OpenlySolved.

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OpenlySolved is a digital library of living documents (living documents are documents that are continuously being edited and refined) containing fully-worked solutions to problems found in commonly used mathematics textbooks in Singapore. Conventional textbooks contain only the final answers to the problems, and they are not helpful for students who are trying to learn mathematics on their own. What they need is the solution process. This is what the solutions in OpenlySolved provide the steps involved in solving each problem and not merely the final answer all at no cost. The solutions provided at OpenlySolved.org have benefited the following categories of people: 1 2 3 4 students who cannot afford tuition classes parents and teachers, who can now use the solutions as a reference and for marking purposes Singaporeans based overseas (e.g., Australia), who use Singapore textbooks to teach their children, but who are in a sense cut off from the Singapore system students taking the examinations as private candidates (e.g., those who are doing the examinations on their own because they did badly the first time)

I founded OpenlySolved.org because of my conviction that knowledge should be shared, and that onetime codification of the solutions, although very labour-intensive, will allow them to be reusable many times over. Social statistics on Singapore also indicates that although many students attend tuition classes, there are many more who cannot afford to. The following statistics makes for some sober reading:

According to the Boston Consulting Group, Singapore is home to 170,000 millionaire households, and this is where the highest concentration of millionaire households can be found (source) According to Professor Tommy Koh, 70,000 kids go to school without pocket money for lunch (source: Dont knock minimum wage yet, a Singapore Straits Times article published on November 11, 2010 see link) According to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, 200,000 people have been helped by ComCare (source)

For the past eight years, the solutions have been created, and made available through a static or dumb website (currently, they are on http://ascklee.org/). The problem with this approach is that students cannot discuss the solutions online, neither can they provide feedback. By January 2012, all the solutions will be transferred to the new website (http://OpenlySolved.org/) which is being developed using the Sakai learning management system jointly developed by Stanford University and MIT. The Sakai platform will enable students, upon registration, to discuss the solutions with others. Future Plans Three main directions are planned for OpenlySolved: 1. 2. To make it a crowdsourcing effort. I plan to invite teachers (from Singapore and internationally) to adopt a textbook that they commit to solving and putting the solutions online. To diversify the number of subjects in OpenlySolved.org. So far, to prove that the concept is workable, I have concentrated on solutions of mathematics textbooks. There is no reason that the concept will not work for other subjects. In fact, there is already a small start in chemistry. To create videos of the solutions to O-Level examination questions. The videos will then be uploaded to YouTube. Publishers can then focus on publishing just the questions, and the tenyear series will become a lot thinner (this means that it will be cheaper and lighter for students, and more environmentally friendly). The funding I seek will help make the videos a reality.

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