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Open Textbook Initiative

aimath.org

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Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#11

Post by rplnt »

dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

> Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

So it's the schools that are in on it and the primary target to put blame on. My university (in eastern EU) had majority of textbooks available for free. We could print them ourselves, have them printed at school, or just buy used. I'm sure it wasn't the case for all curriculums, but probably for many. Writing textbooks is one of the things teachers (professors) do after all.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#12

Post by leonvv »

nvrspyx wrote: post #8
kwhitefoot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the same problem with high school (videregående skole) here in Norway. It should be possible for a child to use their older sibling's textbooks, especially for subjects like mathematics and physics, but very often the school requires a particular edition.

At my high school, the textbooks were given to us and then we returned it at the end of the year for the next cohort (we'd right our names on list in the back with the current condition to keep track). I'm not sure if this is how other US high schools did it.

It's the same in the Netherlands. It's a great system I think. Sometimes you can see kids haul all their books on a bicycle, which is quite a challenge even for the Dutch

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#13

Post by smeej »

nvrspyx wrote: post #8
kwhitefoot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have the same problem with high school (videregående skole) here in Norway. It should be possible for a child to use their older sibling's textbooks, especially for subjects like mathematics and physics, but very often the school requires a particular edition.

At my high school, the textbooks were given to us and then we returned it at the end of the year for the next cohort (we'd right our names on list in the back with the current condition to keep track). I'm not sure if this is how other US high schools did it.

We each got a book to bring home, and then there was another set of the books kept in the classroom, and a few copies in the library.

That way we didn't have to lug our books back and forth to school and could just use the shared books in the classroom and our own books at home.

It seemed to serve us well and not stunt our growth!

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#14

Post by projektfu »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #6
dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

We have the same problem with high school (videregående skole) here in Norway. It should be possible for a child to use their older sibling's textbooks, especially for subjects like mathematics and physics, but very often the school requires a particular edition.

I took Calc 2 at my university and borrowed my roommate's book that he bought the year before. It was useless because it was the "preliminary edition". It was virtually the same book except all the exercises were in customary US units instead of metric. Can you imagine, publishing a math textbook in 1995 in customary units? All of my high school books had been metric and were a decade old. There could only be one reason to do so -- to require the next group of students to buy the new book.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#15

Post by netizen-936824 »

rplnt wrote: post #11
dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

> Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits. So it's the schools that are in on it and the primary target to put blame on. My university (in eastern EU) had majority of textbooks available for free. We could print them ourselves, have them printed at school, or just buy used. I'm sure it wasn't the case for all curriculums, but probably for many. Writing textbooks is one of the…

Some instructors are beginning to use more Open Educational Resources (OER) such as open access online textbooks (OpenStax) in their courses.

Huge props to them and I hope more do this, but we also need to recognise that most OER today serves the basic classes that more people will take.

Its when you get into the higher level, more specific courses where OER is currently under-serving. OER for most of these courses just plain don't exist, I hope someone figures out a way to serve these student and instructors in the near future.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#16

Post by somenameforme »

dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

It's definitely not just the publishers. I think rackets like this work so effectively because bellies get buttered all the way down.

At one class at my university (an early chem class) the author of the book was also the professor of the course. And each year it was a new version which didn't do a whole lot more than fix some typos, introduce some new ones to be fixed next year, and change (probably automatically through software) the problem sets.

Then you'd be forced to buy new copies at full price from the campus book store. And at the end they'd then buy them back for you for a few dimes on the dollar so long as they were in "like-new" condition. And while I don't know what they did with them then I expect at that point they were sold to other universities at a discount for them to start the racket all over again with a set of now "like-new" text books.

Really nobody has any motivation whatsoever to change the system besides the student. Though even there most students seemed frustrated but simultaneously pretty apathetic. Everybody of course realized it was a racket, but didn't really care to make too much of a fuss over it since endless loans and the like all make it feel somehow like the money involved is not really real. And, after all, in a decade or two we'd all be millionaires.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#17

Post by chrisseaton »

dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

In the UK we (or at least I) never used the exercises from the text books - the lecturer sets their own questions and exercises.

So the exact page layout of the text books doesn't matter, and you can use any edition.

In general text books just seem to be less of a big deal in the UK. I remember reading all the classic text books, but the course didn't revolve around them. You could often pick which text books to read out of a selection.

And you just get them from the library.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#18

Post by voxadam »

dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

I personally believe that public universities in the US should be incentivized if not outright required to use and contribute to open textbooks when possible.

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#19

Post by jccalhoun »

dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

Well good news: they don't bring out new versions as often any more for most subjects.

Bad news: they are pushing hard for ebooks that are drm'ed to hell so you can't resell them. And if they do still have paper books, increasingly they are moving to "loose leaf" editions which are "cheaper" because they are just loose pages which means they are much more likely get damaged so you can't resell those either. Or if they do offer actual books, they do "rentals" which means you pay most of the price but have to return them and so you have zero chance of being able to resell them.

But that's ok, I'm sure your local bookstore can help you. Oh wait, most college bookstores are now owned by Barnes and Noble and so they are just another corporate business...

Re: Open Textbook Initiative

#20

Post by chrisseaton »

jccalhoun wrote: post #19
dzdt wrote: post #5

College level textbooks in USA are a total racket. The major textbooks come out with a new revision roughly annually, where the material is reorganized enough to change section and exercise numbers. The purpose is to destroy the used textbook market, as assigned reading and homework will not correspond to older revisions of the book. Then students are forced to buy new books and the publishers can make big profits.

Well good news: they don't bring out new versions as often any more for most subjects. Bad news: they are pushing hard for ebooks that are drm'ed to hell so you can't resell them. And if they do still have paper books, increasingly they are moving to "loose leaf" editions which are "cheaper" because they are just loose pages which means they are much more likely get damaged so you can't resell those either. Or if the…

What I don't get is - do US universities not have libraries where you can borrow these text books?
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