DailyDirt: Those Who Can, Write Textbooks...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Textbooks are surprisingly expensive items. The classic example is an introductory math textbook: where the math hasn't changed significantly for over a hundred years, but the price of the newest edition seems to suggest that there should be a lot of new material added to the book. Sure, there's a used book market -- and even rental books nowadays -- but the trend of rising textbook prices has some students and faculty questioning some of the publishing industry's practices.

• The Supreme Court upheld that anyone, particularly Supap Kirtsaeng, can buy textbooks in Asia and re-sell them for a nice profit in the US -- thanks to the first sale doctrine. Kirtsaeng won his case, but he didn't get his copyright-holding opponents to pay for his legal bills. That could change, though, if the Supreme Court decides in his favor again. [url]
• There are some obvious problems when professors try to use cheaper textbooks as teaching materials -- including pissing off the authors who might be in positions of authority at the school. Should academic freedom allow a professor to chose a different textbook from his/her colleagues? Will the racket of monotonically increasing textbook prices continue? [url]
• The 'Integral House' in Canada is up for sale -- once owned by math professor James Stewart. The calculus textbooks authored by Stewart have raked in many, many millions from college students over the years, but if you have a few million yourself to spare, you can buy this math-inspired house (which looks like it comes with a library of math books). [url]

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Filed Under: academic freedom, education, integral house, james stewart, oer, open educational resources, open textbook, supap kirtsaeng, textbooks

DailyDirt: Open Textbooks Starting To Save Students Real Money

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

One aspect of the open educational resources movement (OER) is open textbooks that are free to use -- content in the public domain or with copyright terms that require only attribution (or attribution and share-alike clauses). Open textbooks have taken some time to get written, reviewed and adopted -- but now that there are hundreds of these books available, students should be able to use them freely and benefit from (and even contribute to) these educational materials.

• One estimate reports that college students can save about $128 per course by using open textbooks. That's just a few hundred bucks that pales in comparison to tuition these days, but it could be a significant dent in the publishing industry if every class used open textbooks. [url]
• OpenStax college books claims to have saved students $39 million in the 2015-16 academic year. OpenStax says that 1 in 5 US colleges are using its textbooks. Launched in 2012, OpenStax is on target for its goal of publishing textbooks for the 25 most-attended college courses and saving students $500 million by 2020. [url]
• Several states have endorsed open textbook projects. Besides OpenStax, Minnesota has an open textbook library, and California is trying to cut its $400 million costs on K-12 textbooks (someday). [url]

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Filed Under: education, oer, open educational resources, open textbook, openstax, textbooks