Digitial Publishing
Will Digital Texts Succeed?
- By Stephen R. Acker
- 03/01/08
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.
Then, too, in testimony before the
ACSFA, John Sargent, former CEO of Macmillan, had
this to say about custom and digital textbooks:
"Custom texts are a prime example
of market demand and advances in
technology. A custom text enables faculty
to choose exactly those materials-
chapters from one or more textbooks,
their own papers and lecture notes,
white papers, independent data and
research, for example-they wish to use
in their classes. These custom texts
combine publishers' content, but also
content from a variety of third-party
sources."
This "print-on-demand" model suggests
a strategy to move from generic
texts to custom digital content, and one
in which college bookstores can play an
important role. Yet, on the other side of
the bridge that crosses the digital divide,
some of the eBooks from Bedford, Freeman
& Worth-
well-advanced in their pedagogy and
offered at half the price of the print text-hint to a "born digital" future.
Mark Nelson, digital content strategist
for the National Association of College
Stores, 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 are retirement of the baby-boom
faculty (many of whom will never quite
embrace non-print), and full emergence
of the digital native population-
described by Nelson and supported by Project Tomorrow data as students currently squirming in
their seats in a sixth-grade classroom.
Content born digital will then meet
learners born digital, but the question is:
Do we have to live through a five-year
gestation? Perhaps; at least by then the
eBook reader may finally have achieved
its promise for portability, contrast, and
navigational richness.
Yet it is easy enough to find examples
of failed eBook experiments, and trace
the reasons for their failure. (Amazon's
Kindle is the latest
experiment, and the jury is still out on
that one.) Typically, user dissatisfaction
revolves around the following:
- Technology (single-purpose display
device, eye-fatiguing screens, material
slow to load)
- Organization (linear "page turners,"
poorly indexed content)
- Inconvenience ("I hate being tethered
to an online text; I can't read my
book under the buckeye tree")
- Lack of flexibility ("I can't take notes;
I can't seamlessly jump to new content;
the search and navigation are
weak")
- Faculty who don't really make use of
the required eText (or print texts, for
that matter)
The majority of today's students still
prefer printed text to eBook readers, and
Stacy Skelly, assistant director/higher
education for the Association of American
Publishers,
puts this preference for print near the
top of her list of impediments to digital
content delivery. She's right: Monitor
glare, dropped network connections,
and confounding digital rights management
strategies detract from learning,
especially if the digital learning environment
is merely the print learning
environment ported to the screen.
However, if the pedagogy advanced by
faculty creates a different learning environment,
different learning outcomes
may appear.
Cal State's Digital Marketplace will be an open and
browseable market allowing faculty members to identify and
select print or digital content appropriate for populating a
reading/resource list, based on course learning objectives.
The Impact of the
Instructional Designer
If the instructional designer's worldview
prevailed, the very first thing on
every course syllabus would be a list of
learning outcomes associated with that
course. Working backward from those
objectives, the pedagogy and the learning
materials that support that pedagogy
would be carefully selected to help the
students meet those objectives. Learning
materials, whether print or digital,
would be focused and organized around
the stated learning objectives. Libraries
and the web would provide conduits for
subsidized or free content for students pursuing a broader array of individual
learning goals.
Alverno College's (WI) Diagnostic
Digital Portfolio website is a great place to learn how to
describe attainable student learning outcomes.
And yes, explicitly stating what
you hope students will learn is challenging,
but it's an exercise that offers
the most amazing rewards.
What, then, is a learning objective?
Simply put, it's a behavioral learning
outcome consistent with course goals.
Revolutionary, don't you think, to offer
students-up front-a syllabus that specifies
demonstrable, learned behaviors?.
Learning Objectives in Action
Kelly Driscoll, educator and co-founder
of Digication, is
both a digital pioneer and a teacher
who believes in identifying learning
outcomes upfront. Digication has
been in the business of helping students,
and the institutions in which
they learn, to build ePortfolios
around student learning outcomes.
In fact, it wasn't much of a stretch
for Driscoll and her content partners
to think about an expanded system
that grouped digital content underneath
learning objectives-Digication
is only one example of a model
for distributing digital content in a
focused, cost-effective manner.
TEXTBOOK
MYTHS ...Or why the traditional new/used hardcopy
textbook strategy isn't a good value proposition.
Though the traditional textbook offers
all needed information in one place, the
mosaic of unmarked chapters among
those with yellow highlights documents
the need for custom texts directly
matched to different course syllabi.
Myth: The high cost of textbooks is the sole responsibility of publishers. Actually,
the root source of high textbook costs is the "annuity problem"-the fact that first
offerings purchased by the first group of students must sustain ever-weakening revenue
streams until the book's "end of life."
Myth: Used books are the ticket to textbook savings. Since the publisher's revenue
from new book sales must subsidize an even greater number of used book sales, a
more efficient used book market will drive the cost of new texts higher.
Myth: Textbooks should be comprehensive. Though the traditional textbook offers all
needed information in one place, the mosaic of unmarked chapters among those with
yellow highlights documents the need for custom texts directly matched to different
course syllabi.
Myth: International textbooks are the answer. Some international texts use lowercost
(and lower-quality) paper and less expensive or no-color processing, but floating
heavy texts back and forth across the ocean adds expense disproportionate to the
resulting value.
Myth: Text rental programs are the way to go. Recent explorations highlight some
clear drawbacks that accompany the positive effects of rental programs on student
savings; namely startup costs and the length of time books must be reused to ensure
program sustainability.
Myth: Libraries can provide copies on short-term loan for all students unwilling or
unable to purchase a textbook. Many libraries would be hard-pressed to meet this
requirement without significant increases in funding.
Myth: Bookstores are focused on serving student interests. Many universities supplement
their operating budgets by defining the college bookstore as a profit center
as well as a student service. Consequently, the university tries to balance increasing
revenue at the bookstore with reduced textbook costs for the student.
Gerry Hanley, senior director of academic
technology services for California
State University, has another model
in mind as he and his team lay out plans
for a Digital Marketplace (DMP).
He discusses DMP using the analogy
of a farmer's market, an open and
browseable market with wares selectable
by the consumer. This large-scope
and well-designed approach to sharing
digital content will allow faculty members
to identify and select content
appropriate for populating a reading/
resource list, based on course learning
objectives. These materials can be made
available as print or digital content, and
DMP will be designed for maximum
flexibility to accommodate commercial,
non-commercial, and faculty-membercreated
content. Somewhere down the
road, students in the Cal State system
will be able to create ePortfolios in
which to document their learned competencies.
These learning outcomes
will share metadata with the content
used to achieve them and thereby help
future faculty identify vetted learning
materials.
Starting with the consumer, the eText
Ohio project is focusing on student
learning outcomes in the world of digital
delivery. With the support of the OhioLINK library consortium, eText Ohio has opted to
focus on faculty members who teach
large introductory courses in colleges
and universities across the state. Working
with four leading commercial publishers, the eText Ohio project will help
faculty to a) expand their repertoire of
teaching strategies advantaged by digital
texts, b) help them to identify materials
aligned with those strategies, and
c) evaluate student learning outcomes in
the digitally-supported courses. The
goals of eText Ohio are to deliver student
materials at less than 50 percent of
the cost of a new text (in all cases at a
price point below what a student can
achieve through used book use or
exchange), and improve learning outcomes
in the process. The eText Ohio
project hopes to meet the Cal State Digital
Marketplace somewhere in the middle.
DMP is building up from the
content selection process, and eText
Ohio works down, selecting content
based on identified learning objectives.
The Last Mile
As always, we have to calibrate our
"change-the-world slider" somewhere
between what the technologies are capable
of delivering and what our social
systems are able to absorb. David Wiley,
lead architect of OpenCourseWare management
system eduCommons and a faculty member at Utah State
University, describes his ideal textbook
as seeded by 30 percent of facultyselected
content that "magnetizes" 70
percent more content contributed from
students taking the class engaged in
active learning. Blaise Aguera y Arcas,
an architect for Microsoft Live Labs
(labs.live.com), offers a compelling
example of an interface exquisitely
designed for socially constructed
knowledge spaces, and one able to display
an entire legible copy of Dickens'
Bleak House on a single screen, preserving
social context and page-turning
with an imaging algorithm that can
zoom to a single word from within an
entire text on screen. (David Wiley,
meet SeaDragon and Photosynth-both
Live Labs innovations-and may they
someday serve your courses well!)
Case Study: Western Governors University
One online university aims to resolve the print vs. digital debate by
stocking its online bookstore with digital textbooks right alongside their
hard-copy versions.
FOR STUDENTS AT WESTERN GOVERNORS UNIVERSITY, a nonprofit institution
offering online bachelors and masters degree programs, online textbook purchasing
is pretty much essential-and not just because WGU has no physical campus (or
bookstore, for that matter). WGU students are also busy; most are working full- or
part-time jobs, living in major metropolitan areas, suburbs, and rural areas, and
some are active-duty military pursuing their studies at overseas installations.
Online ordering has always been key to getting hard-copy textbooks into the hands
of such students.
Then this past year, WGU decided to offer digital textbooks alongside print books,
in hopes that ultimately, a full-scale adoption of eBooks (meaning 100 percent of
books would have digital versions available) would save students money, and more
importantly, afford them immediate access to learning materials (without waiting for
hard copies to be shipped).
The idea sounded simple: Ask publishers to include an eBook alternative with
every print version. But WGU administrators researched formats and delivery methods,
and discovered some unexpected challenges in negotiating with textbook
publishers.With eBooks still an emerging market, many publishers didn't have effi-
cient processes in place for converting titles into digital formats. Individuals charged
with handling questions of digital rights, conversion, availability, pricing, technology,
etc., might work in several different divisions, for instance, making it difficult to
coordinate workflow within the publishing company, much less between WGU and
the publishers.
WGU turned to Ed Map, a provider of tools, support, and services
for managing textbook distribution, for help with the transition to eBooks. Ed Map
assumed project management responsibility with the publishing vendors, creating
templates to expedite vendor partnerships and finalize eBook pricing. Generally,
conversion to digital format has not been cost-prohibitive, even for smaller publishers;
if a volume cannot be digitized, WGU will elect to choose a different textbook, or
offer only the print version. Ed Map also has enabled WGU to analyze alignment of
content with competencies, identify areas for textbook consolidation (where multiple
textbooks or even versions have been selected by faculty), and pinpoint other areas
for process improvement.
WGU's new online bookstore (an institutionally branded site hosted by Ed Map,
including fulfillment and customer support) launched March 1. On launch, about 25
percent of the booklist had both print and digital versions available. This percentage
is expected to increase as publishers add new eBooks and update current editions
to digital format. While it's too early to gauge student response to the store, one
thing is clear: The digital textbooks will indeed save students money, with most
eBooks offered at an average discount of 40 to 50 percent over their equivalent
print editions.
Of course, there are many unanticipated consequences of moving to a digital
textbook realm. Some have been
widely bandied about, and thus anticipated:
concerns about the digital divide,
technical standards, digital rights management,
and resistance of user communities
weaned on print. For yet a wider
framework in which to consider issues
tied to a digital marketplace, read the analysis by Cliff Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information.
Ed Walton's April 2007 empirical study
also raises important issues. Walton, who
is acting dean of the Library School at
Southwest Baptist University (MO),
finds that faculty working with students
using digital texts face a new kind of literacy
challenge because students scan
books as strings of found phrases, jumping
over the linear progression of the
author's idea development. He argues
that we need a new literacy to fully
exploit the digital realm.
The New Value:
Learning Outcomes
A wide continuum of options is available
to faculty and institutions willing
and able to change their instructional
practices that favor a marketplace solution.
By first identifying what the student
should learn, an instructor can
more appropriately value the content to
help students reach those outcomes.
The source of these materials can be
the traditional for-profit publishers, the
start-up companies that privilege the
interface through which to construct
the learning cycle, libraries, outputs
from the minds and processes of the
open courseware community-or a
combination of the above.
As we move forward in redeveloping
the learning materials package to take
advantage of the digital options available
to us, we should celebrate the
diversity of solutions that have emerged
and, ideally, wrap them in common
and open standards, as CEO Rob Abel
and the IMS Global Learning
Consortium would have us
do. We may never solve the paradox of
context and content (content is most
useful within context, yet contextfree
learning objects are most reusable),
but thinking of learning objectives as
magnets that collect content filings will
get us partway down the path of a new,
more affordable, and more equitable
pricing model for instructional materials,
once known by the quaint term,
"textbooks."
::WEBEXTRAS ::
The University of the South (TN)
Next-Gen Textbooks: With textbooks
and other forms of scholarship moving
to electronic formats, schools are turning
to a surprising array of innovative
tools. www.campustechnology.com/
articles/40848.
Case Study: NYU College of Dentistry
Takes Textbooks Online. www.campustechnology./
articles/48557.
Stephen R. Acker is research director for
the Ohio Board of Regents Collective
Action Project (www.ohiocollectiveaction.
org) and associate professor of communication,
The Ohio State University.
