Secretary
of Education Arne Duncan created something of a stir in the academic world Oct.
2 when he advocated a rapid move to digital course materials and declared
textbooks should go out of print “over the next few years.” It turns out Duncan
may have a kindred spirit in Brian Kibby, president of McGraw-Hill Higher
Education.
In an
e-mail interview with Inside Higher
Education, Kibby stressed that “the transition from print to digital can’t
happen quickly enough” for educational publishing. He said McGraw-Hill has been
digitizing all of its content for a number of years and also has built digital
learning systems designed to support and enhance that content.
“The second
reason, and the one I’d like to emphasize, is that the type of digital learning
experiences we offer really have the potential to improve student performance
in a way that print materials simply don’t,” he said.
When the
interviewer mentioned his eighth-grade daughter prefers to read from printed
pages, Kibby acknowledged that digital devices—while improving—still don’t
provide an ideal reading environment. But, he asserted, print materials are
intended for linear learning and that’s not how digital materials should or
will be used. “We’re talking about totally new, nonlinear ways of learning,” he
said.
McGraw-Hill’s
goal “is to create digital learning experiences that are radically different
from what we have now,” he added. “If we keep doing our job the way we know we
can, the way we learn five years from now will look very little like the way we
learned five years ago.”
