Thursday, June 11, 2009

Textbook Affordability

Today I received my University of Denver alumni magazine and learned that a professor there is trying to address the high cost of textbooks through electronic texts. The magazine reprinted an article from October, 2008 about Daniels College of Business professor Don McCubbrey's work to solve the textbook affordability problem facing his students. He worked with his graduate students to develop an electronic book that would be affordable. But Professor McCubbrey was thinking about the cost of textbooks in a more global manner. If textbooks are too expensive for students in the United States, what does that mean for education in less developed areas. Working with Richard Watson of the University of Georgia, Professor McCubbrey founded of the Global Text Project. The Global Text Project's goal is to marshall the resources of the United States to bring 1,000 electronic textbooks to students in the developing world and help education around the world.

1 comment:

Mia Beesley said...

John, I am training to teach (part time) online courses for the University of Phoenix, and if I'm not mistaken their textbooks are all available full text online and it doesn't seem as if there is an additional cost. It is also interesting to me that the library is all online, too. I've been very impressed with how they train their faculty candidates, not just in how to use the online set up, but in how to be a good class facilitator, and this week we used the library in one of our assignments. It seemed pretty extensive. I'm in week 3 of a 4 week unpaid training that is more like a very extended interview.