10 ms·

Open Textbook Initiative

435 points by turingbook 5y ago

snicker7 5y ago
The issue with the textbook market is that the people that pick them (departments, professors) don't actually have to pay for it. If colleges were forced to subsidize even a small % of textbook costs, we'd see an order of magnitude reduction in prices.
therealmarv 5y ago
https://openstax.org/ https://openstax.org/ if you search for more open textbooks (OER = open educational resources) other than math.
jp0d 5y ago
Thanks for posting this.
romwell 5y ago
In case you didn't know: American Institute of Mathematics is a research non-profit ran by one of the Fry brothers (of Fry Electronics). At least until recently, it's been run out of the back of the office space of their headquarters location on Brokaw road in San Jose. Now that the store (and the company) is defunct, I'm happy to see that AIM is still kicking. Can't vouch for everything that they do, but they have been running pretty solid geometric group theory workshops on the reg. I got to attend one, and have good memories of it. I'm still sad that the store has shut down. They cite COVID as a reason, but they've been in liquidation mode long before that (at some point, I couldn't even get a USB flash drive there!). I hope that AIM will go on as a legacy.
eternauta3k 5y ago
As someone who's never studied real math (only Physics math), I found the book "Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications" extremely interesting, in part because it leads you to understand asymmetric cryptography and error-correcting codes. Also the SAGE exercises are neat. http://abstract.ups.edu/aata/aata-toc.html http://abstract.ups.edu/aata/aata-toc.html
- d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
  Sage looks neat. Is it similar to Mathematica ?
  - romwell 5y ago
    Yes and no. It's a computer algebra system, of which Mathematica is an example. But the real power of Mathematica lies in its language. SAGE wraps many libraries in a Python syntax, so the core language is different.
- vmilner 5y ago
  Error correction fans will enjoy this talk: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/error-control https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/error-control
- monkeybutton 5y ago
  I had a CS/Math course that used this textbook. It was excellent!
- dunefox 5y ago
  Abstract Algebra or as mathematicians call it: Algebra.
dzdt 5y ago
College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  We have the same problem with high school (videregående skole) here in Norway. It should be possible for a child to use their older sibling's textbooks, especially for subjects like mathematics and physics, but very often the school requires a particular edition.
  - nvrspyx 5y ago
    At my high school, the textbooks were given to us and then we returned it at the end of the year for the next cohort (we'd right our names on list in the back with the current condition to keep track). I'm not sure if this is how other US high schools did it.
    - leonvv 5y ago
      It's the same in the Netherlands. It's a great system I think. Sometimes you can see kids haul all their books on a bicycle, which is quite a challenge even for the Dutch
    - smeej 5y ago
      We each got a book to bring home, and then there was another set of the books kept in the classroom, and a few copies in the library. That way we didn't have to lug our books back and forth to school and could just use the shared books in the classroom and our own books at home. It seemed to serve us well and not stunt our growth!
  - projektfu 5y ago
    I took Calc 2 at my university and borrowed my roommate's book that he bought the year before. It was useless because it was the "preliminary edition". It was virtually the same book except all the exercises were in customary US units instead of metric. Can you imagine, publishing a math textbook in 1995 in customary units? All of my high school books had been metric and were a decade old. There could only be one reason to do so -- to require the next group of students to buy the new book.
averagedev 5y ago
Great resource, thanks for sharing. As someone who wants to "re-learn" some college level math, this is invaluable.
DrBoring 5y ago
Some mostly off-topic textbook stories: My dad used to be dept chair at the college where he worked. Because of his title, textbook publishers would send him copies of their books for consideration. He would give them to me and I would sell them on half.com. He was also able to order the answer books for my calculus textbook. I could do all the practice problems and look up the answers (not just the odd # questions which were in the back of the student book). At the end of the semester, I gave the answer book to the chair of the math dept to keep in the student math lab. Also, one day in my physics class, some textbook sales reps came to demo this new RF remote with numbered buttons like a TV remote. Each student in class would get one. Their sales pitch was that it would allow our teacher to put a daily quiz up on the projector screen, and each student would use the remote to submit their answer, and then his TA wouldn't have to grade 150 quizzes. Also it would track attendance (which I thought should be optional for college classes). Students were expected to pay for their own remote, and I think there was a license fee per semester. Yuck.
- klondike_ 5y ago
  These remotes (iClicker) are in widespread use for large lecture hall classes at major universities. I don't know why they can't replace it with an app or something, but supposedly the point is that they work as an attendance measure because they only work when you're physically in class. They're about $30 used and there's a large supply of them because you don't use them in higher level classes. IMO not the worst scam in academia compared to $200 book and homework combos
  - MikeTheGreat 5y ago
    I'm surprised to hear about them being used for attendance. Attendance usually isn't a factor at the college level, especially for large lecture classes. I _have_ heard them being used to try and create a more interactive, engaging environment for the students. Typically they're used something like this: The teacher explains something, then asks a question that you can correctly answer if you understood the explanation. There's N answers available; the question + multiple choice answers are on the current slide. Students then group up into small-ish groups (4 people or so, maybe less) and each group discusses the question & comes up with an answer, and then they use the clicker to make their choice. Once all the groups have had a chance to answer the teacher displays a bar chart / histogram showing how many groups chose each answer. The next part I'm not 100% clear on the details, but the bar chart points the students in the right direction AND provides feedback for the instructor. For example, if pretty much everyone got the right answer then the teacher can give the groups that didn't choose the right answer a couple minutes to re-discuss and/or ask questions. If lotsa' students got the wrong answer then the teacher can go back and clarify stuff, etc, etc. So yeah - the point of clickers is to transform a passive "listen to the teacher lecture" experience into something that is more interactive and engaging. In terms of apps - I don't use clickers myself (I teach smaller classes), but if I wanted to I'd definitely use an app for this. I suspect that people still using physical clickers got started with them and are continuing to use them. Personally I'd get my college to buy a classroom set for the students to borrow each class (or to checkout for the semester/quarter/term) but there's overhead with that, too
tomrod 5y ago
In my view, this can be part of the solution. The biggest issue is an incentive issue with tenure. [1] Professors are critically punished for poor research, mildly punished for poor teaching [2] A base level of teaching acumen is required. Improving teaching at all is costly, so teachers are willing to pay up to the opportunity cost of lost research impact for course materials [3] So they systematize and outsource necessary non-core components -- course content, course grading (via TAs and PhD candidates), and where permissible test and homework creation and evaluation. Since they have no real impact to them for the costs involved, such as purchase of texts, they proceed forward purchasing into the racket How to fix? Make teaching reviews (student and outside observer) factors for keeping tenure. Don't include as part of tenure review beyond what is already there. This gives you the best of all worlds: world-class professors invested in quality teaching.
mhh__ 5y ago
Based off my shelf of old books, the price of a good, new, textbook has stayed roughly the same. The quality of the text and layout is much better now, but the paper is pretty much worse. Some really boring old radar books I own, have the most beautiful silky paper that the equations practically glow, whereas now you get stuck with the toilet paper edition for not much less than what that old one would've cost.
dls2016 5y ago
I'm just a lowly adjunct, but I sense that one barrier to open textbook adoption is the accreditation process. I don't know exactly the connection, but I get the feeling that the department can check some box if they say that all their lower division calculus courses are taught with Pearson's book, for instance. Sort of a "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM" type situation. Anyone have any insight to this? I only have a sample size of two... which leads me to believe not all departments worry about this so much. Edit: see these MAA guidelines: https://www.maa.org/programs-and-communities/professional-development/committee-on-faculty-and-departments/guidelines-for-undergrad-programs https://www.maa.org/programs-and-communities/professional-de... One suggestion is "there should be established procedures for periodic review of the curriculum... should include careful scrutiny of course syllabi, prerequisites, and textbooks." As much as I hate to say it, there are legitimate reasons for carefully controlling the curricula in lower division courses. A big one is: transfer credit. People get pissed when it's difficult to transfer their cheaper CC credits to a larger university. The easiest way to solve these problems is by dictating curricula. But, unfortunately, the Pearson's of the world feast on the resulting homogenized market. This is similar to my problem with Common Core. Everything in Common Core is perfectly reasonable. But now we have one giant textbook market where Pearson dominates with their products which now bear a "Common Core approved" label on the cover.
- memco 5y ago
  I expect it varies a lot from school, region, accrediting body, etc., but I worked for a school administration and taught as an adjunct for a spell and mostly the teachers themselves decided the books and were approved so long as the cost was reasonable and the books were easily available. A free textbook published independently would actually have more or less been automatically approved. it was a small school of a few hundred students focused on humanities. YMMV.
- gowld 5y ago
  Schools buy Pearson because Pearson has strong marketing and is the biggest obvious choice, and because Pearson helps schols exploit their students by selling customized (not nationally standard!) hard-to-resell textbooks. Not the only well-developed choice. > "Common Core approved" This does not exist, so you have no problem with Common Core. Common Core is an open standard, not a certification. Any book can be Common Core aligned, and any school board can choose to certify a book within their jurisdiction. Common Core is a standard (checklist of abilities students should learn), not a curriculum. Ilustrated Mathematics ( https://illustrativemathematics.org/math-curriculum/ https://illustrativemathematics.org/math-curriculum/ ) is a curriculum, which is Common Core aligned, that fills in details of the standard. IM certified partners who each publish books. (Both open and proprietary partners exist) This is closest to the accredidation you mention. Yes, accreditation is an expense. That expense can be paid by donations, grants, or government payments. There are currently 3 textbook publishing partners of Illustrated Mathematics. https://openupresources.org/frequently-asked-questions/open-up-resources-6-8-math-license/ https://openupresources.org/frequently-asked-questions/open-... Cengage and McGraw-Hill are major textbook publishers, who are not Pearson. Illustrative Mathematics's publishing partners are also not Pearson. Illustrative Mathematics (used in various school districts) is based on Open Up Resources, a Creative Commons -licensed curriculum https://openupresources.org/math-curriculum/ https://openupresources.org/math-curriculum/ that includes teacher/home/student lesson plans (not exactly a text book, but K-12 school curriculum is designed to be led by a teacher, not self-studied.)
when_creaks 5y ago
I worked for a higher-ed startup that was heavily involved in the textbook space for a little over 5 years. There are a myriad of factors that contribute to the high price of textbooks. Some of those factors are: • The principle / agent problem - Instructors naturally select the course materials for their own courses but typically never need to pay for their own instructor copies. In essence instructors are making decisions for which they generally bear no cost, but which do impact costs for students. Compounding this problem is that, surprisingly often, instructors did not actually know the cost of the materials they selected. • The cost structure problem - Instructors will sometimes select a textbook to use for a course for only a year, but often they'll use a textbook for longer than a year. Using the same textbook for two to three years for a course isn't uncommon. This has implications re: how much revenue is at stake for a publisher for each textbook sale. For example - if an instructor is teaching a particular course twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall), and they use the same textbook for 2 years in a row, and each course has roughly 30 students - then a publisher selling an instructor on a $200 textbook has a value of: 4 courses * 30 students * $200 = $24,000 Or, roughly the cost of some cars. With this kind of revenue on the line for each sale it makes sense for publishers to develop a nation-wide, high touch, hands on, sales force. And a friendly, knowledgeable sales person can be more persuasive during the course materials selection process than a worthy (but distant) affordable textbook initiative that doesn't have an in-person advocate. • The content discovery problem - Part of the reason why publishers resort to sales teams is because they don't really have any good alternatives. There isn't a great platform for higher ed content discovery. Instructors who want to survey what content might be available for their course have a limited amount of time to make a decision, that decision has large consequences (their entire course might have to be redone for example), and there often isn't very good info about higher ed content (what are the learning outcomes associated with this content? what is the resale value of this content for the student? what do other instructors think about this content? etc.). • The transient pain problem - Most students complete their college education in 4 - 6 years, which means that (for most) the pain of high textbook prices is temporary. In other words - the pain is temporary for the cohort that would probably be most motivated to solve the problem.
- perpetualpatzer 5y ago
culi 5y ago
Are there any major resources tracking all the open-source textbook type projects? I've seen some really cool stuff posted on HN like that Homopothy-Consistent Mathematics textbook.[0] AIoM's OTI seems cool, but is limited in scope and OpenStax mostly makes their own textbooks so it also ends up limited in capacity [0] https://kerodon.net/ https://kerodon.net/
chicob 5y ago
Great initiative! I love it. I'm trying to get people interested in developing a model for an open, digital, printable, free textbook, that anyone could access online, download, in full or in part, share, or print if necessary. The general idea is to create dematerialized textbooks, organized in modules: an officially approved minimum basis, and additional optional modules. Redundancy would be allowed for easy adaptation to local needs. Learning and teaching communities could also make contributions. Bundles could then be customized or made available in presets. Schools could have their own official bundles, and students could get them in print in libraries, online, and the digital versions would, of course, have open formats. The best example is that of a Math textbook, that allows for direct translation, and which main contents never get old. So, for example, LaTeX modules would be made available online, and compiled into one document as needed. Indexes would, of course, need to me made universal in some way. And bundles would get their own UID, for easy sharing. Today, the available digital textbooks are heavily copyrighted walled gardens, and their licenses expire after some time, so they're broken by design. But their contents are, for the most part, already Commons. So what gives? When I started writing this comment, I had in mind that the Portuguese Ministry of Education had spent around 40 M€ buying textbooks from large publishers that are distributed for free to students in need, in a voucher system. While checking this, I found recent news reporting that this value, in the Portuguese national budget for 2019, had underestimated the cost by 100 M€ (and that year's budget had a surplus of 0,2% of the GDP...). I expect that an annual sum this large would be more than enough to fund a long term project.
aaron695 5y ago
thecleaner 5y ago
Anybody read the Shoup one yet ? How is it ? I know as much about computational number theory as a chimp knows about computer science.

435 points by turingbook 5y ago

The issue with the textbook market is that the people that pick them (departments, professors) don't actually have to pay for it. If colleges were forced to subsidize even a small % of textbook costs, we'd see an order of magnitude reduction in prices.

therealmarv 5y ago

https://openstax.org/ https://openstax.org/ if you search for more open textbooks (OER = open educational resources) other than math.

jp0d 5y ago

Thanks for posting this.

romwell 5y ago

In case you didn't know: American Institute of Mathematics is a research non-profit ran by one of the Fry brothers (of Fry Electronics). At least until recently, it's been run out of the back of the office space of their headquarters location on Brokaw road in San Jose. Now that the store (and the company) is defunct, I'm happy to see that AIM is still kicking. Can't vouch for everything that they do, but they have been running pretty solid geometric group theory workshops on the reg. I got to attend one, and have good memories of it. I'm still sad that the store has shut down. They cite COVID as a reason, but they've been in liquidation mode long before that (at some point, I couldn't even get a USB flash drive there!). I hope that AIM will go on as a legacy.

eternauta3k 5y ago

As someone who's never studied real math (only Physics math), I found the book "Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications" extremely interesting, in part because it leads you to understand asymmetric cryptography and error-correcting codes. Also the SAGE exercises are neat. http://abstract.ups.edu/aata/aata-toc.html http://abstract.ups.edu/aata/aata-toc.html

d4rkp4ttern 5y ago
Sage looks neat. Is it similar to Mathematica ?
- romwell 5y ago
  Yes and no. It's a computer algebra system, of which Mathematica is an example. But the real power of Mathematica lies in its language. SAGE wraps many libraries in a Python syntax, so the core language is different.
vmilner 5y ago
Error correction fans will enjoy this talk: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/error-control https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/error-control
monkeybutton 5y ago
I had a CS/Math course that used this textbook. It was excellent!
dunefox 5y ago
Abstract Algebra or as mathematicians call it: Algebra.

dzdt 5y ago

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
We have the same problem with high school (videregående skole) here in Norway. It should be possible for a child to use their older sibling's textbooks, especially for subjects like mathematics and physics, but very often the school requires a particular edition.
- nvrspyx 5y ago
  At my high school, the textbooks were given to us and then we returned it at the end of the year for the next cohort (we'd right our names on list in the back with the current condition to keep track). I'm not sure if this is how other US high schools did it.
  - leonvv 5y ago
    It's the same in the Netherlands. It's a great system I think. Sometimes you can see kids haul all their books on a bicycle, which is quite a challenge even for the Dutch
  - smeej 5y ago
    We each got a book to bring home, and then there was another set of the books kept in the classroom, and a few copies in the library. That way we didn't have to lug our books back and forth to school and could just use the shared books in the classroom and our own books at home. It seemed to serve us well and not stunt our growth!
- projektfu 5y ago
  I took Calc 2 at my university and borrowed my roommate's book that he bought the year before. It was useless because it was the "preliminary edition". It was virtually the same book except all the exercises were in customary US units instead of metric. Can you imagine, publishing a math textbook in 1995 in customary units? All of my high school books had been metric and were a decade old. There could only be one reason to do so -- to require the next group of students to buy the new book.

averagedev 5y ago

Great resource, thanks for sharing. As someone who wants to "re-learn" some college level math, this is invaluable.

DrBoring 5y ago

Some mostly off-topic textbook stories: My dad used to be dept chair at the college where he worked. Because of his title, textbook publishers would send him copies of their books for consideration. He would give them to me and I would sell them on half.com. He was also able to order the answer books for my calculus textbook. I could do all the practice problems and look up the answers (not just the odd # questions which were in the back of the student book). At the end of the semester, I gave the answer book to the chair of the math dept to keep in the student math lab. Also, one day in my physics class, some textbook sales reps came to demo this new RF remote with numbered buttons like a TV remote. Each student in class would get one. Their sales pitch was that it would allow our teacher to put a daily quiz up on the projector screen, and each student would use the remote to submit their answer, and then his TA wouldn't have to grade 150 quizzes. Also it would track attendance (which I thought should be optional for college classes). Students were expected to pay for their own remote, and I think there was a license fee per semester. Yuck.

klondike_ 5y ago
These remotes (iClicker) are in widespread use for large lecture hall classes at major universities. I don't know why they can't replace it with an app or something, but supposedly the point is that they work as an attendance measure because they only work when you're physically in class. They're about $30 used and there's a large supply of them because you don't use them in higher level classes. IMO not the worst scam in academia compared to $200 book and homework combos
- MikeTheGreat 5y ago
  I'm surprised to hear about them being used for attendance. Attendance usually isn't a factor at the college level, especially for large lecture classes. I _have_ heard them being used to try and create a more interactive, engaging environment for the students. Typically they're used something like this: The teacher explains something, then asks a question that you can correctly answer if you understood the explanation. There's N answers available; the question + multiple choice answers are on the current slide. Students then group up into small-ish groups (4 people or so, maybe less) and each group discusses the question & comes up with an answer, and then they use the clicker to make their choice. Once all the groups have had a chance to answer the teacher displays a bar chart / histogram showing how many groups chose each answer. The next part I'm not 100% clear on the details, but the bar chart points the students in the right direction AND provides feedback for the instructor. For example, if pretty much everyone got the right answer then the teacher can give the groups that didn't choose the right answer a couple minutes to re-discuss and/or ask questions. If lotsa' students got the wrong answer then the teacher can go back and clarify stuff, etc, etc. So yeah - the point of clickers is to transform a passive "listen to the teacher lecture" experience into something that is more interactive and engaging. In terms of apps - I don't use clickers myself (I teach smaller classes), but if I wanted to I'd definitely use an app for this. I suspect that people still using physical clickers got started with them and are continuing to use them. Personally I'd get my college to buy a classroom set for the students to borrow each class (or to checkout for the semester/quarter/term) but there's overhead with that, too

tomrod 5y ago

In my view, this can be part of the solution. The biggest issue is an incentive issue with tenure. [1] Professors are critically punished for poor research, mildly punished for poor teaching [2] A base level of teaching acumen is required. Improving teaching at all is costly, so teachers are willing to pay up to the opportunity cost of lost research impact for course materials [3] So they systematize and outsource necessary non-core components -- course content, course grading (via TAs and PhD candidates), and where permissible test and homework creation and evaluation. Since they have no real impact to them for the costs involved, such as purchase of texts, they proceed forward purchasing into the racket How to fix? Make teaching reviews (student and outside observer) factors for keeping tenure. Don't include as part of tenure review beyond what is already there. This gives you the best of all worlds: world-class professors invested in quality teaching.

mhh__ 5y ago

Based off my shelf of old books, the price of a good, new, textbook has stayed roughly the same. The quality of the text and layout is much better now, but the paper is pretty much worse. Some really boring old radar books I own, have the most beautiful silky paper that the equations practically glow, whereas now you get stuck with the toilet paper edition for not much less than what that old one would've cost.

dls2016 5y ago

I'm just a lowly adjunct, but I sense that one barrier to open textbook adoption is the accreditation process. I don't know exactly the connection, but I get the feeling that the department can check some box if they say that all their lower division calculus courses are taught with Pearson's book, for instance. Sort of a "no one ever got fired for choosing IBM" type situation. Anyone have any insight to this? I only have a sample size of two... which leads me to believe not all departments worry about this so much. Edit: see these MAA guidelines: https://www.maa.org/programs-and-communities/professional-development/committee-on-faculty-and-departments/guidelines-for-undergrad-programs https://www.maa.org/programs-and-communities/professional-de... One suggestion is "there should be established procedures for periodic review of the curriculum... should include careful scrutiny of course syllabi, prerequisites, and textbooks." As much as I hate to say it, there are legitimate reasons for carefully controlling the curricula in lower division courses. A big one is: transfer credit. People get pissed when it's difficult to transfer their cheaper CC credits to a larger university. The easiest way to solve these problems is by dictating curricula. But, unfortunately, the Pearson's of the world feast on the resulting homogenized market. This is similar to my problem with Common Core. Everything in Common Core is perfectly reasonable. But now we have one giant textbook market where Pearson dominates with their products which now bear a "Common Core approved" label on the cover.

memco 5y ago
I expect it varies a lot from school, region, accrediting body, etc., but I worked for a school administration and taught as an adjunct for a spell and mostly the teachers themselves decided the books and were approved so long as the cost was reasonable and the books were easily available. A free textbook published independently would actually have more or less been automatically approved. it was a small school of a few hundred students focused on humanities. YMMV.
gowld 5y ago
Schools buy Pearson because Pearson has strong marketing and is the biggest obvious choice, and because Pearson helps schols exploit their students by selling customized (not nationally standard!) hard-to-resell textbooks. Not the only well-developed choice. > "Common Core approved" This does not exist, so you have no problem with Common Core. Common Core is an open standard, not a certification. Any book can be Common Core aligned, and any school board can choose to certify a book within their jurisdiction. Common Core is a standard (checklist of abilities students should learn), not a curriculum. Ilustrated Mathematics ( https://illustrativemathematics.org/math-curriculum/ https://illustrativemathematics.org/math-curriculum/ ) is a curriculum, which is Common Core aligned, that fills in details of the standard. IM certified partners who each publish books. (Both open and proprietary partners exist) This is closest to the accredidation you mention. Yes, accreditation is an expense. That expense can be paid by donations, grants, or government payments. There are currently 3 textbook publishing partners of Illustrated Mathematics. https://openupresources.org/frequently-asked-questions/open-up-resources-6-8-math-license/ https://openupresources.org/frequently-asked-questions/open-... Cengage and McGraw-Hill are major textbook publishers, who are not Pearson. Illustrative Mathematics's publishing partners are also not Pearson. Illustrative Mathematics (used in various school districts) is based on Open Up Resources, a Creative Commons -licensed curriculum https://openupresources.org/math-curriculum/ https://openupresources.org/math-curriculum/ that includes teacher/home/student lesson plans (not exactly a text book, but K-12 school curriculum is designed to be led by a teacher, not self-studied.)

when_creaks 5y ago

I worked for a higher-ed startup that was heavily involved in the textbook space for a little over 5 years. There are a myriad of factors that contribute to the high price of textbooks. Some of those factors are: • The principle / agent problem - Instructors naturally select the course materials for their own courses but typically never need to pay for their own instructor copies. In essence instructors are making decisions for which they generally bear no cost, but which do impact costs for students. Compounding this problem is that, surprisingly often, instructors did not actually know the cost of the materials they selected. • The cost structure problem - Instructors will sometimes select a textbook to use for a course for only a year, but often they'll use a textbook for longer than a year. Using the same textbook for two to three years for a course isn't uncommon. This has implications re: how much revenue is at stake for a publisher for each textbook sale. For example - if an instructor is teaching a particular course twice a year (once in the spring and once in the fall), and they use the same textbook for 2 years in a row, and each course has roughly 30 students - then a publisher selling an instructor on a $200 textbook has a value of: 4 courses * 30 students * $200 = $24,000 Or, roughly the cost of some cars. With this kind of revenue on the line for each sale it makes sense for publishers to develop a nation-wide, high touch, hands on, sales force. And a friendly, knowledgeable sales person can be more persuasive during the course materials selection process than a worthy (but distant) affordable textbook initiative that doesn't have an in-person advocate. • The content discovery problem - Part of the reason why publishers resort to sales teams is because they don't really have any good alternatives. There isn't a great platform for higher ed content discovery. Instructors who want to survey what content might be available for their course have a limited amount of time to make a decision, that decision has large consequences (their entire course might have to be redone for example), and there often isn't very good info about higher ed content (what are the learning outcomes associated with this content? what is the resale value of this content for the student? what do other instructors think about this content? etc.). • The transient pain problem - Most students complete their college education in 4 - 6 years, which means that (for most) the pain of high textbook prices is temporary. In other words - the pain is temporary for the cohort that would probably be most motivated to solve the problem.

perpetualpatzer 5y ago

culi 5y ago

Are there any major resources tracking all the open-source textbook type projects? I've seen some really cool stuff posted on HN like that Homopothy-Consistent Mathematics textbook.[0] AIoM's OTI seems cool, but is limited in scope and OpenStax mostly makes their own textbooks so it also ends up limited in capacity [0] https://kerodon.net/ https://kerodon.net/

chicob 5y ago

Great initiative! I love it. I'm trying to get people interested in developing a model for an open, digital, printable, free textbook, that anyone could access online, download, in full or in part, share, or print if necessary. The general idea is to create dematerialized textbooks, organized in modules: an officially approved minimum basis, and additional optional modules. Redundancy would be allowed for easy adaptation to local needs. Learning and teaching communities could also make contributions. Bundles could then be customized or made available in presets. Schools could have their own official bundles, and students could get them in print in libraries, online, and the digital versions would, of course, have open formats. The best example is that of a Math textbook, that allows for direct translation, and which main contents never get old. So, for example, LaTeX modules would be made available online, and compiled into one document as needed. Indexes would, of course, need to me made universal in some way. And bundles would get their own UID, for easy sharing. Today, the available digital textbooks are heavily copyrighted walled gardens, and their licenses expire after some time, so they're broken by design. But their contents are, for the most part, already Commons. So what gives? When I started writing this comment, I had in mind that the Portuguese Ministry of Education had spent around 40 M€ buying textbooks from large publishers that are distributed for free to students in need, in a voucher system. While checking this, I found recent news reporting that this value, in the Portuguese national budget for 2019, had underestimated the cost by 100 M€ (and that year's budget had a surplus of 0,2% of the GDP...). I expect that an annual sum this large would be more than enough to fund a long term project.

aaron695 5y ago

thecleaner 5y ago

Anybody read the Shoup one yet ? How is it ? I know as much about computational number theory as a chimp knows about computer science.