Rethinking Instructional Materials
Posted by karen on February 8, 2010 in Uncategorized
Late last year, the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE), an organization that helps support state board leaders and provides education on a variety of issues, convened a forum of state board of education members and other state and national education leaders to discuss the role of the states in the adoption of instructional materials and what new opportunities exist, particularly with respect to open-licensed curriculum. This is particularly relevant in the context of state budget challenges, the common standards push, increased focus on technology, and copyright innovations like open licenses.
As a result of that forum, NASBE published the policy update “Rethinking the State Role in Instructional Materials Adoption: Opportunities for Innovation and Cost Savings.”
This report provides a good overview of the opportunities for OER in K-12, as well as summaries of what states like Indiana, California, and Texas are doing in this area. It is a valuable piece to share with policymakers, public officials, school administrators, educators, and others who could benefit from knowledge about OER in K-12 education.
The conclusions and recommendations in this report are insightful. Leadership attention to them bodes well for the potential of OER to bring real innovation to our schools.
Textbooks ≠ Curriculum
Posted by karen on February 5, 2010 in Uncategorized
A King County Superior Court judge has ruled in favor of parent plaintiffs, ordering the Seattle School Board to take another look at their math textbook choice.
This is another episode in the infamous “math wars,” which have pitted the traditional approach, which views math as a body of facts and emphasizes specific skills, rules, memorization and practice against a reform approach, which takes a more inquiry-based approach, viewing math as a series of connected ideas that should be understood conceptually first, with fluency following. Those who have been through phonics vs. whole language or a host of other similar debates in education will be familiar with the vehemence with which sides are chosen in these battles. While a balanced approach is in vogue in many districts, apparently many are still picking and defending sides.
I’ll leave aside for now my pent-up tirade about whether it is really the role of the courts to choose textbooks and focus instead on another issue. Textbooks are not the curriculum (or if they are, as one astute reader points out, you have a poor curriculum).
The view that any single textbook is the “curriculum” sadly ignores the role of teachers (as well as students) in the learning process.
There are many dynamics that affect learning in a classroom. Textbooks are not the most important of these. Teachers and the learning process they create and nurture have everything to do with how students learn.
Every student learns differently, has different skills, varies in language proficiency, has different interests, etc. That’s why differentiation of instruction is so important. No textbook, whether it be the “Discovering series,” Holt, or any one of many others is the answer for all students. Any teacher worth putting in a classroom knows this and uses a variety of resources, processes, products, activities, and projects to stimulate learning in a variety way.
Let’s give our schools and our teachers more credit than this court ruling does.
10 reasons “open” is good business
Posted by karen on February 4, 2010 in Uncategorized
Over my career, I have worked in commercial textbook publishing, managed a joint venture for a for-profit software publisher, worked with state DOEs, and run my own small (but profitable) business. I also have an MBA (though I try not to let that slow me down).
Recently, I have become a huge advocate for OER. Have I lost my business sense or decided that my interests lie outside of the commercial arena? No, I believe that OER can be good business. Here’s why.
- There are viable business models built on open licensing.
Many of these revolve around services and customization (both things the K-12 ed market is badly in need of). Look at Red Hat, the new IBM, and Flat World Knowledge. Read Wikinomics. - It serves customers well.
Open is about letting the customer decide what best suits their needs and helping them customize products and services to meet those needs. The K-12 textbook market (and arguably the whole educational system) has been about prescribing what schools need, often in a one-size-fits-all way. Most of these models don’t allow for much differentiation of learning, which is sorely needed to address the achievement and engagement gaps in schools. OER, on the other hand, is all about differentiation and customization. - It serves non-customers well, which may turn them into customers or prompt them to become advocates.
Even those who don’t buy your product or service will be able to experience it and tell others about their good experience. - Giving customers what they want is good business.
I often hear schools say that they want a new way to do things. They want differentiation. They want modular content. They want to be able to remix their curriculum. - Not giving customers what they want is bad business.
Ask a teacher or school administrator what they think about their textbooks or the commercial textbook publishing business. - It better allows customers to spend money for things of value to them.
The K-12 ed market has many mechanisms to restrict free choice in curriculum purchases. Just a few are pricing that ties textbook and ancillary package purchases together, rules that every student must have a paper textbook (regardless of if they’re used), inclusion of (often sub-standard) professional development in book pricing, and packaging of content in enormous 800+ page bundles. OER pulls that all apart so that money can flow to targeted needs. - The first to market with smart open models will have a big competitive advantage.
- State and federal policymakers are lining up behind OER.
Funding and new business models will follow. - It’s a better use of public funds.
Millions of public dollars go toward curriculum development and licensing. Most directly, this happens through competitive grants (something that is being emphasized increasingly by the feds). Public funds should go to serve the public good.
- Publishers, schools, and learners need new models.
It’s a fast changing world with many challenges for all of us. Open is a real way to address many of these challenges. - (bonus) It’s good karma.
Sharing is good. You may argue that this isn’t “good business,” but in my experience, it is.
Please comment and share your additional thoughts.
Potential cost savings of OER – Part 3
Posted by karen on February 1, 2010 in Uncategorized
This is the last in a three-part series on the potential cost savings of OER.
In part 1, I established that the cost of print was not a very significant cost savings. (A bit more on that below.) In part 2, I looked at the development costs of multiple publishers and the savings that could result if just one program were purchased by all schools (which brings up many more questions.) In this final part 3, I’ll look at some other possible areas of cost savings.
Print vs. electronic distribution – At somewhere between $100 and $200 for a student computing device, the economics become feasible to do one-to-one implementations in K-12 schools. This would enable printed versions of textbooks to be replaced electronic ones, thereby eliminating printing and distribution costs. Some have maintained that over a several year period, this would save considerable amounts of money. I think that the costs might break even, but given obsolescence and other costs like support, it is doubtful that money would be saved.
Another option would be to allow students to use computing devices that they already have, namely cell phones. While this could save money and improve educational opportunities for students, it is unlikely to be embraced by schools for policy and control reasons.
Ancillaries – Currently, the model most textbook publishers follow is to give away extensive ancillary packages with a textbook sale. Many states, such as Texas, encourage this by specifying a set maximum price for textbooks but allowing additional ancillary components to be given away. Of course, nothing is “free” though, and the cost of these increasingly expensive ancillaries must be factored into student textbook prices. This problem is exacerbated by schools who, enticed by glitzy and voluminous ancillaries, tend to “buy by the pound,” thereby encouraging publishers to produce more and more, driving book prices up and up.
In many classrooms, it is easy to find boxes and boxes of unused and even unopened ancillary components. Conversely, I have talked to many other teachers and administrators who have wanted to buy only the ancillaries (especially electronic ones), but have been “forced” to take the textbooks as well.
The answer to this problem is for states to ask publishers to uncouple the pricing of student textbooks and ancillaries and to prompt schools to choose what they want to purchase based on real costs. The state of Florida is doing just that. It will be interesting to see what results, but I would predict lower prices for purchases that are more educationally appropriate (and actually used).
Materials that could be marketed across states – Textbooks for the largest states, e.g. Texas, California, and Florida, are developed for those states’ specific standards and adoption requirements. Another “national edition” is then produced for other non-adoption and smaller states. If one version were able to be sold to a larger market, costs for everyone would be lower. The much-maligned Common Standards initiative could be one path to this. However, even with this, states have considerable latitude to include their own unique standards (up to 20%). Also, not all states have signed onto Common Standards, with one of the largest textbook-purchasing states, Texas, being a notable holdout.
Another way to accomplish savings in this area would be for states to collaborate on developing common specifications for a reduced price textbook that could be used by all. See below for more on this.
Another potential approach would be to create materials that are more modular and can be remixed at a state, district, school, or classroom to address different standards or different student needs. This is what OER is all about, and in addition to improving instruction, it could save money.
Closer participation of states in the development process – Currently, adoption states issue a call for textbooks to which publishers respond. The call may or may not reflect the needs or preferences of the actual school districts who will be making the final purchase decision. The calls often leave publishers with many questions about what will be acceptable or desirable in the state’s adoption committee’s eyes. Publishers spend a huge amount of money just to submit an offering to be considered; this offering may or may not be accepted. Even if it is, it is possible that no schools may ever purchase it.
While to some extent, this is the peril of competing in an open market in textbook publishing, it is very expensive and very risky to compete. The result is that smaller players are effectively prohibited from taking part, and larger players must charge a premium to cover their risk. (Another result is that schools often report not having access to the kind of instructional materials they really want.) This is not cost effective for end users or for the taxpayers who fund textbook purchases. If the states were to take a bigger role in helping publishers to understand what they really want AND to lower the risk to smaller players, the market would benefit.
Some specific examples of how the former might take place would be through state co-development projects or state and district participation in the actual development of materials. Examples of the latter would be to eliminate high performance bonds that must be paid before the adoption and to ease the burden of sampling and use of textbook depositories.
Improvement the first time around instead of expensive interventions – Hundreds of millions of dollars are going into costly interventions to remedy the achievement crises in schools today. Beyond that, it is impossible to calculate the financial burden of high school drop-out rates. If instruction were more effective and engaging, a lot of this expenditure could be avoided. While the challenges our schools face are certainly too large to be solved by differentiation and OER alone, their effective use could certainly make a huge difference.
Potential cost savings of OER – Part 2
Posted by karen on January 26, 2010 in Uncategorized
This is a continuation of the discussion of the potential cost savings of OER and an assertion that Texas might save a significant amount of money, possibly as much as $200 million, by adopting “open textbooks.”
In the last post, we established that the printing costs of a program like this are a relatively small percentage of the total cost, so that doesn’t account for a huge savings (ignoring the costs of technology to replace print…but that’s another post).
If you haven’t figured it out already, one significant cost issue is related to how many different programs are produced.
In the last literature adoption in Texas, there were between six and eight successfully adopted programs for each grade level. (There is significant, but not perfect, overlap in the publishers from grade to grade.) This doesn’t take into account the programs that were submitted, but not adopted.
So instead of the $15 million that was estimated for development of such a program, the actual cost was something in the neighborhood of $15 million times more than eight publishers. Even if this number was only 10, that makes up most of the $200 million in possible savings.
If, when Texas funds the development of its own curriculum (presumably under the recent RFO for “state-developed open-source textbooks”), it were adopted by 100% of the schools, the full amount of savings mentioned above could be realized. However, there is a parallel process for adopting conventional commercial textbooks in the traditional manner, some of which will undoubtedly be chosen by some schools. Assuming that roughly the same number of programs are adopted, the total development cost will be roughly the same. The question of whether these costs are ultimately borne by the state depends on which textbooks are chosen by how many districts.
To the extent that the state-developed program is chosen by a large number of schools, the state could save considerable amounts of money. If the state-developed program is not chosen by many schools, the state will not save money. Of course, Texas’ recent change in legislation that incentivizes schools to choose less expensive programs may influence this.
That brings up many interesting questions. First, is it in our schools’ (and ultimately our students’) interests to have choice among various textbooks? And how much “choice” is provided given the current adoption process? What is the ideal number (economically? pedagogically?) of programs to have? Beyond this, who (state board, ed commissioner, state ed agency, districts, schools, teachers, students, John Q Public) should be determining the direction of which parts of this agenda (standards, format, curriculum, etc.)?
All questions that probably deserve their own post. But in the meantime, at least we’ve solved a big part of the conundrum of where this savings might or might not come from.
In the final post in this series, I’ll look at a few more ways that OER might help save states money and improve education.
Texas issues RFO for “open textbooks”
Posted by karen on January 21, 2010 in Uncategorized
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
Posted by karen on January 19, 2010 in Uncategorized
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
Posted by karen on January 14, 2010 in Uncategorized
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
Posted by karen on January 7, 2010 in Uncategorized
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
Posted by karen on December 4, 2009 in Uncategorized
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.
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