The University of Illinois system has received federal money to create an open-access textbook to be used on its three campuses, as well as the state’s community colleges, and shared with colleges and universities around the country, said Charles V. Evans, the university’s assistant vice president for academic affairs. The project is financed by a $150,000 grant from the Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education that the system secured in May with the help of Sen. Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, Mr. Evans said.
Unlike many projects that build collections of open-access textbooks by moving existing content to less restrictive licenses, Illinois is starting from scratch. Faculty members will write the textbook, though its subject has not been selected yet. The planning committee intends to choose a topic that is a strength at all of the system’s three campuses, said Mr. Evans, the project leader. The goal is to pick a topic before the end of the summer and have a draft completed next spring. Faculty members at different institutions will be able to customize the textbook to fit their particular needs.
The textbook will be available for free online, and students will have the option of ordering an affordable print version. The project is the most recent step in a joint effort between Mr. Durbin’s office and the university system to make textbooks more affordable, according to Mr. Evans.
Mr. Evans does not know yet if this textbook will be the first of many open-access books to come for Illinois, but he said he hopes more will become available. “Because it is so supportive of teaching and learning, I believe the option needs to be there,” he said.
The same fund awarded a two-year, $300,000 grant to the Florida Distance Learning Consortium to study the barriers to adopting open-source textbooks, according to Susan L. Henderson, the project’s director. The project plans to develop a financially sustainable model for the use of open-source textbooks by next fall—around the same time Illinois hopes to roll out its new textbook.
8 Responses to Free Online Textbook Project Gets Federal Money
arrive2__net - June 28, 2010 at 6:24 pm
This type of development could be a major boost to online as well as on-campus college and graduate students, since it could save them a lot of money. Developments like this will put pressure on textbook publishers to quickly move their products into a cheaper electronic form in order to save costs, and to compete. I wonder, however, what will be the long term impact on textbook quality. Maybe the higher level of technology in electronic formats with help to keep “textbook” quality high, and a new generation of textbook formats may provide a richer instructional format. Bernard SchusterArrive2.net
dwlewis - June 29, 2010 at 7:36 am
This is a welcome development, but what is really needed is for universities to invest themselves. Imagine what would be possible if the University of Illinois invested $100 per student for each of the next five years. That would be $7 million a year. And if all of the CIC schools did the same then ten times that amount would be on the table; real progress ould be made; open textbooks would be the norm, and studnets would save real money.
procrustes - June 29, 2010 at 9:18 am
dwlewis: do you read the news in the Chronicle? The University of Illinois has not received most of its state appropriation for the year and is nearly broke. The state of Illinois is tottering on the edge of bankruptcy. Where exactly do you think they should find $7m?
mbelvadi - June 29, 2010 at 10:25 am
$150,000 to write a single textbook??? Couldn’t they at least get 2 or 3 out of that much money? For that much money, I hope they end up writing one that competes with one of the $100+ books, e.g. in the sciences or biomed fields, not some little $40 humanities or social sciences/education book.
tubbsjohn - June 29, 2010 at 11:07 am
The bigger picture to consider is whether this is a single book, or the development of platform will support the initial pilot book. As a a part of group that is currently doing online textbook development, the latter is definitely the more cost effective and sustainable solution in our research and planning. What is the incentive for the faculty to write an open textbook? A no cost book would equal no royalties as a faculty author now benefits from. Let’s not forget issues of accessibility and access to the hardware to read the book. @mbelvadi – there are basically costs to consider – the authoring of the book (is the author getting paid to do this?) and the development of the delivery/distribution system (web applications and hardware, IT is not free). $150k is gone pretty quick, especially for the first product out the door.
carolpm - June 29, 2010 at 8:53 pm
People are often surprised to know how much it costs to develop a college textbook. The university would be smart to develop a short text in a subject that does not require a great deal of illustration or interactivity; for this first project the investment should focus on developing a model interface that can be used to publish subsequent texts. They will need to engage faculty willing to produce the interface, programming, and illustration templates for nearly nothing. The typical college textbook publisher often invests $500,000 or more in a first-edition college textbook of 500 pages. This sum does not include paper, printing or binding, nor sales and marketing costs, but “preproduction” costs such as editing and proofreading, illustration development and rendering, photo permissions(a professional photo permissions editor, too), peer reviews, and development of “free” ancillaries such as powerpoint slides, answer keys, test banks, and instructors’ guides. Illustration budgets vary. An artist might render a simple graph for $40 (note the artist must be compensating for proof and correction cycles as well as original rendering) but art studios charge anywhere between $100-$400 per illustration for figures in life and earth science texts. Authors’ royalties are based on the number of books sold, and on the net price of the book (the bookstore buys books from the publisher at a 20-30% discount of list price). 5,000 copies sold at $100 net earns an author $50,000. The publisher hopes for about an 18% return on investment after these costs, and generally must earn it in the first 18 months after publication because after that used books erode new book sales to almost nothing by the third year (which is why publishers new editions so often).
pedromartinez - July 6, 2010 at 10:08 am
Good idea but will it work? The bottom line is will students read their textbook? We had faculty members at our institution who provided textbooks on line at bottom prices; $42 for a business textbook, what a bargain! How many students bought it? Yes, only two.This generation does not read unless it is digested, in bullet form, nicely packaged in summaries and obtained from a quick search engine. We have tried clickers, ipod casts, social network tools and everything we can think of for spoiled techno explorers who want it in an easy and fast way, but who are not willing to do the work. Raise the bar, make them read and think, require the above to be the benchmarks for passing your courses. Stop pandering to textbook companies who send you a free disc with multiple questions exams and a key for the answers, throw away your scanners and prepare for classes instead of giving students “busy work” on Blackboard. Haven’t we learned that it is “time on task” what counts?Doctor Terminator
stevegabel - July 6, 2010 at 10:08 am
Thanks, carolpm, for a clear description of the textbook economy. Since it is self-evident that the entire substance of most textbooks is not obsolete after 18 months, it’s clear that there is a mismatch between the needs of students and teachers and the “hope” publishers have for their 18% RO, which can be achieved only if students are effectively compelled to fork over $100 or more per book designed to become nearly worthless in a short time.