The New Media Consortium listed adoption of digital
textbooks, mobile learning, innovations in web and print design, and the
merging of online and learning analytics as the trends that are reinventing
what course materials can do for students. However, the potential has yet to be
realized.
“Each of these trends is spurring new visions of what
digital course materials could look like and how they can foster more engaged
learning; together, they are fueling a grass-roots wave of innovations,”
authors of the report Course Apps wrote. “Two of the trends in particular, digital textbooks
and design, have not yet reached their full potential in higher education, and
there is space for institutions and education-focused companies to take them to
the next level in service of teaching and learning.”
Textbook publishers are taken to task in the report for
watching from the sidelines as others innovate. Digital tools still need to
include “social, interactive, and immersive capabilities inherent to the
connected devices on which these materials are experienced.” The report also
pointed out that most content creators don’t have the expertise to develop
their own materials.
“There
is a need for user-friendly tools that empower faculty to design the kinds of
compelling resources that will comprise the next wave of instructional resources
and materials,” the authors wrote.
