Brainstorm in Progress: Darrell Steinberg

Showing posts with label Darrell Steinberg. Show all posts

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Jerry Brown Unlocks the Nation's Digital Future through Open Source Textbook Innovation

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today, Governor Jerry Brown signed a monumental set of bills that create the nation's first free online textbook library, an effort aimed at alleviating the burden of rising costs to students attending California's public postsecondary institutions. California is now set to become the nation's first state to create a digital textbook library free of charge for the state's most popular college courses, says the 20 Million Minds Foundation.

Introduced by Senate President pro Tem Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), SB 1052 provides for the selection, development and administration of free open digital textbooks for the most popular lower-division courses and overseen by the establishment of the "California Open Education Resources Council" (COERC). COERC, established by the legislation, will be comprised of faculty members from the University of California, California State University and Community Colleges to determine which courses merit inclusion. Its companion bill, SB 1053, creates the California Open Source Digital Library to house the open source textbooks and courseware.

Both bills place California first in the nation among states to combat higher education's growing price tag with open source software and Creative Commons open licenses so that students can access sophisticated tools and college-level information at no or low cost, allowing them to mitigate escalating college fee increases and save their money for student housing.

With the Governor's signature, California is set to create a competitive "Request for Proposals" (RFP) process inviting faculty, publishers, and others to develop high quality digital open source textbooks and related courseware. The materials will be placed under a "Creative Commons" licensing structure that allows students and faculty free access, and allows instructors to create customized materials from these textbooks and other courseware. Materials must also meet the rigorous standards of college core curricula, and will be reviewed and approved by subject matter experts. "This is a great victory for students and middle class families struggling with the ever-increasing costs of higher education," said Steinberg. "This is a major step toward using technology to cut costs for students while enhancing the quality of higher education in California."

"At a time when the cost of attending California's public colleges and universities is skyrocketing, Governor Jerry Brown recognized that by embracing our digital future with innovative technological advancements like open source textbooks we can save college students in California millions of dollars in escalating book costs," said 20 Million Minds Foundation President Dean Florez. The foundation has been supportive of policy measures to create quality open source textbooks for college students throughout the nation. "This is the first time government has come in with substantial dollars that match philanthropic efforts to create a library where students can access free textbooks and faculty can utilize their skills to remix, revise, and repurpose these textbooks for their students."

Funding for the bills also signed by the governor (SB 1028), appropriates five million dollars for the project from the state public college savings plan ScholarShare Trust fund to be matched by private entities and philanthropy.

Dr. Larry Green, Mathematics Co-Chair of Lake Tahoe Community College, who has been utilizing a free open source textbook for his students, praised the governor. "From the instructors' perspective, having access to a wealth of professional course materials to edit, use and share frees up time for pursuing more one-on-one interaction with students and more personalized learning," said Green. "Choosing to adopt an enhanced digital open textbook for my students spares them several thousands of dollars in combined textbook expenses and increases student success. I thank the Governor for recognizing the need to provide faculty with the tools necessary for remixing curriculum while preserving academic freedom by providing free quality textbook choices for college professors and their students."

The open source library will allow students to download textbooks for free or pay around $20 for a hard copy, and was the principle reason the signed bills received approval by the University of California.

SOURCE The 20 Million Minds Foundation

Friday, February 03, 2012

Beating the High Cost of Education with Open Textbooks

I wrote this as a Tech Beat article for the Times Standard:

Jonas is a 20-year-old College of the Redwoods student. He works part-time at a local auto shop and wants to one day open his own business. He needs to take classes in business and mathematics to help him be successful. Because he works, he barely qualifies for any financial aid, but he was just able to save enough money to cover the cost of school and can make it if his financial aid will pay for the required textbooks.

On the first day of class, he discovers that his financial aid check won't arrive until two weeks after classes have started. Jonas will eventually buy his textbooks and catch up. Some students wait even longer and succumb to the temptation of just “winging it.” They try to get by without buying the textbook at all.

As you can see, Jonas, like many students in California, has a problem. The cost of education is rising twice as fast as the rate of inflation; it is rising even faster than the cost of healt

Image via CrunchBaseh care. The average student spends over $900 a year on textbooks. In many cases, the cost of the textbook is higher than the cost of the class (from Student PIRGs).

One innovative answer is “open textbooks.” What is an open textbook? An open textbook is one that is free, and instead of a traditional copyright which limits what a teacher can do with a text, it is either in The public domain or the author has used what is known as the Creative Commons licensing -- the author retains ownership but spells out exactly how a textbook can be used (seehttp://creativecommons.org). These textbooks are available electronically at online repositories like College Open Textbooks and CK-12 which offers “customizable, free, curriculum aligned content for k-12." Open textbooks can also be available in hard copy editions for significantly lower costs.

Using open textbooks and learning objects can be just as effective and, in many cases, more effective than a commercial textbook. Why? Commercial textbooks are a one-size-fits-all proposition. Because learning objectives and outcomes differ from institution to institution based on the needs of the local communities, main faculty already have to adapt and remix commercial texts for the needs of the student populations, often in the form of additional, costly supplements or multiple books. What I have found in my work with open textbooks is that textbooks are often supplanted (not supplemented) by openly licensed video, audio, images (and yes, open textbooks), making the course even more engaging for the students.

The real value to the authors of open texts is that they are not drawing on their own work alone, but they are getting access to a community of authors, revisers, practitioners, researchers and adapters -- a community of scholarship that will support the work of the textbook. A commercial textbook cannot take into account the social and economic conditions of the local community. A traditional commercial college textbook cannot be adapted to the deficiencies or advantages of the local high school. You can, for a price, however, buy “supplements,” which is the hole card of the commercial publisher of not-quite-entirely-unlike open textbooks. Why let book printers in another state determine the needs of your community? A community of scholars can support an online English grammar better than any book publisher trapped in the two-year publishing cycle model. These conversations and decisions should be happening in colleges and schools, not corporate boardrooms.

The math department at College of the Redwoods is already addressing this issue. They have classes that include free textbooks authored by the faculty. The textbooks are available for free online, on CD, or for a nominal cost in the college bookstore if the students prefer a hard copy. These books are written by local instructor swho are aware of the particular problems faced by the local student population. For the math department, the textbooks did not seem adequate, and they were too expensive, so instructors like Dave Arnold, Bruce Wagner and others in the department wrote or contributed to their own textbooks that include online help, examples and online quiz banks.

And fortunately for Jonas, California Senator Darrell Steinberg has proposed legislation to save California college students hundreds of millions of dollars a year in education costs. At a time when education affordability is at the forefront of national debate, this legislation would give students free access to open textbooks for 50 lower-division courses. These books would be available electronically through a “digital open source library,” with a print versions offered for around $20.