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