[tt] CHE: Software Group Gets Online Textbooks to the Developing World

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Software Group Gets Online Textbooks to the Developing World
The Chronicle of Higher Education  Information Technology
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i12/12a02801.htm
From the issue dated November 16, 2007

Started by 2 professors, the Global Text Project uses volunteer writers to 
keep costs down

By ANDREA L. FOSTER

Learning is valuable, but in Africa it is more than that: It is 
prohibitively expensive. In Ethiopia, where the per-capita income is about 
$100 a year, a single textbook at Addis Ababa University can cost $50.

In order to get more textbooks to students in developing nations, two 
people are leading an ambitious project to produce and freely distribute 
1,000 original titles online.

Richard T. Watson, interim head of the department of management 
information systems at the University of Georgia, and Donald J. McCubbrey, 
a professor of information technology and electronic commerce at the 
University of Denver, have started what they call the Global Text Project. 
This semester the project's first book, Information Systems, is being used 
at Addis Ababa University and at Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University, in 
Indonesia.

The endeavor relies on professors and experienced professionals worldwide 
to each write, pro bono, at least one chapter of a book. Each chapter is 
reviewed by a scholar. Editors then assemble the chapters into complete 
books. The books are written using wikis, communal Web sites that 
encourage people to frequently edit and update the material. Another book, 
Business Fundamentals, is expected to be ready for the classroom early 
next year, and nine others are in development.

The process is demanding. Mr. Watson and Mr. McCubbrey have been lining up 
contributors and talking with potential backers. It is unclear whether 
they can overcome academe's skeptical view of the wiki process, whose 
reliability has been called into question because of the sheer number of 
contributors and the scarcity of oversight of their work. The two 
professors said they expect to avoid such attacks because, in their 
project, scholars and professors have the final say.

Students as Editors and Writers

The project came into being last year after Mr. Watson told Mr. McCubbrey 
that he'd had each of his graduate students at Georgia write a chapter for 
an XML-programming book because he couldn't find a textbook on the topic. 
At about the same time, Mr. McCubbrey wrote a paper on using free online 
content in teaching. The two discussed their experiences at an academic 
conference and decided to start the Global Text Project.

The endeavor is part of a larger movement to provide free academic 
material online. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that almost anyone can 
edit, has spawned free, open-source textbooks called Wikibooks. Rice 
University last year started the first all-digital university press, 
Connexions. Six years ago, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology began 
posting course material online as part of its OpenCourseWare program. And 
the Million Book Project, an effort led by Carnegie Mellon University, has 
digitized 1.4 million books in China, India, and Egypt.

John C. Beachboard, an associate professor of computer-information systems 
at Idaho State University, is one Global Text contributor. He got involved 
because he would like more course material to be free. "I'm not wild about 
the textbook industry," he says, noting that many of his students are 
unable to afford textbooks.

It took Mr. Beachboard six months to write a chapter for Information 
Systems. Some of his graduate students reviewed his work and suggested 
changes, many of which he accepted. But he determined what went into the 
chapter.

Such professorial discretion is one important way the Global Text project 
differs from other wiki efforts, says Mr. Watson. Unlike in Wikibooks, 
scholars have editorial control of the product. There are other 
differences as well. Connexions favors smaller units of learning material 
rather than complete books.

Students will, however, play a big role in the Global Text effort. Mr. 
Watson and Mr. McCubbrey are counting on them to provide editors with 
suggestions for improving the text and ways to include locally relevant 
information. They will also help translate texts and promote the books 
worldwide.

Teams of students, under the supervision of professors, are writing 
sections of chapters in some forthcoming books.

Many Languages

At Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University, Samiaji Sarosa's students are using 
Information Systems as a supplement to other course material. Mr. Sarosa, 
a lecturer, says via e-mail that students are finding the book useful even 
though they struggle to understand English.

"Currently, more than 200 information-management students depend on a 
library collection which is limited to less than 10 textbooks," he says, 
adding that next semester he may use Information Systems as his primary 
course material.

The Global Text Project intends to publish books in Arabic, Chinese, 
English, and Spanish, says Mr. Watson.

Already the University of Concepción, in Chile, has agreed to donate about 
350 books, written by faculty members, for digitization in the Global Text 
library.

Development Lagging

Once enough books are online, Mr. McCubbrey hopes to find sponsors who 
will provide money to keep the project growing. He says he may ask big 
companies, like Accenture, a consulting firm, and the 3M Company to pay 
for development. In return they would get their logos on the covers and at 
the beginning of each chapter.

"It might be worthwhile for some companies," he says, "because of the 
exposure and the good will."

So far the Global Text Project has received $200,000 from the Zurich-based 
Jacobs Foundation, an international philanthropy that focuses on helping 
disadvantaged youth. Mr. Watson and Mr. McCubbrey are using the money for 
travel, to meet potential authors, editors, and financial backers 
worldwide.

Mariano Delle Donne, a Denver business consultant, contributed $1,000 to 
the project after reading about it in a newspaper and recalling how 
difficult it was to get college reading material in his native Argentina. 
Professors there would leave textbooks at photocopy machines and ask 
students to copy several chapters at a time, says Mr. Delle Donne, who 
earned an advanced degree from the University of Denver's Daniels College 
of Business, where he met Mr. McCubbrey.

Established academic publishers have not contributed to the project, but 
Mr. Watson is not counting them out. He is a consulting editor for John 
Wiley & Sons, and although he offered to resign from this post when he 
started the project, officials of the textbook publisher asked him to stay 
on and keep them in the loop.

They told him, Mr. Watson says, that "we'd rather know what's happening 
and see how we can get involved."

Publishers as Partners

One possibility is the donation of old textbooks. A lot of publishers have 
books lying around in warehouses that they could donate to the project in 
exchange for a tax break, he says. The books could be updated, digitized, 
and edited like other Global Text offerings.

"I'd rather work with the publishers to try to help them develop a new 
business model than have this be an antagonistic situation," says Mr. 
Watson.

His most immediate concern, though, is rounding up volunteers. "I might 
speak to an audience of 100 and recruit five or six people," he says. Most 
of the recruits are seasoned professors, since colleges typically don't 
count contributions to the project toward tenure or promotion.

And he has had difficulties getting some of his volunteers to produce.

"The major problem we face is, professors don't deliver chapters on time," 
he says.

To complete the project, Mr. Watson figures that he'll need 20,000 
volunteers. How he arrived at the figure might be worth including in a 
Global Text math book: 20 chapters in 1,000 books equals 20,000 chapter 
authors.