

Each of the three provisions are analyzed in detail in the document. Have a look. It's worth a read. Progress!

- Don

Article on Open Textbooks in USA Today

USA Today published an article on Friday, July 11, entitled "Online "open" textbooks save students cash". Written by Svetlana Shkolnikova, it's a pretty good overview of the problem and some of the ways it's being addressed. For example, the article says: "Textbook prices have outpaced inflation 2-to-1 in the past two decades, says a 2005 report by the Government Accountability Office. They account for 26% of tuition and fees at four-year public universities and nearly three-quarters of costs at community colleges, the GAO says". It goes on to discuss a few initiatives in the open education space, some of whom we've had contacts with, like Foothill Community College and maketextbooksaffordable.com

Two authors who contributed books to the Global Text library are mentioned: Bob Beezer and Rob Stewart. It's a good overview and another indication that the problem of ever-more-costly textbooks is getting more attention and that solutions like Global Text can make a real contribution.

- Don

As Textbook Costs Are Customized, Students Pay

That's the title of an article in the Wall Street Journal on July 10th. Here's the way the article, by John Hechinger, begins:

"College students, already struggling with soaring tuition bills and expenses, are encountering yet another financial hit: Publishers and schools are working together to produce "custom" textbooks that can limit students' use of the money-saving trade in used books. And in a controversial twist, some academic departments are sharing in the profits from these texts.

"The University of Alabama, for instance, requires freshman composition students at its main campus to buy a $59.35 writing textbook titled "A Writer's Reference," by Diana Hacker.

"The spiral-bound book is nearly identical to the same "A Writer's Reference" that goes for $30 in the used-book market and costs about $54 new. The only difference in the Alabama version: a 32-page section describing the school's writing program -- which is available for free on the university's Web site. This version also has the University of Alabama's name printed across the top of the front cover, and a notice on the back that reads: "This book may not be bought or sold used."

"Custom textbooks like this one are proliferating on U.S. college campuses, guaranteeing hefty sales for publishers -- and payments to colleges that are generally undisclosed to students."

The entire article is worth a read. The writer is well-informed on the issues, including legislative actions being taken by some 34 states in the US to reduce the cost of textbooks. He also questions the ethics of this growing cozy accommodation between universities and publishers by noting that "The book-royalty arrangements resemble a practice exposed during last year's student-loan scandal, when some universities steered students to particular lending firms and received a secret cut of the loans.

Gotta shake your head.

- Don

Hi all

I am so excited to join the Global Text Project and become part of this team!

I have been helping with the project for a number of months and applied for a position as soon as one opened up. Since graduating from Elon University with a degree in Professional Writing and Rhetoric in 2004, I have been working in the publishing industry both writing for a magazine and freelancing for myself. However, I was continuously looking for a job that I could relate to my field of interests while making a contribution to the community (a global community, in this case). I believe I have finally found the match for my aspirations.

Now with the title of Associate Editor and with the incredible momentum this project is taking on, I find there is lots of work to do. As Rick mentioned, we are being offered books for publication at the rate of one per week. While I do enjoy absorbing as many college subjects as possible every day, I think we need help pushing this project forward. Along with my introduction here, I am calling for volunteers.

This is an easy way for anyone, anywhere to get involved with the such an admirable project. We need help transforming previously written textbooks into a standard format that we will use for the Global Text library. While many would think that we could just post a book to a website, we are actually trying to re-create a book that optimizes usability and accessibility for all people all around the world.

We use a standard set of styles for each book so that we can quickly reformat any book to meet the needs of a particular audience. For example, if a student is print impaired, we can apply a new style sheet in which all text is formatted in a large font. Therefore, that student will easily be able to access and use the new version of the same book; but one that better meets his or her needs.

This means that we must apply standard styles to each book before publishing. We have several University of Georgia students already helping in this phase and welcome other professionals and student volunteers all over. This is an especially excellent way for someone to acquire service hours without even leaving the house or office! Feel free to spread the word.

If you would like to help prepare these books for electronic publication and/or with copy editing or have any questions about volunteering, then please email me: drexel@uga.edu.

I look forward to working with everyone here at the Global Text Project and also hearing from new volunteers.

Kind Regards,
Marisa

Pathways and appointment of an Associate Editor

Pathways
There is a Chinese saying, “There are many paths to the top of the mountain, but the view is always the same.” Our view is a library of 1,000 open content, electronic textbooks, and we have identified three paths to this viewing point.

Commissioning books
Based upon our experience with the XML text, we started with the idea of seeking volunteers to write chapters to create a text. We called for volunteers from within the academic community to write chapters for texts titled Information Systems and Business Fundamentals.

Our optimism for this approach has been tempered by reality. While many volunteered to write a chapter and promised to meet the deadlines we set, less than a third delivered their chapter on time, and some have still not delivered. Furthermore, individual authors write individual chapters, and there remains the major task of integrating the material to give the book some coherency.

Acquiring out of print books
We have accepted and sought opportunities to speak about the Global Text Project to academics. As a result, we soon learned that there a considerable number of out of print or unpublished books that authors are willing to publish under a Creative Commons License.

Mergers and acquisitions in the publishing industry have caused a pruning of offerings by publishers. For example, when two publishers, who were each offering two books in Information Systems, amalgamate, the new firm will likely discard two of the Information Systems books so that it continues to offer two books. When a book becomes out of print, most publishing contracts have a clause that enables the author to regain the copyright.

It might well be that the majority of the books we need for the library exist in out of print format, and our task is to find the authors and ask them to let us publish the book under a Creative Commons License. The author will retain the copyright.

Out of print books have a considerable advantage over commissioned books, they are complete and integrated. However, they might be out of date, but we can get students to update tables, figures, and so forth to give the books currency, and in the process students create value for other students.

For example, I recently spoke on a panel at the European Foundation for Management Development conference in Oslo. At the end of the panel, one of the attendees sought me out and offered his two out of print books for inclusion in the Global Text Library. The books are on "China Business: Context and Issues" and "Managerial Economics: The Analysis of Business Issues."

We are now getting out of print books at the rate of one per week, and will soon seek such books more actively.

Buying the copyright
Given sufficient funding, we could simply buy the rights for a currently published book from the publisher and then release it under a Creative Commons License so that it is free forever. This approach would support a more focused approach to creating a library. For example, we have identified a set of 30 books for a core science library, and buying the copyrights for these would be a major step forward in supporting university level education in many developing economies.

Going forward, we will use a blend of three approaches, We plan for the near future, however, to focus on finding out of print books as this an economical and fast way of adding material to the library.

Associate editor appointed
Marisa Drexel recently joined the Global Text Project as its first employee. She is responsible for preparing books for publication and coordinating the volunteers who help with book preparation. I have asked Marisa to write a blog introducing herself and her role in the project.

Rick

Building the network

I returned yesterday after a 12 day trip to Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and Dubai, and I managed to advance the Global Text Project on several dimensions.

Ethiopia
I was part of a team that conducted a 2.5 day workshop at the Addis Ababa University to initiate a PhD program in IS. I arrived early on the day before the workshop commenced, and Dr. Salehu Anteneh organized for me to give a lecture to AAU Business School faculty and students on U-commerce and the Global Text Project. Salehu's MBA class had piloted the IS book and provided chapter level feedback to the authors. As a result of the lecture, several students volunteered to help with the project.

Salehu and I had extensive discussions on the Global Text Project. He estimates that a 300 page book can be printed locally for about USD 5, which is a ten-fold reduction on the typical price of about USD 50 for texts in developing economies. We also discussed the possibility of getting AAU students to create the graphics for texts. Professors are rarely artists and diagrams should be consistent across a book. Salehu reports that AAU students have training in products such as Adobe Illustrator and are capable of creating quality drawings. Our first step is to develop a standard for graphics, and we will then pilot some graphic preparation in Ethiopia. Because students in developing economies often need to use their spare time to earn income, we plan to pay for each graphic.

As part of the PhD program, I will be co-teaching a course titled "Systems Thinking and Sustainability" with Drs. Irwin Brown (University of Cape Town) and Peter Meso (Georgia State University). We will organize the class to write a text on this subject.

A member of the PhD project is Dr. Moustapha Diack, who is active in the Merlot Africa Network and the Pan-African Forum on Open Education Resources 2008 to be held on May 28. We plan to work together, and I will attend the Pan-African Forum in 2009.

Saudi Arabia
Each year, I teach an EMBA course an e-commerce course for the King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals in Saudi Arabia. One of my former students, Mr. Thamer Al Munajem, had encouraged me to visit him in Riyadh and examine aspects of his family's company, the largest food importer in Saudi Arabia.

During the visit, I also met with Mr. Abdullah Mashari, another former student. Abdullah is the CEO of Dale Carnegie Training in Saudi Arabia. Formerly, he was an executive with Jarir Bookstore. After a short briefing on the Global Text Project, Abdullah offered to donate USD 1000 to the project and to organize and pay all costs associated with translating a book from English to Arabic. As you might imagine, I was amazed by the generosity of his offer. He has also established a model that we might be able to use with other Saudi Arabian firms to support translation of books into Arabic.

Before I left Saudi Arabia, Thamer announced that he will donate USD 2,500 to the project and organize for the translation of the Global Text Project brochure into Arabic so that he can circulate it to Saudi companies that might be interested in supporting the project. This was another very pleasant surprise.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates
My first doctoral student, Dr. Patrick Doran, has been teaching at Zayed University for six years, and I finally found time to make the promised visit. I met several faculty and gave a talk to two classes on the Global Text Project. Again, the response was highly positive. Acting Dean, Dr. Leon Jololian, came up with a number of very good ideas and saw several opportunities for involving faculty and students. One of the students, Fatima, volunteered to translate my slides into Arabic and promote the project to other students at the University. Fatima is active in Zayed University's student leadership, so her support is valuable. Dr. Rahman Haleem (the head of Institutional Innovation), who has experience in using students to translate from English to Arabic, has also agreed to help with the project and has contacts in the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Foundation, a potential source of funding for the Arabic division of the project. Given the positive support from several Zayed University administrators, Pat is looking at establishing a center at Zayed University to support the project and will soon send us a proposal.

I also paid a visit to Mrs. Maryam Salahuddin Razick, a senior manager at ETA-SEMS, which runs schools in the UAE and has plans to expand into other countries. While her focus is on K-12, she quickly saw how the Global Text Project model could be applied to K-12. One particular problem for the UAE is the time for book delivery. Sometimes, classes will be well underway before books arrive from the US or UK. Of course, this is not a problem for our texts.

Overall, this was a very successful visit. I was able to tell many people about the project and there were several important developments that will advance the project.

Cheers

Rick

The GlobalText.org as Research Project for College Students

College students from Ohio University of USA are taking solid actions to contribute to the Global Text Project (GTP). In their Systems Analysis and Design class (MIS320), offered to MIS major students of the College of Business, students are doing two projects that are based on the Global Text Project (GTP):

(1) Conducting research on how to implement GTP so that it will be well known to college students and successful around US and the rest of the world (like in Mexico and China)?
(2) How to design and develop a website for GTP so that it will be well known to college students and successful like FaceBook.com?

MIS320 class students formed 7 teams to do the two projects. They are: Team En Fuego, Team C#, Team Primetime, Team Red, Team Sweet 'N' Savory, The BobCats, and Team X-Treme.

So far, the first project was finished. All teams have done good work in doing research on how GTP could learn from other websites being successfully implemented targetting on college students. Some interesting and innovative ideas emerged. Two teams’ project reports were scored highest: Team En Fuego and Team Sweet 'N' Savory.

The second project will be completed within 2 weeks. I’ll report to you then. (Note: the completed second projects on designing websites for Mexican and Chinese college students were here: Team En Fuego, Team Sweet "N" Savory, and Team PrmeTime)

(Note: MIS320 instructor is Professor Wayne W. Huang. Two teaching assistants are CEPANEC, ADAM J. and HENTHORN, BRITTANY L.).

Momentum report - February 15, 2008

The first 6 weeks of the third year of the project has been very fruitful.

• Several books have been donated to the project. Thanks to Dr. Paul deLespinasse for Basic Political Concepts, Dr. Stell Kefalas for Global Business Strategy, and Dr. Jurg Nievergelt and Klaus Hinrichs for Algorithms and Data Structures with Applications to Graphics and Geometry. We are in the process of converting these books to the Global Text Project format.
• Dr. Michael Orey of the University of Georgia has his graduate students assisting in the conversion of three books: The Foundations of Instructional Technology, The World Almanac of Educational Technologies, Emerging Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Technology. Students in his classes have assisted with the writing of these books over several semesters, and his current class is helping with the conversion.
• Dr. Franz Lehner, our Chief Technical Officer, has arranged for the German division of Accenture to assist with developing the specifications of the Global Text Project production system. We have quickly learned that managing multiple books and their revision requires good software that supports workflow and versioning. We will with Accenture during May when I will be in Germany teaching.
• I have recruited six University of Georgia students to work with me this semester on developing a student-operated business that handles the production and distribution of books. Using the student newspaper has a model, the plan is to run the Global Text Project with a small professional core, to provide continuity, and a large number of student volunteers. Students will work on preparing books for publication, marketing books, maintaining the database, prepare management reports, and so forth. Currently, this semester's volunteers are working on identifying target universities, populating the marketing portion of the database, and preparing books for publication.
• A cover for Global Text Project books has been created. I commissioned Alan Campbell, a local artist, to paint the globe (see the upper left of this posting). Alan has been a US National Science Foundation Antarctica artist, is a member of the Explorers Club, and an ecological artist. I have personally paid for the painting, and Alan has given the Global Text Project the right to use a reproduction at 72 dpi for book covers, and other matters related to the project. We plan to use the painting to brand the project.
• MBA students at the Addis Ababa University have provided feedback on their use of Information Systems, which has been relayed to the authors. We want to get students involved in thinking about to improve our books. This means the quality of our books will gradually improve and students will learn more because they are expected to reflect more deeply on what they are reading.

Cheers

Rick