Interest Builds in IU's eText Initiative

A used-textbook market, piracy, and students opting to not buy assigned course materials are issues the Indiana University is addressing with its eText initiative. The solution IU created negotiates deep discounts on textbook list prices from publishers in return for a guarantee that every student will buy the e-text.

The system appears to be working, according to Nik Osborne, chief of staff for IU’s office of the vice president for IT, in this Q&A with Campus Technology. He said he believes the program saves students money and allows publishers and authors a fair price for their work. Other universities around the country are showing interest in setting up a similar NET+ service that provide McGraw-Hill e-texts, Courseload readers, and a platform to add notes, combined with their learning management system.

“We're pretty sure that a shift to digital and print is going to happen,” Osborne said. “It seems to be where the publishers are going. It seems to be where the Department of Education is trying to push people, as the software and the devices get better. There are just going to be things in the next three to five years that you can do on an e-text that you can't do on a textbook. Not only in higher education but in the K-12 market there's going to be even more of a push to digital.”

The college store is not part of Osborne’s equation. Store professionals should be exploring every possible way to leverage their expertise in course material adoptions, coursepacks, retailing electronics, and delivering print-on-demand options to become part of the discussion.

Blogger Wonders What's the Rush to E-Text?

It's probably shouldn't be a surprise that students aren’t flocking to electronic textbooks. After all, most have been handed print textbooks at the beginning of every school year for most of their academic lives. Besides, they are consumers who tend to look for low price first, and e-textbooks don’t always offer much savings.

Now, Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, weighs in on the subject on his blog. He observes that while popular e-books are written in a narrative style and are read for pleasure, textbooks deal with difficult material that is being read to learn and remember.

Willingham points to research which shows that while all the videos and hyperlinks that e-texts are able to provide can certainly be an advantage to students, they can also be a distractions that actually limit understanding.

He’s not trying to suggest there’s no reason to replace the printed format. He’s just asking what the rush is.

Sony Courting Higher Ed Market

Sony Electronics is making its pitch to the higher education market with its Sony Digital Academy, a partnership with nine institutions to “foster and fuel innovative approaches and facilitate new expressive applications of digital media technologies,” according to the Sony press release.

The nine schools participating in the initial stage of the program developed digital projects for the upcoming year which Sony will support with camcorders, computers, cameras, and its tablet device. The schools are:

• American University, School of Communication, Washington, D.C.
• Drexel University, Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design, Philadelphia, PA      
• New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, New York
• School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL
• The Florida State University, College of Motion Picture Arts, Tallahassee
• UCLA, School of Theater, Film and Television, Los Angeles
• UC San Diego, Division of Arts and Humanities
• University of Central Florida, College of Arts & Humanities, Orlando
• University of Southern California, School of Cinematic Arts, Los Angeles

"The program is designed to expose students to the latest Sony technologies and equipment, building on mutually beneficial goals, in order to help education to stay ahead of the curve and evolve with the ever-changing landscape of technologies," said Steve Zimmer, business development manager at Sony Electronics. "There is a shared commitment and investment with the schools and we will help facilitate the development of production, research and curriculum with new Sony products."

Harvard, MIT Partner on edX

Following on the heels of the MITx online learning project launched last December, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has teamed with its Cambridge, MA, neighbor, Harvard University, to launch a new nonprofit partnership offering free online courses from both schools.

The project, know as edX, is the latest venture into the world of massively open online courses, or MOOCs. Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Michigan announced in April their partnership with Coursera, a for-profit company that started with Stanford’s experiments in offering free online courses.

“Through this partnership, we will not only make knowledge more available, but we will learn more about learning," Harvard President Drew Faust said at a news conference on edX. “Anyone with an Internet connection anywhere in the world can have access."

MIT and Harvard have each committed $30 million to the project, which will offer its first five courses in the fall. The courses will be free and certificates will be available on completion with no college credits. EdX classes will not only focus on engineering, math, and the sciences, but also include humanities subjects that require grading by peers or essay-grading software.

According to the edX web site, the platform is based on MITx, which offered video lessons, embedded testing, real-time feedback, student-ranked questions and answers, and student-paced learning.

“If I were president of a midtier university, I would be looking over my shoulder very nervously right now, because if a leading university offers a free circuits course, it becomes a real question whether other universities need to develop a circuits course,” said George Siemens in a New York Times article. Siemens is a MOOC innovator teaching at Athabasca University, a Canadian school that offers distance online education. 

TED to the Rescue

TED (technology, entertainment, design) is coming to the aid of teachers who want to use the educational resources on YouTube in their classrooms. TED, a nonprofit organization that promotes ideas through conferences and free online video, has developed a web site that helps instructors find educational videos and provides a tool for “flipping” them.

“Flipping” refers to a blended learning method that makes use of technology to allow instructors more time to interact with students rather than lecture. Students are encouraged to move around the room, helping each other, while teacher-created videos keep the lesson going outside the classroom.

The new site, the second part of an effort called TED-Ed, is a portal that organizes the videos by themes and tags them to traditional subjects taught in school. The site also offers additional material, including multiple-choice questions, open-answer questions, and links to more information.

The site allows instructors to “flip” the videos, or edit them in a way that customizes the lesson. Each flipped video creates a web link for the instructor to distribute the lesson and track student answers.

There’s also a special tool that allows teachers to create a lesson from any video on YouTube that permits third-party embedding. These enhanced videos can be offered for wider distribution and the best will be featured on the TED-Ed site.

“We didn’t want to limit what people might want to use to teach,” Long Smalley, TED-Ed director, said in an article that appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education. 

Breathing Room for B&N in Microsoft Deal

The partnership between Barnes & Noble and Microsoft is providing the bookseller with an infusion of capital it needs and the software giant with the foothold in the e-book and college textbook market it wants.

The deal calls for a new B&N subsidiary formed by spinning its digital and B&N College Booksellers divisions together into a new company, temporarily named Newco. Microsoft is investing $300 million into Newco for a 17.6% equity stake.

The infusion of money will allow B&N to grow its e-book business, while at the same time fending off shareholder calls for it to sell the Nook business or the whole company. In addition, it ends speculation that B&N doesn’t have the funds to go head to head with Amazon.com in the e-book business.

“Our biggest concern for Barnes & Noble has been its ability to compete against Apple and Amazon, two of the deepest-pocketed players in the technology and media world,” said Matthew Fassler, a Goldman Sachs analyst. “Newco now has an equally deep-pocketed partner.”

The investment also gives Microsoft a path into the e-book business and a presence on college campuses to compete with Apple. It was reported that a Nook app for the Windows 8 operating system would be developed, but B&N CEO William Lynch told Forbes that the only plan at this moment is to embed NFC chips into the device.

The deal should also give consumers greater confidence in the Nook, according to David Carnoy, executive editor at CNET News. Speculation about the future of B&N had Nook readers wondering about the titles they’ve purchased and if those would vanish if the company were to fail. But Microsoft’s willingness to invest millions means the Nook will remain.

University of Minnesota Launches Online Open Text Catalog

An issue facing open educational resources (OER) is having a collection of open-content textbooks in one, easy-to-use site. The University of Minnesota is doing its part, recently launching Open Academics textbook catalog that allows students to read textbooks online for free or order a printed version for a nominal fee.

The site has 90 open-license titles available from the school’s largest entry-level courses. It also lists reviewed texts and awards a stipend to faculty members who review or adopt an open book.

“Faculty share student concerns about high textbook costs and are willing to consider high-quality, affordable alternatives like open textbooks,” said Irene Durancyzk, associate professor of the College of Education and Human Development at the university.

The hope of the Minnesota project is to attract not only the tech-savvy instructors, but all faculty members looking to lower the cost of adopted textbooks. OnCampus Research’s Student Watch 2012: Student Attitudes and Perceptions found that 52% of students responding did not buy at least one of their required textbooks for the fall 2011 semester and price was the main reason for the majority of those students.

“High textbook costs are one of the many factors that are contributing to the increasing financial burden that students are facing,” said Lizzy Shay, the undergraduate student body president at Minnesota. “Affordable open textbooks would go a long way in relieving that burden.”