Open Source Differential Equations and Calculus Textbooks

Here's a note from Charles Bergeron, a co-author of the open source text "Differential Equations" with Jiri Lebl:

After my first offering of Differential Equations using my book, there were of course plenty of corrections and additions I wanted to make. I thought I'd draw your attention to it.

www.differentialequations.net

. . . The biggest change is that the book integrates both Maxima and SageMath, and the reader can use either one.

In other news, Bergeron notes:

I've also created a Calc II book that is a mash of Guichard and Mooculus. . . . I'm just about ready to go public with it. By the time I teach Calc II next Spring, I'm hoping to augment this book to provide Maxima and SageMath integration in a manner similar to the DiffEq book.

According to Bergeron, of particular interest to potential adopters is the fact that "there is a tiny bit of Linear Algebra in my Calculus II course, because my college doesn't have a Linear Algebra course and I'm trying to make my Differential Equations course a little more interesting by splitting the prerequisite LinAlg content between Calc II and DiffEq."  That's certainly a departure from traditional second term calculus content.  I'd be interested in hearing from folks that have tried that.

Many of us are considering adoptions for spring classes right now.  Take a look at these.  I'm definitely going to take a close look at the differential equations text the next time I teach that class.

Lawsuit against FedEx, Fascinating Challenge to CC-NC clause.

According to an article at edweek, "Fedex Targeted in Open Educational Resources Lawsuit" by Sean Cavanagh, a lawsuit brought against FedEx photocopying service by OER creator Great Minds raises some interesting challenges to the "print on demand" model so often employed by many of us here.  Great Minds produces OER under a Creative Commons license with a non-commercial clause (CC-NC).  While it is perfectly legal for educators to download and reproduce the materials for their students on their own, Great Minds asserts that downloading OERs and taking them to FedEx (a for-profit commercial enterprise) for printing is prohibited by the CC-NC clause.

A few wrinkles to consider, also from the article: 

• Great Minds offers print on demand services for their materials, but, presumably because they are a non-profit corporation, they may do so at slightly above cost and keep the revenue to support their own operations.
• Officials at Creative Commons have taken FedEx's position and, according to this blog, are against the lawsuit.

As I mentioned earlier, many of the authors here offer their texts at print on demand sites like Lulu or Amazon.  These sites are also for-profit.  A win for Great Minds would force some alterations in the use of these services.  Does this lawsuit require a re-write of the NC clause?  Should we just not use the NC clause?

Open Logic Project

It's not quite a math book, but Richard Zach in the Dept of Philosophy at the University of Calgary wrote to let me know of the Open Logic Project.  The project is a collection of open educational resources (OER) aimed at teaching advanced logic courses typically found in philosophy curricula.

I looked over the web site and they appear to be adhering to the spirit of OER.  The materials, including a pair of logic textbooks, have source available and are hosted on GitHub.

Of course, one of the major challenges of OER adoption is simply awareness.  Please share this with your colleagues in the philosophy department.

Planet Money Podcast Looks at the Economics of Textbook Prices

The NPR Planet Money podcast spent a bit of time on the problem of textbook prices in the US.  I know that many folks here are concerned about textbook prices.  This piece, "Why Textbook Prices Keep Climbing", provides a pretty nuanced explanation of the problem.  As with many things, a big part of the problem is that instructors don't know the costs of the texts that they require and rarely select texts with pricing as a factor.

OpenStax: Doing OER effectively and sustainably.

I recently discovered OpenStax and their collection of open source textbooks for classes at the high school and collegiate levels.  Their texts hit the major courses in math, science, and the social sciences—from calculus to physics to economics.  For readers of this blog, largely interested in mathematics, the three-semester calculus text, derived from Gil Strang's Calculus, is a high quality text rendered in both pdf and html (and soon in print).  Having taught calculus off and on for the better part of 25 years, this free text is at or near the quality of Stewart's.

Having also contributed a bit to Guichard's Calculus book, another good open source calculus text, I was particularly impressed by the high-level of production apparent in the OpenStax calculus book. I know it's pretty difficult for a volunteer corps to create such a high-quality text.  Curious about how such a high-quality open source text came to be, I reached out to Anthony Palmiotto, Editorial Director at OpenStax, to learn a bit more about how they do things there.

The OpenStax organization is a non-profit hosted at Rice University.  Its first open source text was released in 2012.  Since then their library has grown to around two dozen texts.  The consistency of presentation and quality across all of the texts reflects a high quality editorial process.  Their editorial philosophy is characterized by a focus on larger market classes like calculus, intro physics, intro biology, economics etc.  These are the areas where accessible, high-quality texts can have the most impact.  They focus on a single offering in each of the course areas. They want their textbooks to match closely the offerings in the traditional commercial markets for these course texts. Doing so makes it easier for textbook adopters to consider open source texts right next to their commercially offered competitors.

To begin, each text has primary authors and contributing authors.  The authors and editors are paid for their work (unlike in many open-source publishing efforts).  There is a development phase and a maintenance phase.  During the maintenance phase, errata are collected from readers, authors and editors continuously.  Corrections are made incrementally to the on-line version and full updates to the texts (pdf) occur between the traditional academic terms (semesters) of most colleges and universities.

Baseline funding comes from Rice University.  Additional funding for specific book projects is sought on a case-by-case basis through grants and donations.  OpenStax has received funding from a number of philanthropic organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  They also receive funding from companies in the educational technology sector.  For example, WebAssign bundles OpenStax texts with its commercial offerings and supports OpenStax in exchange. OpenStax does not make money on the print book sales.  For the sake of accessibility, print books are sold at or near cost.

Though it is notoriously difficult to assess uptake and adoption of open-source texts, the data that OpenStax receives, from its commercial partners, as well as from self-identified users, shows significant year over year usage growth according to Palmiotto.

It should be noted too, that in the case of OpenStax, I do not use the term open source lightly.  In the true spirit of borrowing, sharing, modifying and redistributing, the source for the texts is hosted on the OpenStax CNX platform.  Users are free to fork an existing text and to modify it to suit their needs.  While OpenStax will conveniently host your forked text on their site, you are also free to download, modify, and redistribute the text on your platform of choice.

In the end, though it was hard to get an accurate figure, the total cost of development for the OpenStax calculus text was between $500,000 and $1,000,000.  This goes a long way towards satisfying my curiosity about the high quality of the text.  In other words, it wasn't a volunteer effort, but rather a paid group of authors and developers.  It remains an open question whether a purely volunteer corps can produce a text of the same quality.  However, unlike a typical commercial text, the OpenStax calculus text could represent the foundation of a purely volunteer effort at maintenance and continued development moving forward. Regardless, all of the texts are significant contributions to the OER effort and help to lower costs and increase accessibility for students taking these courses.

The OpenStax approach to open-source academic publishing is effective and sustainable.  It is a model for how open-source publishing can generate high-quality texts that can compete with commercial offerings.  In a subsequent posting, I'll discuss OpenStax's partner program for educational institutions that wish to make open educational resources a priority.

Expii creator hopes to harness the power of the OER community.

Po-Shen Loh at Carnegie-Mellon is perhaps best known for his success coaching the US Math Olympiad team.  However, he is equally passionate about a project he started called Expii that he hopes will provide self-directed learning of mathematics using open-source contributions and a sophisticated dynamic learning system.

Mathematical subject matter is organized in a collection of nodes that are determined by a core group of editors at Expii.  Navigating through the nodes eventually leads to a specific topic node.  Within that topic node resides a collection of explanations and exercises for that specific topic written by a volunteer contributor.  Explanations are constructed on the site's easy to use editor which recognizes LaTeX.  The site also allows one to embed instructional YouTube videos.  Exercises too are easily constructed within the site's builtin editor.

There are two aspects to Expii that separate it from other open source on-line learning systems, the editorial approach and the dynamic learning algorithm.

First, unlike the Wikipedia editorial approach, contributors do not typically edit other contributors' work.  Factual corrections to an existing contribution are welcome, but stylistic re-writes are discouraged.  Rather, if a contributor does not like the style of a particular explanation, that contributor is encouraged to submit a competing explanation in the style that they prefer.  Subsequently, the two (or more) explanations then compete with each other by receiving upvotes/downvotes from users of the site.  Explanations with more votes are listed first when a learner visits a particular node.  Prof. Loh hopes that this approach will provided a variety of explanations on different topics that will resonate with different learners.

Second, the learning algorithm is a novel application of the ELO ranking system that is used in international chess competition.  In a sense, learners and exercises are in competition with each other and are ranked using an ELO-type system.  In this way, when a learner requests an exercise on a particular topic, their ranking is matched to an exercise with a nearby ranking.  As the learner improves, their ranking improves and they are presented with increasingly challenging exercises.

At the moment, the Expii effort is funded by private investors and is a for-profit entity.  However, Prof. Loh says that the future business model will not include a paywall for access to the site.  Rather, one possible business model would be mediating the pairing of contributors and learners on Expii into paid, adhoc, teaching and tutoring relationships.  The core group is looking for investors and applying for federal grant money to keep the 3-year effort going.  There has been steady growth in both users and contributors, but it seems to not have reached "critical mass" yet.

The site welcomes the addition of existing open-source materials as long as they are appropriately licensed.  For example, a Creative Commons license that allows commercial use would work.

Prof. Loh states that a lot of his motivation for starting the site came from his work with the Math Olympiad and other mathematics competitions.  He recognizes that for the US (and other countries) to compete, there needs to be a large pool of talented mathematics students.  He hopes that Expii can deepen that pool.  Indeed, he hopes that it can take a struggling mathematics student that may not be getting quite what he/she needs in their home classroom and provide just the right kind of learning experience to turn them into future Math Olympians.  And, as a great side benefit, Expii will elevate the mathematical literacy across the board.

If you have OERs that you have developed and would like a venue, Expii may be a good choice for you.  The ranking system may be the kind of objective assessment of your work that could be used in tenure, promotion and merit considerations at your institution.

Interesting OER Article in the Washington Post.

Interesting and encouraging that the nation's community colleges are really taking OERs to heart.  Good article here:  College courses without textbooks? These schools are giving it a shot.  By Danielle Douglas-Gabriel

University of North Carolina Press OER Initiative

The effort by the University of North Carolina Press to provide formal support throughout the UNC system for open educational resources (OER) development described in this Chronicle article is really promising.  It's wonderful to see institutional support for these kinds of efforts.

I followed up with John McLeod, Director of the Office of Scholarly Publishing Services at UNC Press about whether there were any math related efforts within the office right now.  While there aren't any current projects, they have applied for NSF funding to support OER development in service level mathematics classes within the UNC system.  They are also in conversation with the NC School of Science and Math, a high school that is part of the UNC system, about OER for mathematics at the secondary level.

AIM Open Textbooks in Mathbook XML Workshop (almost live updates)

David Farmer, Rob Beezer and others are developing an open markup language, Mathbook XML, to typeset mathematical texts in a way that facilitates publication in a variety of formats (e.g. html, pdf, e-book).  As part of that development, they seek authors willing to engage the new platform and provide feedback for development.

The American Institute of Mathematics is hosting a workshop with the developers and open texbook authors this week that is focused around open textbooks and Mathbook XML.  Rob Beezer and Tom Judson are both posting daily reports on the workshop at their blogs:

• http://mathematicseducationissues.blogspot.com/ (Judson)
• http://www.beezers.org/blog/bb/ (Beezer)

The posts so far have been pretty informative.  I wish I was there.

Lakeland and Lorain Community Colleges Support Open-Source Textbook

Jeff Zeager recently shared the following news:

Carl Stitz and I have been granted sabbaticals from our respective institutions for Fall 2016 to edit and enhance the Stitz-Zeager Precalculus book.  It is our intention to have the 4th edition ready by January 2017. 

The .pdf version of the book along with all of the LaTeX code will be posted on our website www.stitz-zeager.com when we're done with the revisions.

Of course, this is good news for their project, but it also shows that their respective institutions, Lorain County Community College and Lakeland Community College, are willing to commit resources to support and advance an open-source textbook.  Both institutions should be applauded for their support.  If you find yourself in a similar position--trying to justify a sabbatical to work on an open-source project--perhaps point at these two colleges as precedent.

We look forward to the next edition of the text.  

Elementary Abstract Algebra: Examples and Applications

Elementary Abstract Algebra: Examples and Applications is a new open-source abstract algebra text by a number of contributors: Justin Hill, Chris Thron (eds), Thomas Judson, Dave Witte Morris, Joy Morris, A. J. Hildebrand, Holly Webb, Johnny Watts and David Weathers. 

According to editor Chris Thron:

"The treatment is far more elementary than any other book on abstract algebra that we've seen. The text is designed for students who are planning to become secondary-school teachers. We particularly emphasize material that has relevance to high-school math, as well as practical applications."

The link above will lead to both on-line (html) and pdf versions of the text.  Print-on-demand copies are available through Lulu.  There is also a series of supporting YouTube videos.

If you have used the text in its current form, please consider writing a review for the MAA Reviews website.  The previous blog posting describes best practices for doing so.

As a follow up to this blog posting, I hope to get some insight into how this large number of collaborators managed to work together.

MAA Reviews of Open Source Texts

The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) maintains a book review site called MAA Reviews where volunteers review math-related texts.  The site hosts reviews of traditionally published texts, but also accepts reviews of open-source texts.  For example, Vic Reiner and I wrote a review of Guichard's Calculus text a while back.

The editor of MAA Reviews, Fernando Gouvêa, is quite supportive of including reviews of open-source texts on the site.  Though he lightly lamented in an email exchange with me:

We are definitely willing and interested. The difficulty is that
usually the only reward I can offer my reviewers is a free copy of the
book they are to review; as a result, it is always harder to find
reviewers for open-source texts.

For a while, I went on a one-man mission to recruit reviews of open-source texts for the site.  My self-imposed best practice was that the reviewer not be an author of the text and had to have taught at least one class using the text.  Here's a list of some of the MAA Reviews I "recruited" during this period:

• Abstract Algebra: Theory and Applications by Thomas W. Judson, reviewed by Chris Thron.
• A First Course in Linear Algebra by Robert Beezer reviewed by Mike Daven and Tanya Leise.
• Calculus for Life Sciences: a Modeling Approach by J. L. Cornette and R. A. Ackerman reviewed by Steven Deckelman and George Jennings.
• Book of Proof by Richard Hammack reviewed by David Offner.
• Linear Algebra by Jim Hefferon reviewed by Robert W. Hayden.
• Precalculus: An Investigation of Functions by David Lippman and Melonie Rasmussen reviewed by Mike Kenyon.

I had a process where I'd identify a candidate text, usually through word of mouth.  Then I'd reach out to the author(s) and see if they knew of someone using the text that I could solicit a review from.  Then I'd reach out to the recommended reviewer and solicit the review for MAA Reviews.

After a while, other things made claims on my time, leaving me less active in this pursuit.  However, this is a good way to get open-source texts some exposure.  Further, a favorable review in MAA Reviews might help the author(s) get some credit for their work at their home institutions.