XplanaZine

Jimmy Wales has a post on Lawrence Lessig’s site about how curriculum will become a free commodity in the upcoming years. He writes:

In the long run, it will be very difficult for proprietary textbook publishers to compete with freely licensed alternatives. An open project with dozens of professors adapting and refining a textbook on a particular subject will be a very difficult thing for a proprietary publisher to compete with. The point is: there are a huge number of people who are qualified to write these books, and the tools are being created to leave them to do that.

In particular, this prediction would combine OpenCourseWare projects such as those at MIT and Tufts with open book projects like Wikibooks or Gutenberg, and all of that would find synergy with learning object repositories ( MERLOT, CAREO). The result will be a collaborative, free space in which all curriculum elements are readily available at no cost and in formats that can be edited easily.

While I support the vision and am involved in different open source projects that promote it, I am also aware of the real gap that exists between what Jimmy Wales predicts and where we are currently. In particular, we should take a fairly close look at two things: 1) what proprietary textbook publishers really offer, and 2) the administrative/faculty structure that readily promotes what these publishers do.

First, textbook publishers have an established process for envisioning a product, recruiting instructors to author it, editing its manuscripts, producing the product, and marketing and distributing it. While their process is not communal or collaborative (like Wikibooks or some open source course projects), and while it is not as responsive to the community as we would like. it does result in timely products and the revisions of those products.

In addition to an established production that essentially guarantees me choice and updates, proprietary textbook publishers also have an established network that links instructors from different regions. Publishers use paid review panels, authoring of ancillary projects, and teacher training as opportunities to find new potential authors and to sway decision making on adoption committees. Within disciplines, these recruiting efforts give them a web of relationships that they cultivate and manage over multiple decades.

This is not to say that the work by textbook publishers cannot be replaced by an open academic community — I just wanted to point out that undoing an extremely entrenched piece of the educational framework is not as easy as wanting it to happen. And part of the thing that will make this one future possible — that of the free curriculum — is that proprietary textbook publishers are not operating in isolation or in a vacuum. Rather, they function in collusion with many people who are a part of the educational system. Successful textbook authors are making enough money that they have no interest in offering curriculum items for free. Course coordinators and ancillary authors enjoy the extra pay, the extra meals and other junkets that come from publishers, and some administrators serve as consultants to these companies. It is unlikely that those who are profiting from the current state of things will want to see the status quo change significantly.

Finally, I would also like to point out that Jimmy Wales’ prediction seems to focus on traditional textbooks and learning material in a book-centric system. My personal view is that we will evolve beyond a book-centric paradigm in the next decade and that learning objects and courses will become the governing force. That is precisely why I think proprietary textbook publishers will could lose large share of their part of the educational market.

The Gap

Regardless of what content is the center of the curriculum, there are some obvious hurdles that remain if Wales’ prediction is to be realized.

• Instructors Must Participate — Much of our future curriculum will be digital and delivered online. And, as experience has taught us, creating great online courses is more complicated than just showing up to teach your in-class course. That’s the limitation of current open courseware projects. They are basically replications of in-class experiences and those do not necessarily translate well to an online environment. For the future curriculum, then, we will have to do more. Faculty will need to participate actively in building the curriculum and improving their work.
• Instructors Must Collaborate — As we all know, one instructor’s course does not fit all teaching or learning types. A truly open and free curriculum will have to represent a broad array of needs. this means that there must be collaboration between faculty and genuine sharing. It is one thing to teach a course, have the work captured by someone, and then put that individual effort out on the Web. It is an entirely different thing to work collaboratively with other instructors across multiple time zones and cultural realities on a common project.
• Better Repositories and Usage Centralized Clearinghouse — For this to work, we’ll also need a better repository structure and improved technologies.
• There Must be a Way to Make Money — Let’s be honest. There are many people who make money on curriculum content. And, regardless of how I feel personally about the importance of free learning materials for all people, creating revenue will remain an important part of the process if we want optimum participation. This true, first of all, because our capitalist society makes it possible for people to make money. And if they can, they do. Second, some value their intellectual property more highly than others and they should have a way to test their beliefs.

I like the idea of a free curriculum. I believe it is essential for world peace and to create the very best learning resources that can be created by the education community. I am also a pragmatist and understand that it may never happen, at least not in the way Jimmy Wales envisions.