Professors Posting Pricey Textbooks on the Web
The costly textbook market is starting to come under pressure from both the academics who author the texts and groups who believe knowledge and information should be free and available to all. They're taking inspiration from a number of Internet phenomena such as peer-to-peer file sharing, Wikipedia, and the open source movement.
Professor R. Preston McAfee, from Cal Tech, has authored an introductory tome on economics that he has made available online for free. The book is also being offered in print from multiple outlets for a fraction of the price of normal textbooks -- $11 at its cheapest. The book, 'Introduction to Economic Analysis,' is even being used at Harvard.
But McAfee's free e-text book is just the beginning. Connexions is a tool for making what amount to textbook mash-ups. Authors can submit full length texts of individual sections (called modules) that can than be edited, mixed and mashed, as long as the original author is credited according to the Creative Commons license.
Connexions is just one way in which the open source movement is influencing the education market. Perhaps even more impressive is MIT's OpenCourseWare, which since being announced in 2001 has made lectures, assignments, and reading material for over 1,800 classes available online to the general public.
Textbook publishers are now rushing to join the 21st century before they can be blindsided and replaced (as record stores and printed encyclopedias have been) by these new Internet-powered movements. CourseSmart was formed by a consortium of academic publishers who have made over 4,000 textbooks available online or as digital downloads for less than their print options. But even these discounted offerings are pricey and lack flexibility, offering students the option to either download, or read online, not both.
These new free and community based educational offerings are quite a ways from deposing the academic publishing powerhouses, but they will likely find a niche amongst the more technologically savvy and experimental professors and students. [From: The New York Times]
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