
USM holds pilot in which students use free 'open-source' textbooks - kapkapkap
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/education/bs-md-college-open-source-textbooks-20140322,0,6567208.story#ixzz2wpsW4Jw1
======
softgrow
The article appears to be lifted from a student newspaper article from May
2013
[http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/campus/article_3d41096...](http://www.diamondbackonline.com/news/campus/article_3d410960-b9b6-11e2-bde6-0019bb30f31a.html)

A book by the same name by Charles Stangor, University of Maryland and used
for PSCY 100 classes there, so more than likely the book discussed in the
article, is also available free at
[https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=48](https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=48)
but paid and you can also get v2.0! at
[https://students.flatworldknowledge.com/course/1315333](https://students.flatworldknowledge.com/course/1315333)

------
chrisBob
One thing that is missing here is a discussion of how a lot of good professors
have a strong incentive not to use open source books: Many of them wrote the
ones they are using for their course. If a professor wrote a good course text
then they have a strong financial incentive to make the current edition
mandatory for the class. Dealing with this will require some tense
negotiations and possibly mean that the school will have to either buy out the
books, or adjust contracts to include the copyright to faculty authored
content.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I have to say this is a little unfair to many many professors. Very few if any
make enough from margin sales that converting to open source will hurt them
meaningfully.

this is not to say there is not career advantage in writing "the standard book
on", but stuffing a few hundred students each year is hardly the lottery win.

------
noahl
To me, the most interesting part is how clearly the textbook industry and the
reporter don't "get" the open source development process. For instance:

    
    
        But [David Anderson, executive director of higher
        education at the Association of American Publishers] said
        traditional textbooks can cost up to a few million dollars
        to produce, and he is skeptical that such an effort can be
        re-created on a large scale for a product distributed for
        free.
    

Of course, there are multiple open-source software projects that would take
hundreds of millions of dollars worth of development effort to do again. To
me, the number he's quoting seems like so _little_ effort that it's almost
absurd to think you couldn't do it. But if you're not in the software
development industry, I guess these things aren't obvious.

And the related issue is the use of "open source" to describe a process that
does not seem to allow contributions from the public, which is of course how
those software projects became so big in the first place:

    
    
        Roberts estimated that he spent 80 hours pulling
        together open-source materials for his textbook, working
        late into the night to write some sections himself when he
        could not find good material.
    

I'm not entirely sure, but I think the paper (and the professor) think that
"open source" development means putting together class materials that are
freely available online. The trouble is that the economic advantage of open
source software development is essentially that it is cheaper for someone
_else_ , not the original author of the project, to fix a few bugs in an
existing open source project rather than starting from scratch. That is why
people fix those bugs, and why open source projects grow. If you're not
allowing (or really, actively soliciting) those contributions, you can't take
advantage of this effect.

In summary: using open source textbook materials is a great idea, but it would
be better if they learned from how the software industry does it.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
I worked for CNX.org for 18 mths and every single thing we did is on
GitHub/Connexions. A major rewrite of a ten year old also open source project,
by collaborators on two continents aimed at making the editors, processing
chains and publishing for textbooks across the US.

they get it. The excellent annual conference is on now (ish) and will have
everyone from small town professors to udacity and the stonkingly-gets-it
Charles S Burrus who is actually running a coursera EE course where they send
thousands of multimeters, PCbs and tools out to students so they can do the
actual EE parts.

trust me the folks involved get it. I wish I had written up those blog posts
now so I could link you

------
ericcumbee
>Educators at all levels are still figuring out how to best use technology in
the classroom. For example, Baltimore County Superintendent Dallas Dance
announced recently that the district would aim to place a tablet or laptop in
the hand of every student within five years.

I'm not entirely sold on the idea that every student having a tablet or laptop
is the most effective use of education money. I tend to lean more towards
having classroom sets of laptops or tablets and a active learning/ combined
media class room setup.

~~~
chrisBob
Typed reports, and presentations instead of written reports are becoming
common, and I consider that progress. If you require typed homework, but don't
provide a computer to take home then you are discriminating against poor
families. My family has had a computer at home for over 25 years, but that is
not the case for everyone.

------
lifeisstillgood
Going to pitch Connexions.org / CNX.org - open source textbooks by open source
editor - great folks, great mission, all on GitHub

------
seanmcdirmid
The title doesn't match the article, and is incredibly bad. I thought by
reading it that USM decided to incarcerate a student pilot for using a free
open-source textbook.

~~~
yarrel
"in" precludes that reading.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
"USM holds pilot in student's illegal use of free 'open-source' textbooks" is
completely reasonable in English. The current title is not far from that.

