[bksvol-discuss] Textbooks Enter the Digital Age
- From: "Shelley L. Rhodes" <juddysbuddy@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 09 Oct 2006 12:34:37 -0400
This may pose new and interesting challenges for blind and LD college
students as well. Will these new textbooks be available and the sites may
interest some.
From:
U.S. News and World Report
Textbooks Enter the Digital Era
High-Tech options can save money and boost learning
By Alex Kingsbury and Lindsey Galloway
The basic introductory physics textbook for college students has
remained largely the same for the past century, perhaps longer. So why
then, wondered Northeastern University student Jason Turgeon, did his
freshman physics course require him to buy a brand-new textbook for
about $160, even though he'd used one with similar material in high
school? Then, one semester, he shared books, found stuff online, and
got the cost for all classes that term down to $35, recalls Turgeon,
now a senior. That book bill otherwise would have been $500. After
hearing other students echo his frustration, Turgeon in January 2005
started textbookrevolution.org, which links visitors to a variety of
free college-level, digital textbooks on the Web.
Textbooks, those all-too-familiar expensive backpack burdens, are no
longer dominating the classroom experience as they did for decades.
When computers moved into education, textbook publishers started to
add digital tools-video clips, interactive lessons, databases-to disks
packaged with the books. That drove up prices, and students and
professors in response turned to the Internet to look for the best
bargains. What they're increasingly finding out now is that-thanks to
the accessibility of cyberteaching tools on the Web-maybe they don't
need that old-fashioned textbook at all.
Granted, reports of the textbook's complete demise, as Mark Twain
might fittingly acknowledge, would be an exaggeration. There are
thousands of traditional textbooks published every year, enough to
make it a $6.5 billion-a-year business in the 2004-05 academic year,
says the National Association of College Stores. But there are good
reasons to look beyond that traditional tome. The cost of the average
college textbook increased 186 percent between 1986 and 2004,
according to a study by the Government Accountability Office. Those
costs, according to the GAO, were best explained by the expenses of
developing and bundling additional materials like CDs, DVDs, and
websites that supplement the traditional pages.
The net result for students is that their book bill now averages about
$900 a year and can be even more costly for those enrolled in courses
like sciences or art history, which use required reading that is
particularly expensive to produce. "Lots of material gets added
because the publishers want to serve as many people as possible," says
Angelica Stacy, a chemistry professor at the University of
California-Berkeley. What's more, she says, "You end up with huge
books that you can't get through in a course."
Critics also charge that by bundling disks, workbooks, and website
access into a textbook, companies are changing the equation for
textbook resellers. "Publishers are doing everything they can to
undermine the used-book market," says Ava Hegedus, former national
affordable-textbooks coordinator for the student Public Interest
Research Groups. Once opened, the bundled resources, like course DVDs,
can't be resold.
State to state. So students are turning to the Internet for options.
There are, of course, a host of sites for new and used books, from
eBay's shopping site, Half.com, to independent outfits like
varsitybooks.com and ecampus.com. But despite the ease of use of these
sites, their business is only a fraction of the total textbook market.
A 2006 report by the NACS found that 23 percent of students buy their
books online and of those online sales, a third are from the websites
of existing campus bookstores. Seventeen states, such as Virginia and
Connecticut, have recently proposed legislation to help curb the
rising costs of books, including the requirement that schools post the
international barcode number of each of the required texts so that
students can comparison-shop online. The new Connecticut law also
would require publishers to tell professors what the books cost before
the professors assign their students to buy them.
Such attempts to curb the costs of printed textbooks are admirable,
but innovative companies, faculty members, and students are exploring
digital detours that eliminate the book altogether while enhancing the
learning process. For example, Tom Doran helped found Freeload Press
(textbookmedia.com). The venture, run by former textbook publishers,
provides students with downloads of free E-textbooks and study guides
in courses such as business, math, and computer applications. The
downloaded "books" are subsidized by advertising from companies like
Kinko's and Pure Vida Coffee that appears on the digital pages.
(Freeload Press does not run ads from liquor or tobacco companies.)
"With the broadband on campus, the time was right to do free E-books,"
Doran says. And ad-free paperback copies of Freeload textbooks can be
ordered for $35, still a significant markdown on the triple-digit
price tag of similar books.
Universities, in turn, are offering their own textbook innovations.
Pomona College hosts a student-run book-swapping website. The
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point offers a textbook rental service
for undergraduates and some grad students. The school buys the books,
which students rent for about $65 a semester. And some instructors
have taken more dramatic steps. Richard McCray, a retired professor of
astronomy at the University of Colorado, became so fed up with the
staggering cost of printed books that he and his colleagues wrote
their own online texts. "I want students to learn the skills of
finding information and discriminating between good and bad
information," he says. "They are going to use the Web anyway; you want
to teach them to use it in a discriminating way."
Across the board, instructors and publishers are looking beyond the
book with the assumption that technology already has altered the way
that students are learning. "Just look at Encarta," says Bruce
Jacobsen, who spent almost a decade as an executive at Microsoft
before founding an electronic textbook publishing house called Kinetic
Books. "When [Encarta] came on the scene with instant searching, it
was game over for the traditional print encyclopedia that had been
standard for centuries."
Electronic texts, like the Kinetic Books' $40 Principles of Physics
CD-ROM, look remarkably like the traditional textbooks, only students
read them on a computer screen. They are an improvement over the
traditional model in that they can include videos and simulations for
the static images on the printed page. The chapter on acceleration,
for example, has animated races between a tortoise and a hare,
illustrating the principle. Jacobsen argues that the latest
generations of E-books do more than merely electronically post the
text of an existing book; they create a new model for teaching the
material.
Generation text. The educational appeal of these digital
textbooks-that they incorporate diverse tools into a single
volume-also is confirming for some professors that it could be time to
move away from the idea of a central course text altogether. Prof.
Diane Ebert-May, who teaches plant biology at Michigan State
University, says she hasn't used textbooks in her classroom for
years-not even for majors. Instead, her students get a series of
readings that address different topics. "Biology changes so rapidly
that most of the readings in my class are not much older than 2004,"
she says. As for textbooks, she has some complimentary titles from
publishers and keeps them on her classroom shelves for reference.
As the publishing landscape changes, academics are already thinking
ahead to the next generation of print textbooks. A group of 50 leading
teachers, technologists, and scientists studied the problem for the
National Academy of Sciences last summer. They concluded that the next
texts will look more like guidebooks travelers use to explore new
cities than textbooks. They predicted that they will be far slimmer,
customizable, and more challenging than their current incarnations.
McCray, who contributed to the report, says that textbooks of the
future will more likely point out interesting sights along the way,
rather than drown the reader in monotonous detail."When you go to
Egypt, you take along a Lonely Planet guide, not the Oxford History of
Ancient Egypt." And that'll be a relief for many aching backs on
campus.
Shelley L. Rhodes B.S. Ed, CTVI
and Judson, guiding golden
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Guide Dogs For the Blind Inc.
Graduate Alumni Association Board
www.guidedogs.com
Dog ownership is like a rainbow.
Puppies are the joy at one end.
Old dogs are the treasure at the other.
Carolyn Alexander
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