Accessibility Still Lacking to NFB

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) has accused Educause and Internet2 of ignoring the needs of print-disabled students in e-book pilots in progress on more than 20 campuses across the country this fall. The criticism caught the pilot developers by surprise since they thought they were collaborating with the NFB on the project.

The criticism was leveled, in part, because a review of the original pilot done by Disability Services at the University of Minnesota recommended the school drop out of the program because of its use of PDF formats that wouldn’t work with adaptive technology such as text-to-voice software.

“The initial problem was the way the content is packaged and delivered, but it really [goes] beyond that, to the affordances that are built into the package as well,” said Brad Cohen, associate chief information officer for academic technology at the University of Minnesota.

The NFB criticism is an attempt to pressure organizers to add accessibility requirements into any platform used to deliver e-books, according to NFB President Marc Maurer, who added he would be satisfied to know what accessibility plans will be going forward.

“There has to be a deadline by which time they expect the system to be accessible to blind professors and students,” he said. “It can’t be 25 years from now. A couple of years would suit me. I’d be glad to have it sooner than that.”

Educause and Internet2 claimed in an e-mail to Campus Technology, “Given the rapid change in how technology is deployed—students often bring it rather than campuses providing it—it is critical to experiment with new ways to provide course materials. Inevitably, some of those experiments fall short. However, rejecting experimentation does not solve the problem.”

The tiff could be an opportunity for publishers to become more involved. Mickey Levitan, CEO of Courseload, which provides an e-reading platform for the pilot, said he believes accessibility is a “shared interest” between tech firms and publishers.

“These are very complex issues that will have to be resolved with collaboration of all the key parties,” he said. “I don’t think that this is going to fall unduly on any one of those groups, but its clear that its going to have to be a collaborative multipronged effort if we’re going to make progress possible.”

New Study Shows Readers' Format Preferences Vary

The percentage of consumers are buying titles in digital formats has fallen, but more people are also saying they have no preference when it comes to the format of a book, according to the latest Book Industry Study Group e-book reading survey.

Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading reports the portion of consumers who “exclusively or mostly” buy e-books fell from nearly 70% in August 2011 to 60% just nine months later. At the same time, the percentage of respondents who either had no preference between e-book or print formats, or who bought some of both, went up from 25% to 34%, signaling that consumers have become more comfortable with a variety of reading formats.

The study found that ownership of the Amazon Kindle Fire has increased from 7% to 20% of respondents from December 2011 to June 2011, and that the use of multifunctional tables as a primary reading device is growing at about the same pace that the preference for dedicated e-readers has dropped. Preference for the Kindle as a primary reading device fell from 48% in August 2011 to 35% in May 2012, while black-and-white and color versions of the Nook e-reader slipped from 17% to 13% over the same period.

The Apple iPad remained steady in the ownership survey at 17% from August 2011 to May 2012, but now trails the Kindle Fire in the ownership category. The number of respondents who use the iPad as an e-reader also dipped from 10% to 9%.

While the iPad may have moved into second place in the BISG consumer survey, Student Monitor found that 66% of respondents to its survey of 1,200 college students say that the iPad was the “in” device on campus, even though fewer than 12% actually own one. At the same time, the Student Monitor research showed that 88% of students own a laptop computer, 19% have desktops, and just 10% say they own a tablet.

The research also found students’ preference in course material formats may be shifting. Printed textbooks continue to dominate sales, but students saying they “prefer traditional textbooks” has declined from 50% two years ago to 39% in the most recent Student Monitor report.

The Downside to E-Textbooks

There’s been plenty of research showing students are just not into electronic textbooks hype. In fact, the OnCampus Research report Student Watch 2012: Student Attitudes and Perceptions found that just 17% of student respondents even owned an e-reader and 62% of these bought the gadget just for leisure reading.

So why aren’t college students clamoring for e-textbooks? After all, they should be cheaper to purchase, plus there’s all those nifty tools, such as highlighting and interactive footnotes, geared to attract a tech-savvy generation.

The top reason for student reluctance is they’re not often finding the required book in their preferred digital format, according to the Online University staff’s look at reasons why college students aren’t buying e-textbooks. Even if students find the correct digital text, they soon discover it probably only saved them about a dollar after factoring in the cost of the e-reader, “publisher pricing decisions,” and the fact they can’t sell the title back.

Digital formats also complicate the process for students because they vary from one device to another. Add in the fact that some e-text will eat up large portions of storage space in each device, as well as that some e-text can look pretty primitive next to online learning sources, and it’s not hard to see why students might expect more from their e-textbooks than what they currently get.

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.”

Cool Hardware Won't Win Educational Tablet War

There’s little debate about the potential electronic devices have in the realm of learning. The problem comes in realizing that potential, says to Mehdi Maghsoodnia, CEO of Rafter, the parent company of BookRenter.com, in this guest post written for Forbes.com.

Cost is one large stumbling block to reaching that potential. At this point, the cost of the device and the educational content assigned doesn’t ensure a savings for students compared to printed textbooks, which is a primary reason why e-books remain less than 5% of all textbook sales.

There is also the issue of supporting the device and getting educators to use digital content effectively.

“Simply putting digital books on a device is not enough to truly digitalize education,” Maghsoodnia writes. “In order to make real inroads at colleges and universities, devices must be accessible for students, and adopted by their professors and administrators.”

Becoming the device of choice for education will not be a race to the coolest features or content. It will be a race to solve the problems of cost and scale to help institutions find their way into the digital future, according to Maghsoodnia.

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.

Whither Print Communication?

The following article appeared in the January 2011 MACS Newsletter -- page 10. It is short and worth sharing. Reprinted here with permission from the newsletter and author. Also, Peter suggested that as a postscript, I note the recent news published in many locations that ebook sales have now surpassed paperback book sales. Amazon sold 115 ebooks last year for every 100 paperback books, and 3 times as many ebooks as hardbacks. That is total for the year, not just Q4.


WHITHER PRINT COMMUNICATION?


By Dr. Peter Mires
Manager, Delaware Tech, Georgetown Campus


We‘ve been hearing for some time now about the decline and demise of the printed word. Newspaper circulations are dropping to unsustainable levels, e-book sales at Amazon have eclipsed their hardcover list, and even some school libraries, such as Cushing Academy, a private prep school in the Boston area, have gone digital.


Digital delivery makes sense for many reasons, not the least of which is cost. After all, who buys print reference ma-terials such as encyclopedias, atlases, and almanacs anymore? This information is available online. Aside from arguments that Internet sites have issues of ques-tionable authenticity and ―inappropriate‖ sites abound, educators know that excel-lent databases (e.g., Tennessee Elec-tronic Library, EBSCOhost) are out there.


Those of us in the college store industry are aware of this trend. You‘ve proba-bly seen scenarios like online access codes, which used to be considered an-cillary, replace textbooks, or instructors put more material on e-learning plat-forms like Blackboard. Doubtless these and other changes have you wondering about the future of your store and how to adapt.


Allow me to relate a personal experi-ence. I recently published a print-on-demand book (entitled Bayou Built: The Legacy of Louisiana’s Historic Architecture), which is available in both print and digi-tal formats. The digital version is 37 percent less expensive and my royalty is 40 percent greater. The reason is sim-ple: there are no associated printing, shipping, and handling costs.


I confess that I don‘t own an e-reader, like Amazon‘s Kindle or Barnes & No-ble‘s Nook, preferring instead to hold an actual book. Call me old school, Lud-dite, or what have you, but I‘m able to separate trend from tradition. Like it or not, the printed page is for the most part obsolete; it will eventually go the way of my Olympia manual typewriter. I have fond memories of pulling ―all-nighters‖ in college hammering out papers on that durable device, but the writing, so to speak, was on the wall in the early 1980s when personal computers became widely available.


Textbooks, the traditional bread-and-butter of the college bookstore, are go-ing digital. Everyone seems to agree that our bi-annual book rushes will no longer be synonymous with trucks ap-pearing at our loading docks with pallets of boxes. The college bookstore of the foreseeable future is increasingly partici-patory in e-commerce.


It is not without a tinge of sadness or nostalgia that I witness this transition. But, who among us would type when the rest of the world is keyboarding?

Children’s Reading Trends in the Digital Age

On Tuesday, December 14th, Book Business will be hosting a free webinar that you may find interesting. The webinar is called: “Children’s Reading Trends in the Digital Age: An All-Access Pass to Scholastic’s ‘2010 Kids and Family Reading Report.’”

The registration page for the webinar can be found here.

Kno announces pricing for tablets and begins accepting preorders

Earlier today, Kno announced the pricing for its single and dual-screen tablet devices and said that a limited number of devices will ship before the end of the year. As a reminder, the Kno Tablets were designed for higher education and include: 14-inch LCD screens to display full textbook pages; the ability to highlight and annotate; multitasking capabilities; support for stylus, touch, and keyboard input; and data backup in the cloud.

A posting on the All Things Digital website says that company will work with some college bookstores and the device will be aimed at 10 college campuses initially. This semester beta testing occurred at several campuses and Cengage Learning, McGraw Hill, Pearson, and Wiley provided select digital resources for the testing. The Kno website includes videos of a few students describing their experiences with the device and the company says that the student responses have been “overwhelmingly positive for both the single and dual screen devices.”

Students will be able to purchase textbooks through the Kno bookstore that will be accessible on the tablet. The store includes thousands of titles and the list can be viewed on Kno’s website. Currently the device has built in apps for reading, taking notes, and the web but additional apps are in development. A page on Kno’s website invites developers to help them design their development platform and build their app store. Apps for collaboration, specific subjects, educational games, and productivity tools will be available.

In addition, according to the New York Times, Kno plans to make its software available for laptops and potentially other tablets in the future.

These developments will certainly be ones to watch in the month’s ahead.

Study finds digital books could make up 25% of book sales by 2015

An article from The Bookseller.com discusses a new digital study that was conducted by Bain & Company. The study included 3,000 people from the U.S., France, Germany, Japan, Korea, and the United Kingdom. The study found that up to 25% of books will be sold in digital format by 2015 and 15-20% of consumers will own e-reader devices. The study also showed that the switch to digital will occur more rapidly in the U.S. and Korea.

In terms of profit, the study found that digital could represent 20-28% of book industry profits. However, this will be dependent on innovation of the content and operating methods. The study noted, “Experimenting with new formats - non-linear, hybrid, interactive or social - is where opportunity lies.”

Webinar on Effective Communication in Higher Education

On Tuesday, November 9th, Platt Retail Institute will be holding a webinar to discuss the results from their study on communication effectiveness in higher education. The webinar will include a discussion about the most effective communication methods and how digital technologies can improve the flow of information on college campuses.

In an email about the webinar, Steven Keith Platt, PRI Director and Research Fellow, noted, "Our research study found that 97 percent of students prefer to receive information via digital channels, rather than from non-digital sources. Overall, text messages were found to be the most effective distribution channel, followed closely by digital signage."

For those interested in attending, you can sign up here.

XanEdu and NYU Stern School of Business to conduct iPad pilot

According to a recent press release, XanEdu, provider of custom coursepacks and textbooks, has partnered with the NYU Stern School of Business to conduct a program-wide iPad pilot for MBA students. Instructors at the university will use XanEdu’s system to publish course materials that students can access on the iPads. The course materials will include digital note taking capabilities and collaboration tools. Throughout the pilot, students will be asked to provide feedback to help determine if the iPad app meets the needs of the students.