Texas issues RFO for “open textbooks”

Texas has issued an Request for Offer (RFO) for “state-developed open-source textbooks” for literature and ESOL.

They say, “The purpose of this offer is to identify and acquire state-developed/state owned open-source textbooks that are available for downloading from the internet at no charge to a student and without requiring the purchase of an unlock code, membership, or other access or use charge, except for a charge to order an optional printed copy of all or part of the textbook.”

In reading some (though admittedly not all yet) of the 73 page bid package, this appears to follow previously published Texas definitions of “open source textbooks” as owned by the state and licensed to Texas schools without charge. They say that “a state-developed open-source textbook is the property of the state.”

No apparent mention of any requirement that the material actually be open licensed.

I’d say the open ed movement has some education and awareness-building work to do.

Additional notes of interest upon further reading:

“A state-developed open-source textbook must be irrevocably owned by or licensed by the state, and the state must have unlimited authority to modify, delete, combine and/or add content to the textbook after purchase….

A state-developed open-source textbook is the property of the state. The COE shall provide a license to each public school in the state, including a school district, and open enrollment charter school, and a state or local agency educating students in any grade from prekindergarten through high school, to use and reproduce a state-developed open source textbook.

The COE may provide a license to use a state-developed open source textbook to an entity not listed. In determining the cost of the license, the COE shall seek, to the extent feasible to recover costs of developing, revising, and distributing state-developed/state owned open-source textbooks.”

So this really seems to be a work-for-hire arrangement in which the state owns the content. (Not that this doesn’t have merit of its own, but it isn’t “open.”) The state could then sell licenses to other entities (e.g. out-of-state schools) to recover costs.

This seems to be very similar to the state co-development projects of the ’90s. Having led one of these projects myself, I’m familiar with the dynamics.

Potential cost savings of OER – Part 1

I’ve been thinking a lot about the potential cost savings of OER in K-12. I know that in these times of state financial crisis, a silver bullet like free textbooks is very appealing.

Personally, I think that the educational advantages of having resources that are licensed in a way that they can be legally remixed and adapted to differentiate instruction are much more important than the economics. Having said that, I understand that cost savings are likely to be an important driver in OER adoption.

Recently, Texas State Representative Scott Hochberg, who was a leader on the “open source textbook” legislation* there, was quoted as saying “We were due to spend about $225 million to replace the grades six through 12 literature books in the state. We can buy the content for under $20 million. Someplace between $20 million and $225 million, there’s a cost savings.”

This sure got a lot of people’s attention. But where did these numbers come from? We’d need Representative Hochberg to tell us for sure, but here are my thoughts. The $225 million appears to be drawn from the total maximum cost figures (what TEA will pay for these textbooks) in the Proclamation 2010. (The figure for just grade 6-12 literature books is more like $195 million; the figure goes up to $227 million when you add in things like ESOL and AP English books.)

In another article, Hochberg was reported to have asked a company for the cost to deliver digital files and was told it would cost $14 million. It is unclear whether this was for statewide rights, a work-for-hire type arrangement, or actual open licensed content. (I’m guessing the first.) Based on my own experience, development costs for one grade level of a major basal textbook series can run in the $2-3+ million per grade level range, which is roughly in line with Hochberg’s figures. That doesn’t include printing or distribution costs, which may be a part of the difference in figures.

So the question then is how much does printing cost? This has long been a subject of wiggling on the part of the publishing industry. When pushed on pricing of digital materials, they have long contended that the vast majority of curriculum costs are in development. I do think this is true, based on the relatively low cost of printing in the large volumes they run.

My very rough cost for printing and distribution of student and teacher editions is somewhere around $17 million. So…$14 million + $20 million (rounding up) is still quite a lot less than $225 million.

What’s left? Ancillaries (a big $ number and an interesting discussion). Sales expense (also a big number). Profits.

More on those and other potential areas of savings for OER in Part 2 of this post.

* It is worth noting that as the proposed rules on this currently read, these materials do not appear to be intended to be open-licensed, but rather state-funded and owned. While this is may not be relevant in terms of this cost discussion, it is very relevant to others who might or might not benefit from Texas’ initiative. Hopefully, this will be resolved in the final rules.

Looking for middle schools interested in sharing ideas

I got interested in OER because of the need to be able to modify and “remix” materials in order to differentiate instruction….and also out of a disillusionment with how much money is spent on textbooks that often aren’t even used.

I am now working on a new project now to look at the feasibility of producing a core curriculum offering that is open-licensed. It could be distributed in a variety of formats, including print and electronic. Initially, we are looking at middle school math as a content area.

As a part of this, we are gathering ideas from teachers and administrators on what they’d like to see in a product like this. We want to talk with administrators and teachers to get their ideas to make sure that this new OER product meets their needs.

If you are interested, email me at Karen AT k12opened DOT com. (Note that participants need not use technology extensively or be familiar with OER.) Thank you.

The quality issue

There is a lot of talk right now about concerns regarding quality and OER. Quality is obviously of foremost concern with regard to educational materials;  however, I think that those who are castigating OER on the basis of quality concerns are confusing OER with mass collaboration.

Mass collaboration, of course,  is a process by which a task is undertaken by a collective of many (who may be anonymous or not, who may have expertise or not, who may be accurate or not, etc.). This is the development process that has created Wikipedia and some other open resources. I am not going to debate the merits of mass collaboration here (but those who know me might know that I am generally a fan of mass collaboration).

It is mass collaboration that breeds, in many, grave concerns about quality.

However, OERs are not all created by a process of mass collaboration. In fact, many high quality OERs, FreeReading, NROC courses, CK12’s Flexbooks, and most OpenCourseWare resources among them, are not created through mass collaboration, but through a relatively conventional development process that involves a basis in research, writing by qualified experts, and vetting by panels of subject-area authorities.

In short, they are created through a process that does not differ much from that of traditional educational resources, such as printed textbooks.

Appropriately, many state initiatives advancing open textbooks for K-12, such as in Texas, require a quality review and adoption process similar to that of other textbooks. Again, I’ll refrain from debating the merits and fine points of state department of education adoption policies (as much as I’d like to…another time perhaps).

What I would request is this: If you are rejecting the value of open educational resources on the basis of quality, examine the development and quality assurance process involved to see how it measures up. The benefits of OERs to our teachers and students are too great to do otherwise.

Thinking about platforms for open learning

This is a different kind of post for me… I’m really thinking out loud and looking for folks more knowledgeable than me to make suggestions.

I’m working on an OER project plan to develop open “textbooks” (collections of resources with a scope and sequence, not necessarily in a textbook format) for K-12 that can be remixed at a classroom or even student level to differentiate instruction. The focus is on flexibility, ease of use, and appropriateness for average K-12 teacher.

I want to put resources toward high quality content, not a platform. There are so many open platforms out there that there must be one (or more) that are appropriate for this. I suspect that there might be a need for two platforms: a CMS for the developers and an LMS for end users. Some key criteria would include:

  • Support for various media types (text, audio, video)
  • Support for interactive media (quizzes, writing response, assignment submission, etc.)
  • Ability to export in multiple formats (print, electronic)

Here are systems I’ve looked at and thought about (some more than others): Moodle, MediaWiki, Connexions,  FlexBooks, and Sakai.

As an end user tool, I like Moodle for a lot of reasons, including that it is very interactive and geared for remix. It also doesn’t hurt that a lot of schools already use and like it.

While Moodle seems like a good LMS for my purposes, it seems like we’d need a front-end development CMS to host content in. The idea would be that a teacher would choose a course (or smaller content modules) from the CMS and then export them to Moodle where the materials could be customized for individual classes or even groups of students.

Questions:

  • Does this approach make sense?
  • Do you know of anyone using a CMS to export content into Moodle?
  • What other tools or approaches should I be thinking about?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts you care to share.