Well, I'd love and welcome a good high-quality open source textbook movement that happens to also be high quality. It's the quality issue that's the major problem at the moment, I'd say. I've LOVE to see, for instance, Math textbooks written like they wrote "Real World Haskell" in wiki format with a single (or a small,finite set of) editor(s) ensuring that content and quality is up-to-snuff. I think that there really should be minimal educational infrastructure provided for free or very low cost.
Quality isn't the issue for most subjects. There are plenty of free and cheap textbooks with perfectly fine quality.
For example, when I took thermodynamics in college (in 2001), I used a thermo book from the early 70's which cost me $8 on eBay (as opposed to the modern version which cost $100). I also skipped purchasing many books entirely, and just used free materials online, including this newfangled site called wikipedia.
Agency costs and are the issue. The people assigning books don't have to pay the cost of using them, so they have no incentive to select based on price. Further, it's very difficult for students to use substitutes - if the professor assigns problems 1-10 from the book, it doesn't matter how good the material in your cheaper substitute is.
If you want to crack this nut, focus on problem sets, not textbooks.
Well, I do disagree on the quality aspect. I'd like to see a high quality Calc I and II textbook that's free, coherent, and not aimed at MIT students. My wife is a faculty member and if you can find me one, I'll pass it along (they're constantly looking for one). It's just hard to not choose Stewart..it's a solid textbook for a broad range of students, but it's expensive as shit. A lot of professors are getting that this (if they don't, I make damned sure I mention it when we socialize with them) is a barrier for a lot of students.
Anyway, you're absolutely 100% correct about problem sets. Good problem sets go a VERY long way to making a good textbook.
Is there _anything_ in Stewart that isn't covered as well by Khan? You also get advantage of the video tutorial on the topic.
I'm waiting for that point in time when we reach a tipping point and Higher Education Institutions don't just delegate everything to Khan for a lot of their topics.
My Calculus Course (151) at SFU took place in Images Theater at 8:30 in the morning and had 450 Students listening to a lecture on Calculus. The ratio was approximately: 1/8 of the students were bored. 1/8 of the students were lost, 1/8 of the students were attentive, 1/8 of the students were asleep, and 1/2 of the students didn't show up. (8:30 AM!)
I see little need for Stewart in the Face of Khan's Video Collection on Calculus + a bit of wikipedia (Seriously - check out their section on Derivatives and compare it to Stewart)
I will agree with you on the Problem Sets - and perhaps that's the missing ingredient in Khan - He needs to more fully flesh out his test bank - but http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard is moving ahead nicely. (And, in my mind, is far superior to any static test bank)
Problem set quality is not the issue. If it were, I would donate a week or two of my time and build a problem set generator.
The issue is that you need the same problem sets as the instructor. If the instructor uses Stewart and homework is graded, you get a 0 on HW. This is why you can't even go back 1 edition of the book, and why the legacy publishers print a new edition every 2 years with minimal changes beyond tweaking the problems.
A startup idea I never pursued, but one I think has a lot of merit: build an online problem cross referencer. It provides a) free problems to any instructors who want to use them and b) crossreferences these problems with existing textbooks (that way students who don't want to buy the book don't have to).
I'm pretty sure that Int[ 1/Sqrt[3+5x^2], {x}] can't be copyrighted.
Int[ 1/Sqrt[3+5x^2], {x}] can't be copyrighted but a problem set that consists only of exercises as routine as this would be almost worthless. A cross referencer is a neat idea though.
I have not, thanks for the tip. I looked at a book or so, but didn't see an easy away to comment on individual paragraphs like in "Real World Haskell", but maybe more of the interface opens up if you log in. ANyway, thanks for the tip!
Honestly, that is not a ridiculous idea. If we remove the standardized testing, the community developed textbook would explode.
In many of my college classes I spend more time using wikipedia than my textbook.
Furthermore, I know many teachers who have written widely used (assigned reading in over 1k classes) who want their books to be available for a greatly reduced price if not all together for free. Unfortunately the publishers ban this and the writers must relent since the only way to get their book known is if it comes from a major publisher. They justify this mostly based on promotion costs, but this is not even close to their profit margins.
Books are expensive because there is little competition, particularly with k-12 schools, largely based on political lobbying.
Of course, we aren't likely to dissolve lobbyists anytime soon; but the idea of socially conscious startups is to dream big.
I should also add. Technology is driven by people so it matters how they use it to the advantage of all and not just some. When technology helps people, we generally mean to say that people are helping people. I am not being altruistic here but there are things which should be free and available to all equally and education is one of that.
I expect basic education to stay within the realm of government and free. Public giving up education to private/corporate sector is a recipe for disaster.
How technology can help government improve the quality, and how technology can keep the education free for the masses, is another thing.
I don't think that the goal here is to degrade public education; one of the main attractions with this incubator is that it has connections to get your product into public schools.
To provide a good education, public school systems need all kinds of supplies, products, books, services, etc. that don't make sense to produce in-house. This is where the private sector comes in -- though it's hard for small companies (who can often give the schools the best value for their money) to build relationships with schools, get through the red tape (getting onto vendor lists, going through bid systems, etc.), so often the schools are getting lower-quality supplies/services for more money.
...so wouldn't it be nice if there were some group that would help new education-focused companies to get their innovations into the (free) public schools?
Comments
I guess you expect publishers to print and give away textbooks for free too?
Well, I'd love and welcome a good high-quality open source textbook movement that happens to also be high quality. It's the quality issue that's the major problem at the moment, I'd say. I've LOVE to see, for instance, Math textbooks written like they wrote "Real World Haskell" in wiki format with a single (or a small,finite set of) editor(s) ensuring that content and quality is up-to-snuff. I think that there really should be minimal educational infrastructure provided for free or very low cost.
Quality isn't the issue for most subjects. There are plenty of free and cheap textbooks with perfectly fine quality.
For example, when I took thermodynamics in college (in 2001), I used a thermo book from the early 70's which cost me $8 on eBay (as opposed to the modern version which cost $100). I also skipped purchasing many books entirely, and just used free materials online, including this newfangled site called wikipedia.
Agency costs and are the issue. The people assigning books don't have to pay the cost of using them, so they have no incentive to select based on price. Further, it's very difficult for students to use substitutes - if the professor assigns problems 1-10 from the book, it doesn't matter how good the material in your cheaper substitute is.
If you want to crack this nut, focus on problem sets, not textbooks.
Well, I do disagree on the quality aspect. I'd like to see a high quality Calc I and II textbook that's free, coherent, and not aimed at MIT students. My wife is a faculty member and if you can find me one, I'll pass it along (they're constantly looking for one). It's just hard to not choose Stewart..it's a solid textbook for a broad range of students, but it's expensive as shit. A lot of professors are getting that this (if they don't, I make damned sure I mention it when we socialize with them) is a barrier for a lot of students.
Anyway, you're absolutely 100% correct about problem sets. Good problem sets go a VERY long way to making a good textbook.
It's been 15 years since I took Calculus I and II, but looking over: http://www.khanacademy.org/#Calculus
Is there _anything_ in Stewart that isn't covered as well by Khan? You also get advantage of the video tutorial on the topic.
I'm waiting for that point in time when we reach a tipping point and Higher Education Institutions don't just delegate everything to Khan for a lot of their topics.
My Calculus Course (151) at SFU took place in Images Theater at 8:30 in the morning and had 450 Students listening to a lecture on Calculus. The ratio was approximately: 1/8 of the students were bored. 1/8 of the students were lost, 1/8 of the students were attentive, 1/8 of the students were asleep, and 1/2 of the students didn't show up. (8:30 AM!)
I see little need for Stewart in the Face of Khan's Video Collection on Calculus + a bit of wikipedia (Seriously - check out their section on Derivatives and compare it to Stewart)
I will agree with you on the Problem Sets - and perhaps that's the missing ingredient in Khan - He needs to more fully flesh out his test bank - but http://www.khanacademy.org/exercisedashboard is moving ahead nicely. (And, in my mind, is far superior to any static test bank)
Problem set quality is not the issue. If it were, I would donate a week or two of my time and build a problem set generator.
The issue is that you need the same problem sets as the instructor. If the instructor uses Stewart and homework is graded, you get a 0 on HW. This is why you can't even go back 1 edition of the book, and why the legacy publishers print a new edition every 2 years with minimal changes beyond tweaking the problems.
A startup idea I never pursued, but one I think has a lot of merit: build an online problem cross referencer. It provides a) free problems to any instructors who want to use them and b) crossreferences these problems with existing textbooks (that way students who don't want to buy the book don't have to).
I'm pretty sure that Int[ 1/Sqrt[3+5x^2], {x}] can't be copyrighted.
Int[ 1/Sqrt[3+5x^2], {x}] can't be copyrighted but a problem set that consists only of exercises as routine as this would be almost worthless. A cross referencer is a neat idea though.
http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu/ seems good (after 30 seconds of googling, and 5 minutes of skimming).
Have you heard of OERCommons (http://www.oercommons.org/)? They sound like what you describe.
I have not, thanks for the tip. I looked at a book or so, but didn't see an easy away to comment on individual paragraphs like in "Real World Haskell", but maybe more of the interface opens up if you log in. ANyway, thanks for the tip!
My site is a wiki similar to what you describe, http://inperc.com/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Courses. I would like to allow comments but afraid of spam. Maybe one day.
Honestly, that is not a ridiculous idea. If we remove the standardized testing, the community developed textbook would explode.
In many of my college classes I spend more time using wikipedia than my textbook.
Furthermore, I know many teachers who have written widely used (assigned reading in over 1k classes) who want their books to be available for a greatly reduced price if not all together for free. Unfortunately the publishers ban this and the writers must relent since the only way to get their book known is if it comes from a major publisher. They justify this mostly based on promotion costs, but this is not even close to their profit margins.
Books are expensive because there is little competition, particularly with k-12 schools, largely based on political lobbying.
Of course, we aren't likely to dissolve lobbyists anytime soon; but the idea of socially conscious startups is to dream big.
I should also add. Technology is driven by people so it matters how they use it to the advantage of all and not just some. When technology helps people, we generally mean to say that people are helping people. I am not being altruistic here but there are things which should be free and available to all equally and education is one of that.
I expect basic education to stay within the realm of government and free. Public giving up education to private/corporate sector is a recipe for disaster.
How technology can help government improve the quality, and how technology can keep the education free for the masses, is another thing.
I don't think that the goal here is to degrade public education; one of the main attractions with this incubator is that it has connections to get your product into public schools.
To provide a good education, public school systems need all kinds of supplies, products, books, services, etc. that don't make sense to produce in-house. This is where the private sector comes in -- though it's hard for small companies (who can often give the schools the best value for their money) to build relationships with schools, get through the red tape (getting onto vendor lists, going through bid systems, etc.), so often the schools are getting lower-quality supplies/services for more money.
...so wouldn't it be nice if there were some group that would help new education-focused companies to get their innovations into the (free) public schools?
I hope this makes more sense now.