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Digitial Publishing
Will Digital Texts Succeed?
3/1/2008
The great textbook debate roars on, but
if we focus on learning outcomes first,
we'll see a high value-to-price ratio for
learning materials-digital or print.
Jim Sayer, Wright State University's (OH) faculty senate president, is a master rhetorician and teacher of that fine art, as well. Leading a discussion among the faculty senators on the relentless rise in the cost of textbooks-compounding at more than 6 percent per annum for the last two decades (according to the US Government Accountability Office)-he puts the problem of high textbook prices plainly: "I've taught Aristotle for 38 years. Every three years I do so from a different textbook, and it always is more expensive for my students. Why? What's going on here? Do we have a strategy for getting these costs under control?"
There have been numerous attempts to answer Sayer's questions, many of which call on digital technologies to save the day. With faculty changing instructional practices to take advantage of customizable, focused content (and digital delivery of that content), many people assume that digital distribution is the answer to bringing the costs of course content delivery in line. But the picture just isn't that simple.
Mark Nelson at NACAS buys into the vision of a digital future, but puts the tipping point another five years down the road. The twin forces for change he sees: retirement of the baby-boom faculty and full emergence of the digital native population.
Why Go Digital?
This past June, the US Department of Education's Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance released its year-long study of the "broken" textbook market, laying out the problem of the rising cost of textbooks, and suggesting various recommendations for steps the federal government, Congress, and the Secretary of Education can take to make textbooks more affordable. After detailing a set of short-term strategies similar to those outlined by the ACSFA, Patrick McElroy, CEO and founder of Learning Content Exchange, and colleagues (who prepared one of the foundational documents for that study) put forth an additional analysis of disaggregating textbook content and course materials and delivering them digitally rather than by truck.
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