Starting today, Collaborative Statistics 2nd Edition is available for all professors to adopt, providing students with an interactive experience using videos, applets, graphics, exercises, and a variety of navigation and study features for zero cost. This version is available at kno.com through a web browser, on Windows, and on Apple Mac based systems and iPad tablet.
Collaborative Statistics, 2nd Edition, was written and updated by Barbara Illowsky and Susan Dean, faculty members at De Anza College in Cupertino, California. This textbook is intended for introductory statistics courses taken by students at two- and four-year colleges.
In California community colleges alone, over 120,000 students every year take the general statistics course. With an average new book price of over $150 dollars, students pay anywhere between $10 and $18 million dollars per year for this basic statistics course. With the new enhanced digital offering, students will experience a free PDF for the course or the enhanced version under $20 dollars for the semester.
“One of the criticisms leveled at open textbooks is that the quality somehow suffers because they do not have the “imprimatur” of the commercial publishers. But after today, we will no longer view open source books the same way. Today our collaboration with Kno will showcase future open source books with Web 2.0 capabilities able to outperform commercial publications at every level,” said Florez.
Today marks the first merger between a for-profit giant, Kno, and non-profit, 20MM, to actually deliver an open source book through a vibrant leading edge commercial platform, offering faculty another quality choice. The potential to impact students now lies in the hands of willing professors and students advocating on behalf of today’s open etextbook opportunity, and the many more to follow.
“The opportunity to partner with Kno allowed us to leverage their groundbreaking education platform, application and national distribution capability to create a truly amazing etextbook based on open content,” said Dean Florez, a past Senate Majority Leader in California. He added, “Our overall target is aimed at massive faculty adoption throughout the nation by spring of 2012.”
Collaborative Statistics is also available free in pdf and Connexions versions. Students have the choice of using the enhanced digital version available at Kno.com or the pdf version available at Connexions site or the hard copy available for purchase. The hard copy will have a red cover and be available from QOOP: ISBN: 978-0-615-50867-2.
About 20 Million Minds Foundation
20MM Foundation is a non-profit organization dedicated to greatly reducing textbook costs. Headed by past California Senate Majority Leader Dean Florez, the foundation is currently leveraging leading edge technologies to create more affordable, engaging, and effective educational materials for college students throughout the nation. 20MM has currently funded, along with its working partners at both the Hewlett Foundation and Gates Foundation, a series of open source books due out by Spring of 2012 that are the next generation of open educational resources able to be remixed, reused and restructured based on an open Creative Common license model.
About KNO
Kno, Inc. is an education software company on a mission to make learning engaging, effective, and social for students. Osman Rashid, the co-founder of Chegg, and Babur Habib, a consumer electronics veteran, founded Kno, Inc. in May 2009. The company has received funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Intel Capital, Goldman Sachs, Advanced Publications, FLOODGATE, GSV Capital, First Round Capital, Ron Conway, Silicon Valley Bank, SV Angels and TriplePoint Capital and is based in Santa Clara, California. For more information, go to www.kno.com, or follow Kno at facebook.com/GoodtoKno.