Haiyan Zhou's List: ebooks_etextbooks

• University of Kansas. Its bookstore sports a bright, modern look and can print its own books. It was the first to join a pilot project with Hewlett-Packard to test print-on-demand machines in college stores
• So the Kansas store recently added a price-comparison tool to its Web site. Students click the courses they're taking from a menu, and the site pulls up a list of required textbooks and shows what each title would cost in the campus bookstore, on Web retailers like Amazon.com, or from a textbook-rental service that the university recently formed a partnership with. The comparison tool was made by Verba Inc., a company started by recent Harvard University graduates who are working with college bookstores around the country.

• The new Create system lets professors go to a Web site and select sections of 4,000 McGraw-Hill books, thousands of articles and case studies, or any document that the professors themselves upload. A price tag displays how much the resulting book will cost. Professors can then choose whether to make the book available to students as a printed book or an e-book. In a demonstration for The Chronicle this week, a book on health care cost about $6 as an e-book but jumped to $16.96 as printed book.
• The system does not include material from other textbook publishers. That is typical of custom systems but makes it impossible for professors to blend a chapter from one publisher with a competitor's.
• Major publishers did team up to create an online e-textbook distribution service called Coursesmart, but it does not include custom-publishing features or some of the latest evaluation materials that publishers offer on their own advanced online platforms.

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• Curricular Resource Strategies (CRS)
• Examples of such repositories include MERLOT, the Maricopa Learning Exchange, WISC-Online, the North Carolina Learning Object Repository, The OER Commons, The Open Educational Resources Center for California, and the Community College Open Textbook Collaborative.
• Libraries also offer access to video and audio content with advanced technology for inserting clips or whole works into digital spaces. Open educational resource sites, such as Flatworld Knowledge and Connexions, offer faculty more formal textbook content in digital format. Faculty can choose to use all or segments of the content. From these many choices, faculty can pick and choose their content and then mash it into a learning resource.
• What would it look like? In some ways a course designed and developed with a CRS approach would resemble existing course sites that incorporate a mix of content organized to promote student learning. For example, a course on “Technology for Teachers” developed by Wesley Fryer demonstrates how multiple formats are combined to create non-textbook learning materials. The home page provides access to a wikibook on the course topic. The content for each week of the course is a mix of web sites, readings, video and other medi
• such as Macmillan Publishing’s Dynamic Books. One of several innovative alternatives to traditional textbooks, it allows faculty to create customized textbooks using the publisher’s existing content, and faculty can add their own chapters, images or other material. Collaboration between traditional bookstores and open platform publishers can work too. Flat World Knowledge recently inked a deal with Barnes & Noble for the distribution of print copies of Flat World’s catalog through B&N campus outlets.

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• The earliest electronic textbooks simply offered the text of the printed book on a computer. Today's newest models, though, come with an array of features, including software tools that automatically grade homework for professors or let students share their margin notes with friends online.
• comes bundled with "lecture capture" software, so professors can use the built-in microphone and camera on a laptop computer to record their lectures for students, as well as with other features that are new for textbook publishers.
• The company is urging professors to require the electronic textbooks for their courses, rather than leave it up to students whether they buy a printed book or an e-textbook.
• McGraw-Hill did not design its own lecture-capture software but instead has incorporated existing software made by Tegrity.
• Other textbook publishers are offering new features in their digital products as well. E-textbooks sold through CourseSmart, a company started in 2007 by a group of textbook publishers, allow students to e-mail parts of the book to their friends (with their notes attached), or to read the complete text on their iPhone. E-textbooks published by Flat World Knowledge, meanwhile, let professors customize the textbook by adding their own chapters or making changes to the text for the edition offered to their students.

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• The system, called DynamicBooks, lets any professor make a customized version of one of the company's existing titles. That means that chemistry professors can take one of the company's chemistry textbooks, rewrite some parts, add their own papers or chapters, or embed videos or homework questions they've created. Any passage added or changed is clearly labeled as not part of the original book, so students know what is original and what is customized—a concession that was made to textbook authors
• Professors who customize a textbook have a chance to make some extra money. For each customized copy that a student buys, the professor who contributed the material gets a dollar. That could add up if a professor's retooled book becomes popular and is assigned by professors at other colleges.
• All of the new systems offer advanced features and services that go beyond simply displaying the pages of existing textbooks on a screen. They mix multimedia, online testing tools, and social-media features that publishers hope will persuade professors to assign them and students to choose them over printed versions.
• One consequence is that they make it difficult or impossible for a student to resell the book to someone else. Most of the new e-books self-destruct after a set period of time, say a semester or a year, to prevent resales.
• Another feature, likely to frustrate some users, is that these platforms have their own interfaces and formats that the companies control.
• I think it would be better for professors to use existing course management software and existing scholarly articles or online modules to build their own "textbooks." Many already do. Unfortunately, it seems to only happen in higher level courses. We would do well to introduce students to real scholarly communication throughout their college

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• Arizona State University found last month at the start of an experimental class with Amazon Kindle e-book readers.

• Princeton University, Case Western Reserve University and the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Busines

• that there hasn’t been a critical mass of inventory available on a single platform. So that student that wanted to try it had to wonder ... 'Is it going to be on a platform that’s compatible? Do I have to have multiple books on [different] platforms?'" Devine said.
• "We believe as standards emerge, the market will grow, and as common platforms emerge, the market will grow. We don’t even necessarily believe it has to be our platform."
• In Ohio, especially, Devine stressed the key combination of a "critical mass of content," a single platform and a pre-existing portal that students already heavily use. If it's successful, it could be seen as a model for future e-textbook ventures.
• Esposito, meanwhile, stressed that until professors start assigning e-textbooks on a widespread basis -- or nudging their students to use them -- the market will continue to respond to demand for print materials

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• Meijer, BBA ’05, a member of the UT-Southwestern Medical School class of 2010, had been charged by the Texas Legislature with the task of preparing UT for a digital transition. He is now designing a new pilot program for UT classrooms. The industry representatives came on his invitation to peddle their (soft)wares
• The format of Meijer’s event gives a sense of the uncertainty surrounding e-textbooks in 2010. Universities feel compelled to take steps to stay ahead, but no one knows just yet which way to head. Thus, Meijer is exploring a range of variables, from software to devices to content licensing models, to isolate and test potential game-changers. As he does so, he’ll have to navigate between publishers and students, two groups whose financial interests often diverge.
• In fact, nearly 70 percent indicated in a survey that they preferred to have a hard copy to read.
• However, our students told us that cost was not their primary driver in moving to another form of textbook materials — value was the driving proposition. Students would like to pay less for their textbook materials, but, above all, just like all good consumers, students want improved value from whatever it is they buy.”
• With the rise of e-textbooks, knowledge becomes more ephemeral, and, even after an e-book has been purchased at retail, questions remain about who owns the information contained within it
• McGraw-Hill indicated that they would limit users’ licenses to their textbooks, so that students might lose access at the end of the class.
• The worst-case scenario for students would be if they were forced into purchasing e-textbooks yet denied a perpetual license to access the contents. Stith sees this as the future some publishers are angling for by building homework and grading features into their digital learning environment software. Right now students can choose to keep textbooks for future use or try to sell them back. “With licensing,” Stith says, “not so.”
• Hegarty is more hopeful about future licensing models. In the long run,
• university-wide licensing might be the key to making high-quality digital materials available to students at low costs. “Someday,” he says, “I believe textbook materials will be licensed on a broad basis by university libraries, just like research journals are today, and made available to all students electronically as part of the digital classroom, the cost of which is already included in their tuition.  No doubt it will take time and investment to get to this point, but I believe we will get there.”

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• The primary obstacle

• Students were initially fascinated with their readers, said Dean L. Hubbard, the university’s president, but they soon became frustrated with the devices’ limited interactivity capabilities — which made it impossible to highlight passages, cut and paste text, or participate in interactive quizzes.
• Laptops provide more interactivity than the Sony Readers, Mr. Hubbard said, because they let students participate in interactive quizzes and allow professors to add material to textbooks as needed.
• Northwest Missouri State currently spends about $800,000 a year on its rental textbook program, which allows its students to acquire books at a fraction of the cost of buying them,
• Mr. Hubbard said. Switching to electronic textbooks could shave as much as 50 percent off that figure, he added.

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