This is a followup on my previous post about the challenges of open educational resources (OER) production and adoption. I’ve come to the conclusion that the key aspect holding back the “OER dream” is not the lack of collaboration tools or the ability for teachers to discover material, but the quality of the content. You can’t write a textbook by committee. It’s as simple as that!

I wish collectives of qualified authors/teachers could come together to create the free textbooks and other educational material, but it seems human nature doesn’t work this way, and it’s very difficult for multiple authors to “sync” their thoughts together and come up with a coherent narrative for book-length projects.

The key to the production of quality educational content is to set the right incentives for knowledgeable authors to write. I’m thinking graduate students writing tutorials, blog posts, HOWTOs, books, and generally living from the proceeds of their work. Rather than wishful thinking about “collaborative projects” where multiple authors come together to write a book, why don’t we focus on single-author textbooks? Rather than a “commons” approach where nobody owns the project, let’s have a single author “own” the project and make them personally involved with its success. I believe the monetary incentives will be enough to make the author invest the time needed to make the book/project/resource a success.

It’s possible to replicate, and generalize the business model I used with the MATH&PHYS, and LA books with experts in other fields: chemistry, biology, economics, psychology, history, etc. If a young person (think an M.Sc. or a Ph.D. student) with practical and teaching experience in a particular subject writes books, I can guarantee the book will be a success.

 

Business model

The beautify of the matter is we don’t need to invent anything new. We’ll use a very traditional business model, where we sell products to make cash. The authors will make a significant profit from each copy of the book sold, and will thus be incentivized to produce quality content that sells.

The publisher (Minireference Co.) will also make profits from the book sales and be able to fund software development, marketing efforts, author advances, and generally take care of the business overhead for running operations. The main innovation of this business model is that, rather than the publisher being in an exploitative relationship with the author, they are equal partners. Rather than authors making 10% royalties, at Minireference Co. authors earn 50% royalties. The publishers takes care of the boring stuff and allows the authors to focus on the hard task—writing, polishing, and curating the content. Equal partners, with parts of the proceeds.

The market(s)

The main audience for the textbooks will be students, but students in the broadest sense of the term. We’re talking advanced-level high school students,  university students, parents, and adult learners. By setting a price point for the products around \$29 to \$39, we’ll make sure the books are affordable for everyone, but also make enough money to sustain the authors so they can keep producing more books.

 

Okay, so where is the OER in all of this?

By now, my dear readers, you might be wondering if there is no case of “bate and switch” going on here. We started with the promise/mission to make open educational resources more accessible to students and adult learners around the world, and somehow we ended-up with a reaffirmation of a business plan to make money from selling books. Perhaps there is some of this going on, but you must agree that building stable organizations with individuals who earn a living by teaching is a step in the right direction.

The approach that I imagine for getting achieving the “OER dream” is to encourage authors to sell their university-level books, but contribute primary and high school material as OER. I think the “university for money, but high schools stuff for free” approach will work for two reasons. Some authors might start from an altruistic point of view, and want to do something good for society by releasing some introductory lessons for free. Other authors might be motivated by purely capitalistic incentives, since releasing the high school material for free is an excellent way to promote their work.

 

Focus, focus, focus

There’s only a limited things one person can do in their lifetime so it’s important to focus on the things that make sense, and which have potential for growth and high impact. I’ve invested the past 5+ years of my life in the math textbook business so I think it’s important to continue that project instead of changing priorities or working on other projects.

The beauty of this idea is that it doesn’t require any miracles, breakthroughs, or external funding. All it takes is an evolution of the project I have currently going on, so I can work with more authors. Life always tends to make things more complicated over time, so starting with a simple plan, and keeping the focus is generally a good way forward. Vamolos; ándale!