There is a group in South Africa called Siyavula that is coming up with open textbooks. They have written several books and last year the South African government printed out millions of copies of their books and gave them away to students for free. How cool!
As they tried to ramp up their book library, they determined that this could be efficiently done in authors workshops in a weekend. This model is based on the idea that bringing a diverse group together will create a product is better than something that comes from just one person.They bring a bunch of subject matter experts together, break them into groups and have the different groups. All are volunteers, most haven't written in this way before. They are using Google Docs to create the books. They usually have more than one workshop that they work on the book. A couple of their recent books took 3 workshops.
They are giving badges to people to recognize their work on the project. The badges will recognize not only writing, but some of the support work that folks do on the project.
Siyavula
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