Sustainable Idea Management in Academia: Free Textbooks for Students by Students

Abstract

This paper reports on an innovative method to engage students in developing textbooks as part of their information systems courses. Students at the University of Washington (UW) Information School, through collaboration with consultants and managers at BearingPoint (a global management consulting firm), developed a change management textbook as part of their course – Information and the Management of Change. Through this project, students not only gained further knowledge about change management, but collaborated with seasoned practitioners and documented their learning for the benefit of others. It is our hope that through the documentation of the process, learning, and feedback from this innovative educational experiment, we might promote similar learning experiences and create renewable, and sustainable, assignments for the benefit of the IS (information systems) academe, and the world beyond.

Keywords: information systems, education, Global Text Project, renewable projects, sustainability

JEL Classification: L32, L86, O31, O33, O34