Digital Content Report Draws Line in the Sand

A new report, Out of Print: Reimagining the K-12 Textbook in a Digital Age, from the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) urges states and school districts to “commit to beginning the shift from print to digital instructional materials” no later than the 2017-18 academic year.

Otherwise, the report says, teachers and pupils will be stuck in another funding cycle resulting in the acquisition of out-of-date content and inflexible print formats. It could be another decade before they’d have the monies to replace print with digital materials.

Some state legislatures are already on board, such as Florida, which wants schools to substitute electronic materials for at least half their books by 2015. However, some educators think students aren’t ready for such a rapid move. Tampa Bay Online reported on the problems one district had with digital books, including login difficulties and students with limited or no access to computers at home.

Those are the kind of wrinkles schools will have to iron out. SETDA’s report points to seven factors to address: sustainable funding for devices, robust Internet connectivity, up-to-date policies and practices, prepared educators, intellectual property and reuse rights, quality control and usability, and state and local leadership buy-in.

SETDA’s report recommends that schools establish and communicate “a clear vision for the use of digital and open content,” which includes chucking any regulations or policies that get in the way and finding dollars to ensure adequate classroom technologies.

The report also calls on government, education, and business to work together on “alternative, flexible models” for the development and dissemination of digital content.

Course Manager App Does Its Job Well

There are many things the Course Manager app from iTunes U does not do. It does not integrate with learning management systems. There are no discussion boards or blogs. There are no assessments or gradebooks. Plus, it only works on Apple devices.

On the other hand, Joshua Kim reports in his Inside Higher Education blog that it looks good and runs well. He also points out that it’s a curricular content-consumption experience that should be viewed as a supplement to a learning management system.

“Mostly, the whole experience on the iTunes U app just feels smooth and polished,” Kim wrote. “Content is easy to find, everything opens up quickly, and everything is logical and seamless.”

In an earlier post, Kim suggested curriculum content consumption supports the way students learn and that because it’s so easy to use, the iTunes U app should not be ignored.

“The fact that Course Manager and iTunes U is free to use, works with all sorts of text documents, handles video beautifully, allows for easy content downloading (hence offline viewing), and works great on an iPhone should make the incumbent coursepack platform providers take notice,” he wrote. “The iTunes U app is a significant threat to their business models.”

Media Company Looks to Profit from Education

The Association of American Publishers estimates the K-12 textbook market approaches $3 billion in the United States, with an additional $4 billion spent on teacher guides, testing, and reference material. So it should come as no surprise that companies other than traditional publishers are looking to grab a piece of that pie.

Discovery Communications, which owns the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC, is doing just that with the introduction of a line of digital textbooks called Techbook that will provide video, virtual labs, and downloadable content, according to a report in The New York Times.

“It’s kind of perfect for us,” Discover Communications CEO David M. Zaslav told the Times. “Educational content is core to our DNA, and we’re unencumbered—unlike traditional textbook publishers, we’re not defending a dying business.”

Tough words perhaps, but education publishers are not going to concede their turf without a fight. Pearson, McGraw-Hill Education, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have all introduced digital educational products and recently teamed with Apple to sell high school textbooks through its iBook store.

“Over the last 10 years alone, we’ve invested $9.3 billion in digital innovations that are transforming education,” said Will Ethridge, CEO of Pearson North America. “One way to describe it would be an act of ‘creative destruction.’ By this I mean we’re intentionally tearing down an outdated, industrial model of learning and replacing it with more personalized and connected experiences for each student.”

In the meantime, Discovery has a staff of 200 working on its Techbook project. The cloud-based technology works on any hardware a district might be using and will cost about $38 per student for a six-year subscription, compared to the $70 average price for a traditional textbook.

“Television is always going to be our primary focus, but we’re incredibly excited about the business potential of the Techbook,” Zaslav said. “Education is an area of solid, sustainable growth.”

Techbook is only targeting K-12 students for now, so it’s just scratching the surface of education’s “business potential.”

In Defense of Publishers and Digital

Brian Kibby, president of McGraw-Hill Education, threw down the gauntlet in a recent essay for Inside Higher Education, asserting that there needs to be a complete shift to digital in higher education, and it needs to be done within the next 36 months. He claims lagging grades and student graduation rates, along with graduates not leaving schools with the skills employers need, as the reasons the digital shift is so important.

The problem with this challenge is those paying for the course materials aren’t buying it, according to Daniel Luzer, web editor of the Washington Monthly.

“That’s because students don’t actually like the digital model,” Luzer wrote. “While electronic might work well enough for some forms of reading: novels (particularly the trash sort where you don’t want people to see what you’re reading on the subway or whatever) and magazine articles, it’s not actually all that good for studying, where underlining and marking up the text is part of what enables people to learn. It’s just hard to study using anything other than print.”

He then suggests the possibility of an ulterior motive to Kibby’s challenge.

“What students really want are used or rental textbooks,” Luzer said. “Textbook rentals are very popular on college campuses. But then, McGraw-Hill doesn’t make any money off textbook rentals or used books.”

Making publishers out to be the bad guys may be good reading on a blog, but Luzer seems to fail to understand where digital course materials and education are headed, which is part of Kibby's point. Digital course materials of the future will be not be the “PDF-equivalent” that they are today, and it will not be about “reading” text like we may have in the pre- and early-digital dark ages.

While Kibby’s forecast may be aggressively optimistic, the future of course materials will be more digital, and more value-adding in terms of contributing to student success. What will replace textbooks are products that are interactive, incorporate assessments, and which are tied to improving learning outcomes. Most major publishers, like McGraw, are making substantive investments in higher education gaming solutions, assessment of content mastery, re-envisioned LMS and learning environments, adaptive learning materials, and a range of other digital products that we would hardly recognize as “textbooks.”

Regarding the ulterior motive ascribed to Kibby’s challenge, publishers like McGraw are publicly traded commercial enterprises, and thus have a distinct incentive to maximize financial returns. If current business practices (e.g., used and rental) do not allow them to generate revenue off of products they originally created, then we should expect they will explore and promote products and business models that do.

What students want is value at a reasonable price. That does not necessarily mean “used or rental” textbooks. They are just the perceived best option at the current time.

Our mission should be to improve educational affordability and student success. We should learn to stop bashing the publishers like an autoimmune response to change.

Do I like every publisher business practice?  No.  Are course material prices too high (generally speaking)?  Yes.  Are arguments like this productive or lead to better solutions?  Not likely.

We would be much better served by finding ways to be part of the new technologies and delivery models, and helping find ways to improve them, rather than giving the long-term suppliers and partners for our core product reasons to work against and around us. Let us take some accountability and help create options that address both affordability and student success, recognizing that many of these options will be substantively digital in the possibly not-to-distant future.

Reducing the Clicks from User to Content

As the back-to-class season draws closer, a number of course materials systems are hooking up.

At its own BbWorld annual conference in New Orleans, Blackboard announced plans to develop one-click access to Ingram’s Vital Source e-textbook platform directly within the Blackboard Learn learning management system. The integration, intended for both computers and mobile devices, will allow faculty and students already logged into Learn to click into digital course content without messing around with software or additional logins. Vital Source has 80,000 titles.

Blackboard is also getting a little cozier with CourseSmart. Since last November, the two have been working with 20 campuses to pilot integration of CourseSmart’s Building Block digital catalog with Blackboard Learn. Like the Vital Source arrangement, the integration enables users to access the course materials with a single sign-on. The pilot was apparently successful as Blackboard will now make Building Block available at no charge to all schools using Learn 9.1.

For its part, CourseSmart has also been dancing with Desire2Learn. In an enhanced integration announced recently, CourseSmart’s 30,000-title e-textbook catalog will be available through Desire2Learn’s learning management system. Once again, students and instructors will be able to get there via just one click.

College Stores Must Get Involved in the E-Text Conversation

Last January, an e-textbook  pilot program was launched on five university campuses aimed at providing each with ways to access digital course materials and negotiate volume pricing deals designed to reduce costs to students and pay authors and publishers fairly. That program is now being expanded to at least 25 additional schools for the fall 2012 semester.

Through the pilot, each institution subsidizes the cost of the digital course materials, which are provided to students at no cost, with a print-on-demand version available for a $28 fee. The participating courses use McGraw-Hill Education e-books and digital learning materials, along with the Courseload reader and annotation software.

The program has also, in some cases, excluded the college store from the textbook equation.

“When students don’t need to shop at our stores for their books, they certainly don’t need us for school supplies and other items,” wrote Jon Kates, executive director of the University of Virginia Bookstores and Cavalier Computers, in the For What It’s Worth column in the March/April 2012 edition of The College Store magazine.

UVA was one of the first schools to take part in the pilot and will continue to look at the program this fall, so Kates has had a firsthand look at the program. He’s also being proactive and listed in the column a variety of ways his store is working to remain relevant on campus.

“This program/model is really about institutional licensing,” said Mark Nelson, chief information officer of the NACS and vice president of NACS Media Solutions. “There are a lot of challenges and shortcomings of institutional licensing models, but unless stores understand those better, it will be difficult for the industry to speak with sufficient credibility on the topic. Stores should work to get involved.”

Blogger Weighs in on E-Book 'Rush'

The CITE featured a blog from University of Virginia professor Daniel Willingham who wondered what the rush is to adopt digital course materials (scroll down to May 8). His point was that course materials are more difficult to read than books for pleasure. Besides, digital he added textbooks aren’t much cheaper than print editions in the first place.

That post brought a reply that led to a different and perhaps more cynical conclusion on the reasons behind the push for digital. This blogger questions why both the federal and state governments are pushing digital materials so hard and finds the answer in big business. He says he wants to believe that all the legislation is about making things better for students, but is concerned it’s just about money for publishers.

“The thing is, if my conclusion about how digital textbooks got so hot so fast (is right), then it raises serious doubts as to whether they really have so many virtues,” writes Nate Hoffelder. “What if all the supposed advantages of digital textbooks are really the invention of a sophisticated marketing department and not the observations of enthusiastic adopters?”

Clearly, these are very different points of view. So what’s your thoughts?

Print Preferred by College Instructors

Students are not the only ones on campus reluctant to embrace digital course materials. A new study from the Book Industry Study Group and Bowker Market Research found that print is the format of choice for faculty as well as for students.

In Faculty Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education, a survey of college faculty perceptions on classroom materials, 93% of the instructors surveyed equated success in the classroom to use of assigned materials. However, only 32% of faculty make e-book options available and just 2% of students select that format.

Comparing the faculty survey with BISG’s Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education survey shows just 12% of faculty prefer digital to print, while 16% of students would choose electronic options. The faculty research also suggests a high level of satisfaction with e-textbooks once they are adopted. Of the 20% of faculty members who reported using digital course materials, 90% said they were likely to adopt an e-text in the future.

“The emergence of e-books has led to a lot of confusion in the marketplace about what faculty want from publishers,” said Angela Bole, BISG’s deputy executive director. “While students may be the ultimate consumers of course materials, professors are not only influencers, they are decision-makers. Understanding where they fit on the e- vs. print continuum is essential for any organization serving this market.”

Developing a Digital Textbook Strategy

The videos from the Developing a Digital Textbook Strategy for Your Campus symposium hosted on Feb. 8, 2012 by the Florida Distance Learning Consortium are now available in YouTube, accessible from the Open Access Textbooks Project website, and will soon be added to The Orange Grove repository. Also available on the Open Access Textbooks Project website are presentations, implementation checklists for state and institutional textbook initiatives, publisher and vendor handouts, as well as other symposium documents.

BISG Presents Data on Higher Ed Textbook Market

Here are some recent statistics that came out the Book Study Industry Group (BISG) Making Information Pay in Higher Education conference last week. 

Overall, the higher education textbook market saw a decrease of 2.5%, the first decline in six years.  It was noted that the recent numbers did not capture some of the e-commerce companies.

Kelly Gallagher from Bowker reported that about 5% to 7% of the e-textbook market is digital, versus the 15% to 20% that many major trade publishers reported.  Gary

Shapiro from Follet Higher Education Group reported that sales of e-books are less than 5% of its revenue but this is misleading because it does not account for digital sold in a bundle which makes up 25% of its textbook revenue.  Follett also saw growth in interactive digital textbook at around 5% and expects that segment to grow the most in the future.  Cafescribe, Follett’s online textbook business estimated to be at $400 million is the 56^th largest e-commerce in the U.S.

Kent Freeman from VitalSource Technologies, Inc. reported on data they collected which found that e-textbooks are available for a course 23% of the time, 53% sometimes, 9% rarely, and not available 14% of the time.

Some of the stats reported here and others presented at the meeting reinforce that the availability and impact of digital is growing.  It also points to "PDF equivalents" being less attractive and that the future will be more the "native digital" -- course materials that are part of an integrated learning solution with interactive components that enhance student learning skills or outcomes.  The true volume of digital being sold, often as part of a package, suggests growing penetration of technology-based course materials solutions. 

Textbook Distribution Study

We recently posted a story on Daytona State College reconsidering going all digital.   This is a follow up to that post.   Here is the article describing the study that Daytona State conducted that led to their decision.  The study was conducted over four semesters with 12 faculty members and more than 1,250. 

The study compared the experiences of students and faculty using four textbook distribution models: print purchase, print rental, e-text rental, and e-text rental with e-reader device.   The following are suggestions for developing a digital program on campus based on the study:

·         Offering faculty the option to teach with e-texts rather than requiring them to do so

This seemed like an obvious one.  We really don’t want to force anything upon the faculty.  Although there was a study from a few years back in the dental school area that found moving to digital in a "big bang" or all at once approach was more successful than transitioning more slowly. 

·         Ensuring that infrastructure is adequate to meet greatly increased demands

According to the study, the students had challenges accessing publisher’s content and had some initial problems with overloading on wireless network.

·         Remedying the technological skill deficits inherent in an open-access student population

This is a quote from the study, “ After teaching with an e-text, one faculty member concluded, “We need to get more students up to speed technology-wise- top spend more time explaining simple tech concepts.” Another faculty was quoted as saying s/he noticed a “huge learning curve for some students or students without much [previous] opportunity to use technology.”

·         Guaranteeing students cost savings large enough to compensate for their initial discomfort and frustration with the technology

Cost savings are a key driver for student adoption, but so is perceived relevance and value. Any initiative focused solely on cost is likely to not achieve its intended outcomes.

·         Providing resources and support for faculty adapting their instruction to fit new formats.

The study suggested digital programs should be supported at every level of the college including programs and departments.  Faculty remain a barrier to digital course materials and there is need for more professional development and consideration of what it will take to get faculty to convert.

Perhaps the real lesson here is to have a digital strategy in advance, and to look before you leap.  While digital course material technologies are maturing, there are still some barriers that prevent wholesale converstion across every discipline or every institution type.  The lessons learned by Daytona State are not surprising, but they are important for other institutions considering similar all-digital moves. 

Daytona State College Reconsiders Going All Digital

Here is a recent article about Daytona State College backing off a previous plan to go all digital textbooks.  The decision comes after a report by the school that suggests students should have a choice whether to use a traditional textbook or an e-textbook.   

Michelle McCraney, the project manager of a pilot program conducted by the school, where 1,250 students and 12 faculty participated in evaluating electronic and rental books, says “some students prefer to have a book, and some students prefer to have a computer to read their books and some students like to rent their books.  Everybody learns differently and you have to be able to embrace that and let people choose.”

According to the article, the school’s study found that “the majority of students found the e-book to be an inconvenience and more time-consuming than flipping through a textbook because it was also challenging at times accessing the books.”  The students also commented in the report the issues of the hidden costs of the e-book, such as a computer, online access, and printing.

The campus hopes to ease into transforming more e-textbook in the school by offering mentoring programs for faculty who are interested in using e-textbooks in their classes.

This story is very similar to the experience of California State University’s pilot program where the conclusion was about choice, affordability, and accessibility.  CSU emphasizes heavily on education faculty and students about e-textbooks.

MacMillan to Launch Digital Textbook "Principle of Biology"

According to this story, Nature Publishing, a division of Macmillan Publisher will debut its digital textbook “Principle of Biology” in January.  The digital textbook is packed with interactive features from dynamic illustrations to interwoven audio and video clips into the text.   

Nature Publishing “chose to make the browser central to the textbook, rather than creating individual apps for students to use on electronic devices- an expensive procedure that might require as many as 20 versions, the website senses which device a student is using say a laptop or a tablet, and delivers the appropriate format to the browser.” 

The textbook was piloted at some campuses of California State University this past year.  

Growth in Multimedia Course Learning Products

This story from Marketwire says Simba Information’s latest report shows that the U.S. market for multimedia materials in higher education will grow 48.4%, topping $1 billion by the end of 2011.  According to the story, Cengage Learning's learning tools such as Aplia (homework assistance) and SAM (skills-assessment assistance) had more than 20% growth in a one-year period.   The story also says that product such as Pearson’s MyLabs continues their success on campus and John Wiley & Sons is arranging to unveil a more interactive version of its learning platform WileyPLUS in the near future.

The article quotes Kathy Mickey, senior Simba Information analyst, “Publishers are seeing double-digit growth across the board with multimedia materials.  Pearson so far has reported the highest percentage of revenue from products tied to digital solutions and services, nearing half of their global education revenue.  Although textbooks remain the largest revenue stream for publishers, the multimedia materials segment is where they can expect to compete against the used and rental textbook sellers,” 

So, if you take a conservative estimate of 20% growth rate for multimedia learning products over the next three years we can expect this market to reach over $3 Billion by 2015.  This story should encourage campus stores to put learning tools in your digital product offerings. 

Online University Adopts CourseSmart for Digital Textbook Delivery

Online universities continue to see some of the largest adoption of digital course materials.  Such institutions have distinct advantages for this shift, due to standardized curriculums, centralized course decisions, and primarily distance/commuter population to name a few.  These advantages also make it easier for institutions whose classes are primarily online to negotiate institutional licensing arrangements for content--something that is more complicated and much higher risk for traditional academic institutions. 

A recent article in Campus Technology underscores this pattern, reporting that Western Governors University, a well-recognized institution with largely online classes, has started to adopt digital textbooks into their curriculum.   Like many of their for-profit counterparts, the cost of the digital course materials is included in student’s tuition and fees charged by the university.  Students can then access digital titles through their existing university accounts.  Approximately 15,000 students have used about 130 distinct e-texts through CourseSmart, and half of the university’s 350 courses are currently using the new delivery service according to university officials.

Hidden Cost of Digital?

Here’s an article about colleges capping broadband usage on campus and students having to pay for data overlimit fees.  As digital books become more embedded with rich-media and takes up more and more data transmission this issue could be one of those unforeseen consequences of going digital.  Will faculty have to deal with students who say, “I could not access my digital course materials because I went over my data limit and I can’t afford to pay the fees?”

This leads to asking the question, what is the real cost for going digital?   Many schools have ‘free’ (nothing is really free- tuition is suppose to cover those costs) internet access and may not limit downloads.  But what if the student does not have access to internet at home or cannot afford broadband access to required educational content?  Are download rates higher as students move toward tablet devices like the iPad?  Will students need to subscribe to internet or broadband services so that they can read their assignments?  Will students without such access be at a disadvantage as digital course materials become the norm? 

We were recently asked, "What is the average data usage for student’s courses?"  Honestly, we do not know. If anyone has any data out there please share with us your findings.  Is it insignificant?  Will it become significant down the road? 

Students Give Up Sex for Digital Textbooks

A recent survey found that one in four students say they would abstain from sex for a month if they could have all their textbooks in digital format. Here are some other interesting Infographic stats posted by Economy Watch:

By 2014, nearly 19% of US Textbook Market will be Digital.

There was a 400% increase in digital textbook sales between 2008-2009

42% of students either bought or at least seen a digital textbook in 2010. That is a 24% increase from 2007.

South Korea is investing $2Billion to make sure all textbooks are digital by 2015. An equivalent investment for US would be $10Billion.

Almost three-fourths of the $7.5 Billion in textbook sales are brand new textbooks.

Digital textbooks are, on average, 53% cheaper than new print books.

Check out the infographic for some other interesting stats. 

NetFlix provides lessons for stores...

There has been a lot of flack  surrounding movie rental company NetFlix lately.  First they changed their pricing plans.  Now they are separating the physical DVD business from the streaming business -- requiring customers to have two accounts.  Amidst all of this is was a breakdown in communications between the company and its customers as the company tries to transition from a world of more physical media to one of more digital delivery.

There are several lessons book stores could learn from NetFlix's recent foibles:  Perils of rental models; transitioning from physical to digital; or communication.   However, one quote from CEO Reed Hastings in his apology blog post captures one of the key messages I think stores should hear. 

For the past five years, my greatest fear at Netflix has been that we wouldn't make the leap from success in DVDs to success in streaming. Most companies that are great at something--like AOL dialup or Borders bookstores--do not become great at new things people want (streaming for us) because they are afraid to hurt their initial business. Eventually these companies realize their error of not focusing enough on the new thing, and then the company fights desperately and hopelessly to recover. Companies rarely die from moving too fast, and they frequently die from moving too slowly.

And there it is.  So whether we are talking about mobile commerce, digital course materials, rental, data analytics, price comparison, or any of a number of other technologies and developments in the retail book space -- we can not be afraid as a channel to venture boldly into a new future if we hope to have one.  This may mean trying new models that at first seem less profitable or sacrificing margins for market share. 

I hear many arguments that say "digital course materials is moving slowly, so I do not need to worry about it."  I believe this strategy is flawed.  Frankly, I do not care so much whether digital course materials take off this year, or in 5 years, or in 10.  We can all debate the rate at which digital takes hold, but that debate is hardly productive.  The truth is that the transition has begun.  Our window of opportunity to drive developments in favor of stores is now.  We must as a channel place "enough focus on the new thing" that when the time comes to move quickly we are not caught in a position of desperation or unviability.  That is key aspect of channel and business stewardship, and it is a critical strategic activity for all levels of management.  With the emerging technologies ahead of us, we are more likely to fail for having taken no action, than we are for having acted and making some mistakes along the way. 

Ok.  Back off of my soap-box. 

An Inkling of textbook innovation

Many of us are probably aware of tech start-up Inkling.  If not here is a great collection of videos on the company.  They now have interactive versions of dozens of textbooks, geared toward tablet devices, developed with cooperation from leading textbook publishers -- and representing some of the largest textbook adoptions.  The videos are something all stores should watch -- partly to understand how these technologies are marketed to students, and also to help stores gain a quick glimpse into the beginning of the future for the digital textbook:

Wake Forest Profs Trying to Reinvent the College Textbook

Research has shown humans learn best when they put facts together in an order that makes sense to them. Now, a pair of professors from Wake Forest University is trying to turn that concept into a digital biology textbook call BioBook. The effort is based on the free, open-source learning management system Moodle, according to an interview with one of the authors in Campus Technology.

BioBook is being created in HTML5 and set up so students can see information on the left-hand column of the screen and track their progress on the right. It will also be available online and in a mobile format while allowing the ability to type notes.

A pilot program with 10% of the students at four schools using the text will begin in the fall. Results produced by the 10% using the digital textbook will be ultimately compared to the 90% who didn’t use it.

“There are other digital textbook initiatives underway at other colleges, although most involve taking existing, linear books and making them digital. BioBook, on the other hand, is truly digital from its roots,” said Jed Macosko, an associate professor of physics at Wake Forest who teamed with senior biology lecturer, A. Daniel Johnson, on the project.