Last month, Donald Christiansen wrote an article that appeared in the online journal “Today’s Engineer.” In this article, the author objects to the process of electronic textbook adaptation on the grounds that authors lose credit and are sometimes given incorrect attribution for changes that anonymous persons made.
The author starts by describing Open Textbooks as:
textbooks that are editable at will by professors and others to “customize” them for particular purposes. Chapters may be rewritten or replaced by alternate material. Paragraphs, equations and illustrations may be deleted or altered.
There is nothing out of the ordinary here. Educators have the right to choose which aspects of a textbook they wish to convey as well as the right to supplement the textbook with materials from external sources. Technology such as Booki, Connexions, and Flexbook are helping teachers, and peers, to remix and repurpose materials from a worldwide body of Open Educational Resources (OER).
Granted, there are often state and other standards bodies determining various milestones of competency. Adhering to standards recommendations does not, for example, require that a teacher subject her students to all 600 pages of their Algebra I textbook as well as making them do 100% of the practice equations. Teachers are, again, free to use their knowledge of the subject and students’ abilities to cater the curriculum to specific needs.
Mr. Christiansen also points out the importance of attribution when using and modifying cultural artifacts:
Some academic faculty seem not to see any harm in [modifying content] — many believing that changes will be clearly marked and their authors identified.
I would object strongly to having anything bearing my byline rewritten or significantly altered without my involvement and approval.
Digital rewriting … can be done without any involvement of the author or even notification to the publisher.
Using materials without citing the original source/author is, at the very least, plagiarism and may also be copyright infringement. Standard copyright protects creators exclusive rights for around one century [nbnote ]http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap3.html[/nbnote]. Fair Use, however, allows us to make significant and autonomous alterations to a published work in order to re-contextualize the work for purposes such as “criticism, comment[ary], news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research.”[nbnote]http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html[/nbnote]
Next, Mr. Christiansen takes a look at Wikipedia, as it is one of the largest examples of a peer edited knowledge repository:
Wikipedia is estimated to consist of millions of articles/items written collaboratively by volunteers who are presumed experts or at least knowledgeable in a particular topic.
Only “registered users” can create a new article, but anyone may anonymously edit the articles. This permits erroneous, nonsensical and openly biased material to be added …
The result is that many Wikipedia articles are well developed, current and accurate, while others are sketchy and of questionable value.
This serves to remind us of the importance of media literacy education and critical thinking in the research process and as a general practice in life. Erroneous, nonsensical, and openly biased materials occur in many types of publications [nbnote]http://www.actionbioscience.org/education/allchin2.html#primer[/nbnote] [nbnote]http://www.ohri.ca/bmg/types_bias.html#definitions[/nbnote] [nbnote]http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/confirmation_bias.htm[/nbnote] .
Additionally, Mr. Christiansen notes that the general public uses Wikipedia to view content describing popular culture[nbnote]http://blog.thegabrielflores.com/2009/08/top-50-most-popular-wikipedia-articles.html[/nbnote].
Among the most frequently viewed Wikipedia articles in 2009 were The Beatles (No. 2) and Michael Jordan (No. 3). Also among the top twenty were Adolf Hitler, Transformers, Scrubs, and Slumdog Millionaire, seeming to substantiate critics’[citation needed] accusations of undue weight being given to popular culture.
Many people also use Google, and other search engines, to look up popular culture[nbnote]http://www.google.com/intl/en_us/press/zeitgeist2009/overview.html[/nbnote]. This fact does not reduce the value or validity of search engines as a research tool.
Mr. Christiansen’s final, speculative paragraph deserves delicate attention as there are several strongly worded statements:
Perhaps each professor will produce his or her own version of an e-text, cobbled from a variety of sources at little or no cost.
“A single course drawing on OER can contain high-quality learning materials developed by dozens of different educators.”[nbnote]http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Free_to_Learn_Guide/Improving_the_Quality_of_Teaching_and_Learning_through_Resource_Sharing_and_Collaboration[/nbnote] The ability of professors, and people in general, to combine materials from a variety of sources in order to create a new and unique artifact is a cornerstone of our cultural heritage. By inexpensively producing new artifacts, we ensure that our culture is broadly affordable.
Perhaps the professors will resell them to their students. Textbook publishers will then need to seek a new line of business.
Professors and students can print open textbooks at very reasonable prices. For example, University of Michigan students printed the Python for Informatics textbook for around $10 per copy[nbnote]http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/20559[/nbnote].Textbook publishers may have to reinvent themselves and their industry to assimilate into this newly emerging paradigm. As an example, ‘textbook manufacturers’ can continue to add value to the generative process of cultural evolution by participating in new communities to produce peer reviewed, quality educational materials. Some examples of peer review communities include Connexions, College Open Textbooks, Merlot, and OER Commons.
Authors of classic texts would then be found only in the pages of history.
There are efforts to preserve our cultural heritage so that future generations have access to classic texts, music, and other multimedia.[nbnote]http://www.archive.org[/nbnote] [nbnote]http://catalog.loc.gov[/nbnote] [nbnote]http://openlibrary.org[/nbnote]
The incentives for and rewards to individuals to create such inspirational textbooks will have disappeared, supplanted by the anonymous activity of the hive and the homogeneous if perhaps bland output of the crowd.
With incentives such as acknowledgement, karma, enjoyment, learning, exploration, sharing, teaching, paying-it-forward, &c, our collective efforts are producing a rich diversity of creative and beautiful culture.[nbnote]http://www.deviantart.com/[/nbnote] [nbnote]http://www.jamendo.com/en/albums[/nbnote] While the technology that facilitates global distribution of our collective culture is new, we can work to make sure that attribution is an inherent part of distribution so that authors get due credit for their contributions.
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