iTunes U Course Manager Just Might Be Big

Apple’s iTunes U Course Manager is a web-based tool that allows instructors to create “courses” that can be downloaded and synced to the iTunes U iPad app. That could be a very big deal for higher education if the platform can jump a couple of pretty big hurdles, according to Joshua Kim in a Technology and Learning blog post.

Courses created in the platform can include documents, audio, and video files, which can be read on whatever iPad app a student chooses. The information can be viewed both online and offline, provides additional features that allow students to create and share study notes, and enables course materials to be delivered to students without going through a third-party publishing platform.

The biggest obstacle to making this work on any scale is also the most obvious: Students have to be hooked into an iOS device, preferably an iPad. The student experience on an iPad is great, according to Kim, but those students without Apple devices are out of luck.

Another concern for Kim is students will have to go outside the Apple setting at some point because the platform separates content for iOS devices from the creation of blogs and discussion boards that appear on learning management systems.

“Despite these challenges, I see the evolving Course Manager and iTunes U Courses as a compelling development,” Kim writes. “We have struggled to find a robust way to deliver a combination of text and multimedia curricular content that is organized around a course narrative to mobile devices. Apple seems to be offering us, or at least those of us in the Apple universe, a solution.”

Chegg Testing More Services on New Site

When Dan Rosenweig took over as Chegg’s CEO, he became certain the next big challenge facing the online textbook rental company was going to come from digital course materials.

Rosenweig invested $50 million on acquisitions he hopes will turn Chegg into a digital destination that can fill every need a college student may have, from course materials to homework help to dorm decorations. The firm began testing an enhanced Chegg.com site on June 1 that brings together all the services Chegg has purchased or created.

The new site allows students to use their Facebook credentials to login, providing Chegg with information about its users, social networks used, and where each individual goes to school. New services allow students to answer questions posed by others for free or a small fee, help high school seniors narrow their college search, or receive daily-deal offers from a subscription-based service.

The new Chegg web site is what Facebook might have become had it remained limited to universities, according to Michelle Hummel, CEO of the digital marketing agency Web Media Expert, in this article for Bloomburg Business, adding that students and educators are “looking for something other than Facebook that’s more targeted to their needs.”

Report Shows Retailers Struggle with Digital Shopping Experience

Traditional retail channels are having a hard time mixing digital into the shopping experience, according to a new report, Omni-Channel 2012: Cross Channel Comes of Age from Retail Systems Research LLC. The firm has been doing the study for six years and this year found that retailers now feel cross-channel marketing will play a role in their business but that merging digital with the bricks-and-mortar selling is the biggest challenge.

The report surveyed 66 retailers on their cross-channel practices and technology adoption plans and found that just 32% of the responding retailers believe they have reached the goal of consolidating the customer shopping experience across all channels.

The report is available as a free download, but registration is required.

Developing a Digital Textbook Strategy

The Florida Distance Learning Consortium recently hosted a symposium titled Developing a Digital Textbook Strategy for Your Campus.  The videos from the symposium can be found at YouTube.  You can also access the videos as well as presentations and other symposium documents here at the Open Access Textbooks Project website.  We encourage you to check out the videos to learn about what is happening on other campuses and also to hear from industry people who are working with digital materials.

Here is one particular video of a faculty member from Dayton College speaking to his experience working with e-books in the classroom.  The professor has three main messages he wanted to convey.  First, he says faculty should take ownership of the e-books and provide technical instruction to the students instead to sending them off to the helpdesk.  Second, decision to adopt digital course materials should be driven by student learning outcomes.  He thinks that if you get more success using digital than you should use it but if you are not seeing improvements than maybe you should rethink digital adoption.  Third, students need something more than saving money when it comes to e-books.  The students want clear demonstrative academic benefits and some form intellectual payoff that they would not get if digital was not being used.

The take away from this video is that schools should not make any hasty decisions about mandating e-textbooks across campus.  Rather the schools should focus on assessing whether e-textbooks provide improved learning outcomes before launching a campus-wide digital textbook policy.