Article in IHE: Can We Afford Free Textbooks?
Cuillier, Cheryl A - (ccuillie)
It’s really disappointing that this is what Inside Higher Ed chose to run during Open Education Week:
When it comes to student success, “new” open resources ultimately do little more than further entrench an ineffective status quo, argues Robert S. Feldman.
Cheryl
Cheryl Cuillier, OER Coordinator
Main Library A207
University of Arizona
P.O. Box 210055
Tucson, AZ 85721
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-6010-4405
Jeff Gallant
Hi Cheryl and all,
The IHE editorial is an interesting (if overplayed) take on educational resources, and from an institution which was one of the first when it comes to early OER creators and adopters. The timing’s quite bad, but it does at least help us to think about the arguments out there. It got me to type out some thoughts, which is rare! (Sorry, LibOER! ALG has been pretty busy over here.)
In some ways, Feldman’s argument seems like comparing apples to oranges; a type of medium (textbooks versus adaptive learning systems) versus a method of licensing and distribution (open education). After all, even OpenStax is pursuing adaptive courseware. However, it’s also a common argument among publishers that textbooks are already dead, and these new systems are the modern form of the educational resource.
The open textbook reply to this argument is simply this: We would not have this conversation at all if textbooks, traditional textbooks, weren’t still the majority of educational resources used in higher education. McGraw-Hill’s higher education president famously (to us) said “Textbooks are dead. They’re dinosaurs” back in 2014, but textbooks continued to be a pain point for making education affordable from college administrators and faculty. If textbooks were indeed fossilized underground in 2014, our calls for open educational resources wouldn’t have been received nearly as well.
Part of why textbooks aren’t dead is that institutions and faculty are not ready to adopt these alternatives, because adaptive learning platforms have not always delivered on what they have promised. The AAP has their own cited article in the IHE editorial, but there are recent studies by external researchers that show adaptive platforms aren’t meeting the needs they advertise while keeping costs the same or increasing costs. Plus, companies have been so eager to jump onto the adaptive learning buzzword that there isn’t a standardized definition of what adaptive learning is. Some adaptive platforms only respond to students’ multiple choice questions alone, “pathing” them based on what they get right or wrong within one paired textbook. Others break an entire subject down to its granular bits of knowledge and plot a student’s course based on not only what they answered, but what the system predicts based on what other students answered. And, of course, those more granular systems integrate OER, because the 5R’s allow systems to learn better, too.
I think real adaptive learning is set to take off in the next five years. What we know as “adaptive” systems at the moment are largely brute-force data miners instead of thinkers, but once neural networks are developed enough to be implemented, this will change. Then we’ll have a much larger debate on not only the state of open education, but on the state of education at large.
Just some thoughts! Maybe someone from OpenStax has some machine learning ideas to contribute?
Happy Open Education Week, everyone!
Best,
Jeff
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Labadorf, Kathleen
Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Cheryl. I’m just reading it now and will probably have more to say later. His thinking is simply textbooks, as far as I can see.
BUT… Here’s his bio: Robert S. Feldman is deputy chancellor and professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He also serves as chair of the McGraw-Hill Education Learning Science Research Advisory Council. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
I’d love to hear a little context from Marilyn or Jeremy. These challenges appear and can become clarifications in the end. Meet it head on and, as in The Labyrinth, remember – “You have no power over me.”
Kathy
Kathy Labadorf
Open Educational Resources, Information Literacy, and WGSS Librarian
Phone: 860-486-1253
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
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Labadorf, Kathleen
Hi again,
He really makes good points but his flaw is in thinking only in terms of textbooks. That is a simplistic way of thinking about open and easy to use arguments against. This movement is not about textbooks, it is about making Higher Ed more affordable as well as allowing our faculty to be creative and teach what they know the students need to learn. One interesting note – IHE could be accused of inflammatory publishing – trying to inflame. When I went to save this as a PDF, the actual title printed there is:
Colleges should focus on keeping students in college, not free textbooks (essay)
And he includes links to references. I’ve attached the PDF here (in case they change it).
Kathy
Kathy Labadorf
Open Educational Resources, Information Literacy, and WGSS Librarian
Phone: 860-486-1253
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
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Allegra Swift
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Jeremy Smith
Digital Projects Manager in Scholarly Communication
W.E.B. Du Bois Library
154 Hicks Way
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Amy Hofer
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kate.makowiecka
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