Kudos to Ms. Martin for taking charge and acting on student concerns and needs. Hopefully other colleges and universities will follow her example

It's good to see an entire department experimenting with alternatives to traditional textbooks - especially with the twist of integrating it into the student's tuition and fees. In my essay "Taming the Textbook Market" (http://bit.ly/bH0mEg) I recommended the idea of adding a minimal fee to bring in revenue that could not only cover the cost of open textbook resources, but doing so in a way that could generate a fund that could be used to help the bookstore remain viable (in the model presented above - how does the bookstore survive - by just selling college merchandise?).

While Flat World offers some hope for the problem of costly traditional textbooks, it could work in this situation because there are a fair number of business texts. But if you tried this in an education school or over at the sociology department it would be impossible or difficult at best because so many disciplines are just poorly represented at Flat World. That means we need more faculty from a broader range of disciplines to become contributors to Flat World or Connexion - and to make these alternative approaches a viable option for what I call the "Curricular Resource Strategy".

Jeff, Founder, here from Flat World Knowledge. I appreciate the comment "blendedlibrarian." Please note that our first General Education title (College Success) was recently released. That will be followed this fall by Introductory Sociology, Introductory Psychology, Beginning Algebra, and others. Over the next couple of years you'll see 30-40 General Education titles released by Flat World Knowledge. Stay tuned.

The idea is innovative.

Doesn't this take away choice of textbook for professors, since the school is locked into the deal with Faltworld? Or are these first year texts so the content is more universal anyway?

Sorry, I meant Flatworld.

As a VSU instructor...we are free to choose other means of learning materials. For instance, FlatWorld does not carry texts for what I teach but this move encouraged me to investigate other low cost, quality means of delivering the material. It also allows me to use timely articles to tie in the real world business experiences we need to use in the classroom.

The other thing the article does not mention is the buy in from nearly all the faculty and the energy that Dean Martin brings to the school!

I agree that textbooks cost a lot, no question about it. So does tuition at most institutions. I'm curious how much a credit hour costs at this business school? Textbooks costs have become such a hot topic again, but meanwhile higher education is just saddling graduates with a level of debt never seen before starting them off post-college with such a burden that many can never recover from.

At a community college the costs of textbooks is much higher as a percentage of ovetall costs, but at most colleges and universities it is still such a small percentage. Again, I agree that textbook prices are out of control and that has a lot to do with the publishers combatting the used book market since they don't make anything off of used books, but let's keep things in perspective.

I think E-Books have a future, probably much closer now with tablets like the iPad, but I think you also have to consider keeping your college bookstores in the distribution model as the source for consolidating the course material requirements and distribution of them as well, such as E-Textbooks or open source books, which is the model from FWK.

Full disclosure - yes, I do work as a collegiate retailer. Thanks for reading.

Flat World Knowledge is an open-source textbook publisher. I'm surprised that the article didn't mention that. The fact that this is an open-source provider is (IMO) a far more interesting point than that the books are electronic.

I was told by a high official at my university that open source textbooks would never be accepted by our faculty. The fact that a large and respected business school has made a unified commitment to open-source materials is a terribly important story.

Here's a link to Flat World:

http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/about

eBooks are here to stay. With programs like these and text book prices still being ridiculously high, pretty soon everyone will be getting eBooks to replace the paper copies that cost an arm-n-leg. Publishers have already figured this out and enacting more copyright laws and complicated royalty hurdles. But the tides have turned IMO.

Sujan Manandhar
Technology Integration Specialist
Ohio State University
http://edutechman.blogspot.com/

One of my colleagues told me this week that her class' e-textbooks cost almost the same as new hardcopy. I was irritated, but not surprised.

As more and more people switch to e-books, expect more and more textbook publishers to "adapt" by ratcheting up the prices of e-books. I predict the "silver bullet" of e-textbook price savings to increasingly dwindle over time.

Uconndirk brought up the point about textbooks being small potatoes next to expensive tuition. I'll add equipment and supplies cost to that. Ever price out the supplies needed for nursing, interior design, aerospace or photography programs? To name just a few. They can easily reach $1,000. Why is that never mentioned? Such costs dwarf a textbook's cost, yet textbooks are the recipient of all the ire.

I suggest that faculty increase their 24/hr work week (common at most universities) to help with tuition costs. That will have a far greater impact that saving a few bucks on a textbook. :)

24 hour work week? Baloney! I've worked in several universities, and I've worked in the private sector, and I'm faculty right now. The private sector was a vacation compared to the work I do now. In the past several years, I don't think I've put in a week under 60 hours, and I've taken precisely 2 weeks off in 4 years. I work most weekends - though yes, some of the work is done at home. Faculty have flexible hours, but between teaching, preparing the course, marking, serving on endless committees, and doing research and publishing, it's an absolute pile of nonsense to say that faculty work weeks of 24 hours are common at most universities. This is insulting and ignorant. Yes, there are some deadwood faculty, but most of the ones I know work very hard indeed.

In 20 years of college teaching, I've never known anyone who kept a schedule like yours. Where I am, we work 9 months out of the year, teaching summers only if we want to. And after teaching the same course a few times, I'm wondering what's left to "prepare," unless you keep overhauling it. Committee work is required, but I've never found it to be "endless" unless I was on a really unproductive committee.

Now, research and publishing, yes, that certainly adds to the workload. But if research is required, the teaching load is commensurately reduced.

YMMV, obviously.

#9: If your faculty aren't willing to consider whether open content textbooks would meet the needs of their students, aren't they essentially saying that they're not willing to do their jobs?