Pros and Cons of Inclusive Access

More colleges and universities are offering inclusive-access programs for course materials because they see the model as ensuring wins for many involved.

Students get their course materials at discounted prices on the first day of class, making instructors happy. Publishers are guaranteed 100% sell-through for offering significant discounts on the content, which provides institutions with a way to show they are keeping costs in check. There’s also a role for the campus store because they have established relationships with all the parties involved—faculty, publishers, and students—and have the means to handle the transactions.

However, not everyone sees it as the best or only option.

Proponents of open educational resources view inclusive access as a model that just replicates the same publishing structures that led to rising textbook prices in the first place. Some faculty members also see inclusive access as an academic-freedom issue, limiting their choices on content to just one publisher.

“I do think it is likely that traditionally published content will continue to be used at colleges and universities, although whether or not it is through inclusive access remains to be seen,” said Nicole Allen, director of open education for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. “Textbook publishers have been through many iterations of models for proprietary digital content—it is hard to know how long any one will last.”

The 2017 Textbook Affordability Conference is Nov. 10-12 at Georgia Tech. Updates from the conference will be posted on Twitter using the hashtag #TAC2017Ignite.

Goldrick-Rab Headlines TAC 2017 Speakers

Sara Goldrick-Rab, professor of higher-education policy and sociology at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, will deliver the keynote address at the 2017 Textbook Affordability Conference (TAC), Nov. 10-12, at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta.

Goldrick-Rab is author of the Amazon bestseller Paying the Price: College Costs, Financial Aid, and the Betrayal of the American Dream and founder of the Wisconsin HOPE Lab, the nation’s only translational research laboratory focused on ways to make college more affordable. Her keynote speech will discuss reasons why campuses must collaborate with internal partners to address affordability.

TAC 2017 will also feature presentations from Robin Baliszewski, managing director, Pearson North America; TJ Bliss, director of development and strategy, Wiki Education; and Rick Anderson, associate dean for collections and scholarly communication, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. All TAC 2017 learning events are focused on developing models that campuses can use to create more affordable, accessible, and effective course-material options for students.

Baliszewski was president of Pearson’s North American career and professional education business from 2000-09 and served as the company’s director for people, with responsibility for recruitment, retention, development, and succession of Pearson employees. Her current responsibilities include sales and field marketing for higher-education, academic, corporate, and government markets.

Bliss is responsible for developing strategies and relationships in the philanthropy community and working with the Wiki Education board to create an organizational strategy. He guided the open education resources portfolio for the Hewlett Foundation for the last three years and served as director of assessment and accountability for the department of education in Idaho.

Anderson previously worked as a bibliographer for YBP Inc., now known as GOBI Library Solutions. In addition, he was head acquisitions librarian for the University of North Carolina, Greensboro; director of resource acquisitions for the University of Nevada, Reno; and is a regular contributor to The Scholarly Kitchen blog.

The conference schedule and registration information is available at the TAC 2017 website. The Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center has rooms available at special conference rates until Oct. 2.

Go Easy with Gaming in the Classroom

Gaming is being tried by instructors at every level as a creative way to engage and educate students. While games have a place in the classroom, they may be much less effective than expected.

Vic Vuchic, chief innovation officer and executive director of Digital Promise Global, told attendees at the 2016 Textbook Affordability Conference, held April 27-29 at the University of California, Davis, that games are so perfectly designed for the task performed in the game that information doesn’t always translate beyond the competition itself.

“To be honest, the hype is far beyond what the research is showing us is happening,” Vuchic said during a question-and-answer session that followed his presentation Collaborative and Innovation as Course Materials Strategy.  “If you learn something in a game, generally, when you step out of that game and have to apply it somewhere else, you really won’t be able to do it.”

Vuchic told the audience about work done at Stanford University by Daniel Schwartz, dean of the institution’s graduate school of education, that showed games are most helpful when direct instruction was part of the coursework. In the experiment, Schwartz had one test group play a game and then provided instruction before a test was given. A second group only played the game before the assessment and a third only received direct instruction.

“It ends up that the ones who played the game and got direct instruction far outperformed the others,” he said. “You get some loose concepts in understanding games, but it’s not enough to bring it home. Someone has to anchor it and say, ‘This is the theory.’”

Vuchic’s presentation was streamed live on the NACS Facebook page. Here is the entire 53-minute video: