The Global Text Project: The Arabic Imperative

1. The Global Text Project:The Arabic Imperative • Richard T. Watson—University of Georgia • Nagwa Badr—Ain Shams University • Donald J. McCubbrey—University of Denver

2. The problem • Poverty is a problem for half the world • Mass education is a means of relieving mass poverty • Textbooks are essential to education • The current business model does not work for developing economies

3. Goals • Create a free library of 1,000 electronic textbooks for students in the developing world • Cover the range of topics typically encountered in a university’s undergraduate programs • Engage the global academic community and global corporations to create and sponsor the library

4. Proof of concept • Create an infrastructure for free, open-content, global electronic texts • Publish two books in four languages • Arabic, Chinese, English, and Spanish • Develop a sustainable financial model • Learn how to scale • Build a system around the scarce resource

5. Opportunity • $100 laptop • XML text experience • AACSB BizEd article • Enthusiastic reception of idea

6. Economic development • Aid agencies should focus on specific tasks (e.g., textbooks) • William Easterly, former World Bank economist • The return on educational instructional materials is estimated to be up to 14 times higher than the return on physical facilities • World Bank report

7. Economic development • “Three broad facts about education have emerged from recent research. • Firstly, almost universally education is found to lift people out of poverty. • Secondly, when a comparison is made between investing in education and other forms of investment, the returns from investing in education are on average higher. • Thirdly, the returns to education–in the sense of the increment in income that accrues to each year of education–are much higher for those with higher levels of education” • Paul Collier, Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University

8. The environment Wired 2007.09

9. Key directions • Quality • Quality Assurance Board • Editorial structure • Procedures for quality • Sponsorship of books

10. Quality (book)

11. Editor-in-Chief • Develop the structure of a book • Assurance of complete coverage • Identification of links between chapters • Manage consistency between chapters • Recruit chapter editors • Manage relations with the book sponsor • Chair regular meetings of the chapter editors

12. Quality (chapter)

13. Chapter editor • Develop the structure of a chapter • Take a lead role in writing a chapter • Quality assurance for additions and deletions • Recruit contributors to ensure a global perspective on key issues • Create links where appropriate to other books in the series and relevant Web sites • Recruit contributors to help with writing the chapter, developing exercises, support material and so forth

14. Renewable student projects • Massive waste in university education • Develop human, software, and communication infrastructure to reduce waste • Highly motivating

15. An organizational design Domain of student opportunity

16. Software requirements • Enable searching across a library, field, book, or chapter • Management of access rights • MathML support • Multiple output forms • Multiple languages

17. Software requirements • The scarce resource principle of design • Maximize the number of people who can contribute • Uploading of word processing files • All maintenance done within a word processor • Simple interface

18. Partners • Ain Shams University, Egypt • University of Concepción, Chile • Wuhan University & Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China

19. Arabic imperative • How do we efficiently and effectively translate to and from Arabic? • How do we handle technological and scientific terms? • How do we engage students in Arabic universities? • How do we promote the project? • What are the cultural pitfalls?

20. Engaging many for the benefit of many more