• Home
  • News
    • Politics / Govt
    • Legislature
    • Crime / Courts
    • Health / Medicine
    • Archives
  • Sports
    • Badgers
    • Packers
      • Titletown Report
    • Brewers
  • Contact Us
    • Reporters
  • Affiliates
    • Affiliate Support

Wisconsin Radio Network

Wisconsin News and Sports

You are here: Home / Education / UW prof is ‘open textbook’ author (AUDIO)

UW prof is ‘open textbook’ author (AUDIO)

September 19, 2011 By Bob Hague

A UW Madison professor has tackled the issue of costly textbooks head-on. Dr. Dr. Timothy Paustian is a UW professor who faced a dilemma — more and more students who could not afford textbooks costing hundreds of dollars. Paustian’s solution was to write his own. “I was already writing pages for my students, explaining stuff and filling in the gaps sometimes,” said Paustian. “I did all the copy editing, I did all the copyrights for all the figures. I made all the other figures that I needed, and I published it on the web.” His students have been using the text for nearly a decade. “The students thought it was great. There were some issues with it. It needed more editing, and over the years it’s gotten better and better. But they’ve been very happy with it.”

Paustian figures even more such texts will be widely used in the next three to five years. “The publishing industry is in chaos, because their business model doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “They’re just clinging to that book, and they’re not changing it. They keep raising prices because they’ve got to raise money, but they’re just pricing themselves out of the market.” He said the key to making so-called ‘open textbooks’ more widely available will be finding a business model that does work, and convincing more professors to use them.

AUDIO: Dr. Tim Paustian (6:00)

Share this:

  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Filed Under: Education Tagged With: University of Wisconsin



Featured Stories

Panthers rally to upset Wright State in Horizon League quarterfinals

Jokic leads Denver in rout of the Bucks

Can Packers make a splash in free agency? Aaron Jones?

Wisconsin was better but still falls short at Purdue

Assembly Republicans propose bills to prohibit transgender girls from girls’ sports

TwitterFacebook

Sports Headlines

Panthers rally to upset Wright State in Horizon League quarterfinals

Jokic leads Denver in rout of the Bucks

Can Packers make a splash in free agency? Aaron Jones?

Wisconsin was better but still falls short at Purdue

Marquette edges DePaul in Big East action

More Sports

Tweets by @WRN

Get our news delivered to your inbox:

Enter your email address:

Delivered by FeedBurner

Copyright © 2021 · Learfield News & Ag, LLC