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