Open-Source College Textbooks Gaining Mindshare

bcrowell writes "The LA Times has a front-page article about how open-source college textbooks are starting to gain traction. One author says, 'I couldn't continue assigning idiotic books that are starting to break $200,' and describes attempts by commercial publishers to bribe faculty to use their books. The Cal State system has started a Digital Marketplace to help faculty find out about their options for free and non-free digital textbooks, and the student group PIRG has collected 1200 faculty signatures on a statement of support for open textbooks."

Re:What's the deal?

[db32]

Basically yes. Even if the course isn't structured around a particular book, instructors are going to be receiving pressure from the school to use the latest and greatest book from publisher XYZ that they have a deal with. It is a money issue more than anything. To be fair, some subjects do change often enough that you need to refresh books frequently, but many don't. How long has it been since Algebra or Calculus has changed significantly enough to warrant a new book?

I have never taken a college course that was really structured around the book in a start to finish style. Typically the instructor takes the few sections he wants to use, arranges them how he wants to teach them, and then uses the homework from the book and the grading key to deal with assignments. It keeps everyone at the same reference point.

Re:Many a foolish man has crossed Houghton Mifflin

[db32]

Firefox, Samba, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, Gimp (it is very comparable to photoshop given that most people don't use all of photoshops capabilities in the first place and assuming that everyone who needs a good graphic editing program is a photoshop wizard with $600 to drop on it is a complete r-tard). Then we have BSD, Linux, Gnome, KDE, Evolution, OpenOffice... Seriously...there are TONS of open software projects that compare to or exceed their commercial equivilents. Microsoft is going to support the ODF format BEFORE their own OOXML garbage...So push all they want...they are losing ground. Did you not just read how their silly SCO attempt went up in flames?

Now...that doesn't EVEN begin to compare the supercomputer and science realm of software that I don't have any experience in. IBM has been giving up tons of stuff to open source at a much lower level than "ooh look at the pretty clicky" user level stuff. The notion that free software doesn't compare to commercial software because you can't play Bioshock on a Linux desktop is laughable.

Re:Old fashioned way

[muzip]

You are right, but, most of the time we do not read the whole 800+ pages of a textbook. IMHO, printing out the parts that require studying would not cost much.

And, since it will also be available online, we wouldn't have to carry those oversized books everywhere.

Re:Old fashioned way

[schnikies79]

In my years of college, I have never had a professor that wouldn't let you use an older edition of a textbook. I used an old version if my gen chem and organic classes and just copied the questions at the end of the chapter on a photocopier. The professor(s) knew and recommended it if you couldn't afford the newest.

Don't sell back your books at the buyback, sell them on Amazon. I sold a few mechanical engineering books for more than I bought them for, and they were 3 or 4 years old.

NCSU ahead of this... sortof

[RaigetheFury]

Most professors at NC State during my time (1994-2002) we realistic about the books. I was there when books went from cheap to retarded in price. NCSU is currently in the works to prevent books costing over $150 from being a choice, and to prevent teachers who use books they wrote or co-wrote from charging over $50 for it. I doubt it will go through and I'm sure I'm behind the actual state of it.

The worst offender I remember was some douche bag who wrote his own chemistry manual and his WIFE (a non chemist) proof read it. The funniest thing and I couldn't find a link to the picture was the the cover had Avogadro's number on the cover... as

6.023 x 10 -23... yes I said NEGATIVE 23 in bold yellow on glossy paper.

the book had so many mistakes. I'm so glad I wasn't in that class.

Re:Many a foolish man has crossed Houghton Mifflin

[meringuoid]

Imagine a world where current higher education materials are available to ALL OF HUMANITY instead of a select few rich enough to go to college and pay these "rich people only please" prices.

Yes, just imagine it. [mit.edu]

Re:Many a foolish man has crossed Houghton Mifflin

[db32]

I'm not a programmer either, but I imagine most of the people writing OO stuff are programmers and not bankers and businessmen. So you should probably write a polite email to them explaining what you would like it to do in as much detail as possible and hope they get around to implementing that feature. You should also encourage anyone else who needs those features to do the same.

I have done that with a number of small F/OSS projects and at the very least I typically get a polite reply from a developer explaining why that feature isn't already there, that it is being worked on, or asking for a few more details so they understand it better.

Re:Old fashioned way

[Enderandrew]

You still seem to miss the point. I suggested you shouldn't print out a textbook. You state that you need to draw reactions.

How do these two statements relate?

Either you're insisting you need to draw them directly on the textbook, or you're missing the point.

There is no need to print a 500 page textbook on paper (wasting ink and paper) just because you want to take notes on paper.

You can draw reactions in a notebook, while you keep an e-book on your computer just fine.

Conversely, many colleges and science programs ISSUE notebooks to their students. My wife just finished her biology degree (she took o-chem as well) and is trying to get into a PhD program at Creighton. My best friend is off to get his third science Masters (Atmospheric Science).

I don't believe my wife, or anyone in her class used a computer for o-chem, but she said it was pretty standard fair for most of her classes for people to take notes on the computer.

I can type much faster on PC that I can write on paper. I can revise on the PC, search on the PC, etc.

Re:What's the deal?

[Attila Dimedici]

Of course, this is part of what drives the price of textbooks up. I used to manage a college bookstore. For every textbook returned, the bookstore has to sell two to break even. When a professor orders a textbook he doesn't use, the bookstore ends up having to return a lot of copies. I always pushed the professors to only order textbooks that would be of value to the students.

Textbook Torrents

[chainLynx]

Why buy if you can download? http://www.textbooktorrents.com/ [textbooktorrents.com]

Re:Many a foolish man has crossed Houghton Mifflin

[Luke_22]

I'd really hate that, because I like to read the book myself, and I don't need somebody reading it to me. Having to write everything down distracts from trying to understand what he is saying. If you go home with a bunch of notes that you don't understand, what good is that?

I have done some uni classes without books.
all I can say is:
-Book is never perfect, the teacher gives you feedback, quicker help.
-Teacher without books is not that bad, you learn to write what's important, and leave the rest. I think this is an important skill lots of people don't have.
-Learn to write notes! how can you not understand what you've written? notes are not meant to teach you. they are meant to remeber you of something easier. oh, and i usually listen fist, then ask questions, and just then i write... no, i never missed anything...
-writing notes helps you follow the teacher. it's so useful that sometimes i don't even revise notes.

That said, the best for me is a combo... teacher talks, you take notes, and you use the book at home.
...but if your book costs you 100eur+...
I've avoided some books with wikipedia, so open source books is not a bad idea for me. i'll propose this in my uni.

Re:Many a foolish man has crossed Houghton Mifflin

[penrodyn]

As I wrote in a previous post, this is definitely not true, at least in the sciences. There is *no* tenure credit for writing a text book, what matters is grant money.

Re:Many a foolish man has crossed Houghton Mifflin

[magarity]

So, what parts of Wikipedia do you consider to be fundamentally wrong?
 
Pointing out exactly what's wrong the problem, isn't it? Sure, most of it is reasonably accurate, but what parts aren't? Who knows when someone who really knows the material last looked at it and corrected the mistakes? At least with a book there are authors (real people, not handles), editors, and dates attached to the editing.

Re:Many a foolish man has crossed Houghton Mifflin

[treeves]

Well, I've used them and I'd say they can be quite useful at times. Let's say I've got a couple of machines that make widgets and each machine has multiple programs for making widgets and multiple operators and there are three shifts and four different kinds of widgets and you collect dimensional data on every widget produced. Pivot tables easily let you see the dimensional data as a function of shift, operator, program, widget type, etc. So, you could find the average length of all type 3 widgets made on machine #2 during the day shift, swing shift and graveyard shift and compare it with machine #1 for each shift, etc. You can easily see what factors are significant. It's a lot like an informal DOE, without the statistics, with the convenience of being able to drag and drop which variables you look at.