Finally taking the time to read James Farmer’s article on incsub: Communication Dynamics: Discussion boards, weblogs and the development of communities of inquiry in online learning environments.
Did a quick skim, and he’s referencing the book “E-Learning in the 21st Century: A framework for research and practice” that was put together by Randy Garrison and Terry Anderson. Randy is the Director of The Learning Commons, while Terry is up at Athabasca University, and was involved with the development of CAREO.
Small world 
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
D’Arcy,
As I browse the web, I can find 3 or 4 web pages that refer to an attempt to create opentextbooks via web communities.
http://www.opensourcetext.org/links.htm http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/World_History_Project_-_California_Content_Standard http://otp.inlimine.org/ http://www.opentextbook.org/
As I’ve tried to contact these folks to see how things are going, I am left with the impression that all of these projects are either very stalled, dying, or outright dead.
After 11 years in the software industry, and 7 years at Microsoft, I have left “corporate America” to pursue a PhD at Utah State University, under David Wiley. I am seriously considering the idea of an “Open Textbook” in U.S. History for High School students, created in some sort of heavily moderated “wiki” fashion by an online community (with teachers, students, and administrators “on the ground” in Utah as an integral part of this community). This book WILL be printed out….I repeat….WILL be printed out….but the idea is to make the printout so cheap ($10?), that it will save school districts lots of money. The idea is to also build a library of digital learning objects around the textbook, to enhance both instruction and self-paced learning.
If you have any ideas or thoughts regarding the possibilities of such a project, or know of any others who are doing something similar, or would even like to participate/support, please reply….or shoot me an email at: johndehlin @ usu.edu
Thanks! John Dehlin
Director of Outreach OSLO Research Group
http://oslo.usu.edu
I emailed John off-blog, but for Google’s sake, John’s project sounds pretty interesting. Using a wiki (or wiki-like strategy) to author a physical textbook… Wow.
Could be some fun policy decisions (who gets to contribute? Why? Who gets to review? Why? Who gets final approval? Why? – it’s going to press, so someone has to “sign off” on it…)