Hi everyone. I teach physics and astronomy at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Richmond, BC, right across the river from the other Vancouver. I have started working with the Openstax (http://openstaxcollege.org/) physics book that Clint and Mary told me about and I can speak from the point of view of the adapter.
Some of the videos in this week's "readings" talk about the price of textbooks. In my experience as a student in the 80s, a book like this cost $30~35. (I must be a little older than the guy who said $40 in his time.) I thought the students today were paying about $120 and I thought that was steep enough. When I looked it up last month, if I hadn't gone to the open book, the book the student would have been told to get, the one we had "always" used, costs $187.15. I told my department colleagues and they were all shocked. How many of us really pays attention to the current price to the students? Did we really mean that students should have to pay at this level? If this is a typical price, a full time student would be paying $1500~$2000 in a year just for textbooks.
I don't want to come across like I have a beef with the texbook industry (I have met some very nice people working to make an honest living) but when the prices are this high, natural forces emerge to counter the trend, right? One manifestation of these forces are the open textbooks.
In terms of quality, I've always taken the view that no textbook does exactly what I want it to do, exactly how I want it done. This particular book I started using seems as good as any and better than some. And if something really bugs me enough, I'm allowed to change it because of the openess. I probably won't need to go to that length. Despite being free, it does not look and feel cheap. So where is the reason not to make this work?
I'm sorry I'll have to miss the session tomorrow, but I'll check out the recording.
cheers
Tak