University of Cape Town: In last week’s student newspaper, Varsity, Zerene Haddad reports that a new free online marketing text book is now available to South Africans. The book, which is an entry level guide for 3rd year management studies, was launched last week. According to Rob Stokes, the CEO of Quirk, the downloadable eMarketing textbook, “is Quirk’s contribution to Open Education because education is something we are passionate about – especially in South Africa where skilled people are needed so desperately. The more we can get this knowledge out there the better. We felt it was our responsibility to make this happen” 1.
This marketing ebook download illustrates Quirk eMarketing’s commitment to the Cape Town Open Education Declaration which aims to make educational resources available to all students. Students wanting to download the free emarketing ebook will have to decide whether to do it chapter by chapter or to download a complete version of the book in one go.
Stokes comments that individual acknowledgment is not as important as the team effort that it took to develop the book. He is keen to that instead of being concerned about who wrote the book that effort is place on “thinking of new ideas to get this book into the hands of more people” He notes that at Quirk eMarketing they are “currently working on an opportunity with the social development department of a blue chip corporate to co-brand and print several thousand copies of the book to get it into the hands of students in South Africa’s disadvantaged areas. That’s the beauty of Creative Commons, we will make no money out of it, but I think you will agree that everyone wins. I’d love to hear your and your readers’ thoughts as to how we can better get the book out there…?”1
Thanks to David Horwitz for the heads-up on this article!
Cheryl Hodgkinson-Williams
1 http://imod.co.za/2008/07/18/quirk-emarketing-book-but-no-rafiq/
