Prof Vents about Textbook Rentals

Does renting textbooks save students money or cost them the real value of a college education? Sheila Liming, an assistant professor of English at the University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, makes a case for the latter in an opinion column for Inside Higher Education.

“A degree used to mean learning from texts and racking up a cumulative store of skills and reference materials along the way,” she wrote. “But with the rise of textbook rentals, the rules of learning are getting rewritten, and not by education professionals, and not in accordance with the needs of student consumers, either.”

Her issue with rentals is they’re promoted as a cost-savings option but there are limits to how students can access and use the materials. Those are roadblocks that inhibit critical thinking and conversation, according to Liming.

“Rental companies insist that a given book can only be ‘useful’ to a student for the duration of a single semester, and so encourage students to see their own learning as fated for expiration and uselessness,” she said. “Even worse, rental companies and vendors—including campus bookstores—actively discourage students’ efforts to use the text they have rented, since wear and tear threatens the longevity of a book that a vendor wants to re-rent over and over again.”

To Liming, rental is just the latest “scheme” to make a buck, and is doing so at the expense of students’ education, depriving them of the ability to look back at previous classes or assignments to gauge their progress.

“Students are paying more and being coerced into renting because they are told they must, and  because they have not been made aware of their options,” she concluded. “It is therefore up to education professionals to show them—and to fight for the expansion of—worthy, cost-friendly alternatives, including both OER (open educational resources) and affordable print editions. Those alternatives do exist, and anyone who says differently is, as the saying goes, probably selling something.”

Liming may have a point when it comes to affordable alternatives for her English classes, but what about required texts for introductory biology or chemistry classes? Do students with other majors actually want to keep them to reflect back on and will they ever consider those textbooks affordable?

Iris Scans Could Be the Next Student ID

Identification cards have served college campuses well over the years, allowing students to do everything from gaining access to buildings to eating in the dining halls to charging purchases in the campus store. Soon, however, advances in technology may make the ID card obsolete.

With fingerprint readers and iris cameras already basic components in smartphones, some colleges and universities are working on ways to put those features to work. Campus stores are already experimenting with low-energy Bluetooth beacons to offer shoppers discounts as they enter. Advances in hand-geometry readers, which identify the shape of a user’s hand, are also on the horizon.

The University of Georgia, Athens, will allow students to enroll in a system that uses iris authentication to enter dining halls and the student center. Georgia Southern University in Statesboro has used iris cameras to control entry into dining halls since 2013 and has found data gained from the technology useful.

“If we have a freshman who’s living on campus and required to have a dining plan, and suddenly we see the student’s not coming in anymore—what’s going on?” said Richard Wynn, director of Eagle Card services at Georgia Southern. “We can actually alert housing staff and let them know we haven’t seen that student in a while and they can actually go check on them.”

Iris authentication could also be used for entry into residence halls, the library, and sports venues, providing the institution an idea of how individual students spend their day. That sort of information would be valuable in university marketing efforts, yet it also brings up privacy concerns.

“These aren’t scanners,” Bryan Varin, executive director of UGA dining services, said of hand-geometry readers and iris cameras. “Both of them are simply taking a picture and ending up with a mathematical equation that grants you entry.”

Taking Back Textbook Sales

There are plenty of reasons for college stores to consider offering a virtual online solution for course materials. The model can reduce costs while providing guaranteed commissions to make up for some of the lost revenue. The newfound space created by the absence of textbooks can also be dedicated to merchandise that produce higher margins.

The Florence O. Wilson Bookstore, The College of Wooster, Wooster, OH, gave the hybrid model a try, but soon discovered that a virtual solution was actually keeping students away. After two semesters, the store decided to offer textbooks again because a branded website with competitive prices simply became another place for Wooster students to search instead of the place to go for course materials.

“College stores have long provided value, serving faculty and students in equal measure with technology, processes, and expertise to support the academic needs of the institution,” Director Kevin Leitner, CCR, wrote in a LinkedIn post. “The hybrid model, while it offers some advantages, puts a college store in danger of disintermediation and irrelevance, the ultimate danger to a college store.”

Editor’s note: The CITE will be on hiatus as the NACS offices and warehouse in in Oberlin, Westlake, and Cincinnati, OH, as well as in California and Washington, D.C., are closed the week of Dec. 26-Jan. 2. Look for the next post to appear on Jan. 4, 2017. From all the staff of NACS Inc., have a safe and happy holiday season.

NACSCORP, OpenStax Launch ACCES

NACSCORP, a subsidiary of the National Association of College Stores, and the Rice University-based publisher OpenStax has expanded their partnership by launching the Affordable Custom Content Enhancement System (ACCES) on the eve of CAMEX 2016 in Houston, TX. The online platform allows faculty to create open educational resources (OER) and offer them through their campus store.

OpenStax has released 16 college titles that are used by nearly 400,000 students this year. The number of instructors using OpenStax titles increased by more than 100% in 2015 because of its partnership with NACSCORP, which provides low-cost print versions of the textbooks.

With ACCES, faculty will be able to reorganize chapters and add their own content. In addition, educational publisher Dover Publications is making its catalog of anthologies of classic literature, poetry, plays, music scores, and other publications available for faculty to insert into ACCES content.

"The OpenStax-NACSCORP custom print partnership is a direct response to faculty requests for customized print versions of OpenStax textbooks that will provide students with useful and affordable course materials," David Harris, editor-in-chief of OpenStax, said in a press release. "Many faculty want to use technology to tailor materials for their students, but they don't want to sacrifice quality. They want to start with a rock-solid, peer-reviewed textbook--preferably one with full-color illustrations and a full suite of homework and testing modules--and they want to make only the changes that are relevant to their teaching."

To make it easier for faculty to track the cost of the books they are working on, ACCES will display associated print costs in real time. ACCES will also automatically format pages and create a new index.

"We are committed to providing our campus store partners with the textbooks their faculty demand, including OER titles and customized materials," said Kurt Schoen, president and chief operating officer of NACSCORP.

Smartwatches Changing Wearables Market

Many college stores have found success selling wearable technology to students on campus, but that could soon change as sales of smartwatches are projected to outpace other wearables.

International Data Corp. (IDC) found that wearable shipments will be around 80 million this year, with smartwatches making up a quarter of the total. Shipments will increase to 111 million units by the end of 2016 and will double by 2019, according to IDC research.

The company estimated that shipments of smartwatches will rise from 34.3 million units next year to 88.3 million by 2019. Fitness bands will take a direct hit because of that jump.

“Cellular connectivity, health sensors, not to mention the explosive third-party application market, all stand to change the game and will raise the appeal and value of the market going forward,” IDC analyst Ramon Llamas said of smartwatches in a report for InformationWeek.

The Apple Watch will lead the category in 2016 with a 61% share of the market, with the Android Wear platform a distant second at 15.8%. Apple could ship as many as 45 million watches by 2019, according to IDC, but Android Wear will become a more formidable competitor by then, with a share of 38.8%.

At the same time, Rick Yang, a venture-capital partner at New Enterprise Associates, told CNBC that wearables will disappear next year in favor of newer and more fashionable products. He said luxury brands will soon enter the smartwatch field and that technology embedded into clothing and tattoos could become the next big trend in the industry.

“Our big thesis has been that wearables will mirror fashion.” Yang said. “I think tattoos are one of the ultimate fashion statements and so it’s only a matter of time before that gets penetrated by technology as well.”

Latest Tech Expected on Campus

People have come to assume colleges and universities use the latest technology. In fact, a new survey found that 86% of more than 2,000 people surveyed last August and September anticipated an institution’s auxiliary services, including the campus store, to be outfitted with the newest technology, while 81% said use of the latest tech improved their opinion of the institution.

Nearly every respondent (95%) to the survey, conducted for the office-equipment company Ricoh, said they believe college costs have gotten too expensive, but 79% also said a college degree is necessary to landing a good-paying job. The study reported that 65% of respondents believe online classes can help reduce student costs.

At the same time, most students can’t imagine a completely paperless campus, according to a report in Campus Technology. Nearly two-thirds said it would be impossible for students to complete assignments without using paper every day. Just 48% said they could see a paperless campus within the next few years.

Students Depend on Campus Store

Despite reports to the contrary, the campus store remains an important resource for course materials, according to a student panel survey conducted by OnCampus Research. The study found that 73% of the students said it was extremely important or very important to have a physical store on campus that sells course materials.

The survey also reported that 62% of students bought course materials in their campus store in the past year, compared to 27% who said they acquired course materials through the store’s website. In addition, 78% of students living on campus acquired course materials at their college store.

The survey also found 80% of community college students said a physical store on campus that sold course materials was important. The survey found that 71% purchased school supplies from the campus store, 37% bought food and beverages, and 36% picked up apparel and school-logo wear.

Tool Puts Store into Content Discussion

There’s a new tool that can help college stores be part of course-materials discussions. SIPX Campus makes it possible for campus entities, such as the college store, to set up course readings on behalf of instructors.

The tool is one of three created by ProQuest SIPX, a provider of digital course material solutions. SIPX Central allows instructors to select course readings through a self-service, cloud-based interface. SIPX for MOOCs enables course readings for massive open online courses to be organized for an institution by the company’s service team and simplifies copyright permissions, according to a report for Campus Technology.

The tools also provide free access to course-relevant content to students, tools for sharing nonsubscribed copyrighted materials, and analytics to monitor student engagement with assignments. 

Publishers Expands Marketing to Students

Since college students today have many more course materials options available, publishers are exploring direct-to-student online sales, along with using on-campus events and employing student ambassadors.

“It’s not in our best interest or the students’ to limit the access points or the purchase opportunities for our stuff,” Dawn Keller, senior vice president of consumer and digital marketing at Cengage, said in an article for Inside Higher Education. “Our hope is we can do some things on CengageBrain to … make it easier for students to find, buy, and register products.”

Joseph J. Esposito, a digital media and publishing consultant, said in the same article that college store professionals are right to be concerned. He said the direct-to-student marketing is part of a long-term strategy to control the textbook supply chain.

More direct sales to students will provide publishers with a way to increase adoption of digital course materials and cut out resellers. Publishers could also build bigger customer databases and turn those into more effective marketing to students.

“People keep talking about how digital textbooks will kill publishers, open educational resources will kill publishers,” Esposito said. “If you look at the publishers’ numbers, they’re pretty good. They have learned to adapt to a challenging marketplace.”

SEC Filing Sheds Light on B&N Education

Details about Barnes & Noble spinning off its education division recently came to light in a report from Shelf Awareness. Shares of B&N Education, applying to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, will go to current stockholders and no dividends are expected to be paid in the near future.

According to the filing with the Security and Exchange Commission, B&N Education saw its revenue increase to $1.5 billion while its net earnings fell to $19.4 million in the first three months of the current fiscal year, which closed at the end of January.

The filing also noted that B&N Education operated 717 college stores and that its largest area of growth is through its school-branded e-commerce sites at each. The company is planning to increase that number by bidding aggressively on the 53% of college stores still operated by their institutions.

“The prospectus is highly optimistic as to the new company’s prospects,” Nate Hoffelder noted in his post on Ink, Bits, & Pixels. “I, on the other hand, can see that B&N Education faces strong competition in a declining market. It’s not just that students are buying less from their college bookstore, or that B&N Education’s digital textbook offering is a train wreck, but also that it has a couple of established competitors (Follett Higher Education and Nebraska Book Co.) as well as an aggressive newcomer (Amazon) with extensive retail experience and a kill-all-prisoners attitude.”

Some Questions for Amazon@Purdue

Purdue University went all out for its new Amazon@Purdue bricks-and-mortar location in the Krach Leadership Center on the West Lafayette, IN, campus. The university president was there to cut a ceremonial ribbon and student employees in Amazon gear gave away gift cards and apparel to students in attendance.

But not everyone was impressed.

Tom Frey, owner of the University Book Store, which is technically off-campus but only by a few feet, has given lawyers a list of 57,000 titles Amazon is selling below his costs, according to a report by the public broadcasting station on campus. The University Book Store has been a licensed retailer of Purdue items and has sold textbooks to Purdue students for 75 years.

Bobby Haddix, the Purdue student body president, also questioned giving space in a building designed for students to an outside corporate entity. Amazon even flew Haddix out to Seattle so he could learn more about the company after he made two presentations against the idea to school trustees.

“This is a brand-new building. It was supposed to be specifically dedicated for students,” Haddix told the radio station. “And the decision was made over the summer while there weren’t a lot of students here to share their input to give this conference room away.”

Amazon Giving Bricks-and-Mortar a Try

Amazon’s first bricks-and-mortar location is aimed squarely at fostering customer loyalty with the millennial generation, according to a report in ZDNet. Amazon@Purdue at Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, provides the online retail giant with a way to conveniently reach the 18-34 demographic.

“The millennial generation of customers, which includes those in college right now, is going to be the most important generation of consumers our country has ever known,” said retail consultant Micah Solomon. “There are more of them than the baby boomers and they will soon control a dominant share of the purchasing power as well.”

The Purdue location is really more of a post office, with pickup lockers and a staffed counter where students can claim their orders. It’s also an expansion of the Amazon Student initiative that provides students with discounts and perks on textbooks and college essentials for a subscription fee.

While Amazon@Purdue allows the e-tailer a way to give bricks-and-mortar locations a try, some wonder how pickup locations will work off campus. After all, one of the reasons Amazon became an online retail powerhouse is because it has avoided the costs associated with physical locations.

“Amazon is the acknowledged king of online commerce, but there are many things about physical commerce that cannot be replicated online,” Solomon said.

Seeing Comic Books in a Different Light

A comic-book section is probably not high on the list of things for a campus bookstore to offer, but maybe it should be. Our brains process print and digital media differently, according to Tufts University professor Maryanne Wolf, and comics just might be a bridge between the multitasking brain used when viewing digital content and the “deep reading” brain used for printed material.

Comics, often presented like a collage, can provide a reading experience that is different from other forms, wrote Bill Kartalopoulos, editor of Best American Comics 2014, in a blog post for The Huntington Post.

After centuries of reading one way, it’s not always easy to process the way information is presented online. Constant linking to different websites is also disruptive when reading, but Kartalopoulos said comics are a form that melds linear typography with an Internet-like real-time grouping of different parts.

“Artful comics induce a kind of double vision in the reader. We fully experience the work by understanding the relationship between parts and the whole; between linear sequence and the simultaneous perception of related fragments,” Kartalopoulos said. “This is the medium-specific quality that make comics something more than simple storyboards, and this is the element of comics that brings us back to the Internet and our endangered ‘deep reading’ brains.”

Students Celebrated on Fourth NSD

Nearly 2,000 college and high school stores across North America are recognizing students and the good work they do today as part of the fourth annual National Student Day (NSD). Festivities include special events ranging from flash sales and free food to contests, games, and live music on campuses across the United States and Canada, and even in Bermuda.

In addition to the fun, many campus stores are working with charitable organizations and businesses in their communities to raise awareness, collect donations, and provide students with the opportunity to volunteer.

Students can also enter the new NACS-sponsored NSD photo-sharing contest. All they need to do is post a selfie of themselves doing volunteer work or performing any act of kindness to Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, or to the National Student Day Facebook page with the hashtag #NSDvolunteer to be entered to win a $1,000 prize for themselves and a $1,000 donation to the 501 (c)(3) charity of their choice. Photos can be posted through Oct. 23 and winners will be chosen at random.

National Student Day is supported by Sidewalk, a provider of rental solutions to the college store market. For more information on National Student Day and the contest, visit www.nationalstudentday.com or find it on Facebook and Twitter.

Campus stores can also watch for more details in the Campus Marketplace newsletter.

Fire Is a Real threat to Retail

The Amazon Fire may be a remarkable advance in smartphone technology or an underwhelming device that costs too much, depending on which article you read. But Fire’s real value for Amazon is what the company does best: make Amazon indispensable to its users.

“The Amazon Fire phone exists so Amazon can showroom the world,” Sascha Segan wrote in PC Magazine. “It’s the hardware device for the Everything Store. And any actual store that competes with Amazon should be just a little afraid.”

There have been reports suggesting consumers are starting to shy away from showrooming in favor of webrooming, using their smartphones to learn about products that they later purchase in a store. The Firefly button on the new Fire could change that because it makes showrooming so much easier. A single click from the lock screen provides a user with information on the product in question and an easy path to the Amazon checkout page.

“Apple, Samsung, and AT&T can be Amazon’s suppliers, even though Apple and AT&T have successful retail arms,” Segan said. “But pure retail stores are just the enemy.”

That includes the college store industry. Just imagine a student walking in, pointing his Fire at a textbook and Amazon does the rest, making sure the student has plenty of options to rent or buy, along with suggestions on hoodies and dorm supplies that can be added to his or her cart.

CAMEX Digs into Tech, Content, Commerce

College and university campuses are possibly the only places where consumer technologies, higher learning, new media, electronic and mobile commerce, libraries, retail technologies, and digital content intersect. Educational sessions coming up March 7-8 at the 2014 Campus Market Expo (CAMEX) in Dallas, TX, will address just about all of those areas.

Among the presenters for the Thought Leader series will be Charles Key, director of adoptions, grants, and the College Open Textbooks project for the Open DoorsGroup in San Jose, CA, a coalition of organizations working together to make education more accessible, and Mark Milliron, chancellor of the WesternGovernors University-Texas, a nonprofit institution providing online and blended degree programs.

Key will address Open Educational Resources and the Economies of Sale on Friday morning while Milliron’s Saturday session will discuss Technology, Education, and the Road Ahead.

Concurrent CAMEX educational sessions will explore new retail technologies for campus textbook sellers, how campus stores can work with other entities to support student retention and success, updates on the Higher Education Act and Department of Education regulations, how faculty and students are using technology for their studies, digital content pilots on college campuses, mobile commerce developments, connecting with students through social media, trends in higher education course materials, and integrating e-commerce and digital content platforms.

Flash Sessions (shorter takes on topics) will look at how campus stores can support student learning outcomes, helping students understand interactive digital homework solutions, selling textbooks online, using Google Analytics to track web traffic, what technology products students are buying, licensing course content, and where massive open online courses (MOOCs) could be headed.

Watch The CITE for reports from several of these sessions.

Following the session days, CAMEX will continue March 9-11 with its trade show for retailers serving students at higher education institutions and prep schools. CAMEX is owned and produced by the National Association of College Stores.

Follett Higher Ed Testing M-Commerce

By their very nature, campus stores attract a younger crowd that uses smartphones. That fact has Follett Higher Education Group actively testing its mobile marketing ability and plans.

Follett test have indicated more than 60% of recipients of special offers delivered by text message during a slow sales period viewed details of the offer, and 9% redeemed the coupon. In addition, fewer than 1% opted out of receiving the text, according to Leeann Fecho, manager of emerging media and loyalty marketing at Follett.

The company also developed a program that created a unique personal identification number that links a customer to a transaction when redeemed with a coupon and a program that allows shoppers to simply wave their mobile phones at an in-store kiosk to retrieve coupon offers.

“Mobile presents unique opportunities to connect and consolidate the customer experience,” Fecho told a session at the Internet Retailer Conference & Exhibition 2013. “The value of mobile isn’t just about building offers or mobile commerce—it’s all of that, but while doing that and blending the in-store and online experience.”

Imagining a New College Store

Albert Greco, professor of marketing at Fordham University, has predicted the market for printed textbooks will tumble about 95% by 2017. While that certainly paints a bleak picture for bricks-and-mortar booksellers, it doesn’t necessarily mean college stores should transition completely to being clothing outlets, according to Tony Sanfilippo in his Content Storage Unit blog.

Sanfilippo imagines a new campus store that partners with the library to offer students the option to either purchase or borrow their course materials. Librarians would be in charge of distributing the books and would help faculty find lower-cost or free alternatives.

He sees a store that utilizes a patron-driven acquisition business model where publishers find campuses with the most interest in their new text and make it available essentially on consignment basis for a fixed number of months. Stores would also become a dedicated place on campus where students and faculty go to locate alternatives to commercial publishing.

“Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with textbook prices, perhaps all faculty already see all the new scholarship in their respective fields at conferences, and maybe writing and publishing centers aren’t something campus communities need. Maybe,” Sanfilippo wrote. “But it seems much more likely that what most folks on campuses don’t need is another opportunity to purchase a tee shirt.”

Campus Store Could Provide Tech Playground

Matt Reed recently wrote in his Confessions of a Community College Dean blog for Inside Higher Education that it would be a great idea if college campuses had a “dedicated lab/room with plenty of up-to-date technology where faculty could go to learn” how to use the latest gadget for their courses.

“The idea was that the best way to learn a technology is to play with it—I strongly believe that, just as I believe that the best way to learn a concept is to teach it—but that playing with it requires the presence of both the tech itself and a safe space,” he wrote.

Reed went on to list funding as a major obstacle to such a lab, adding that he doesn’t have a solution for the idea. He even solicited his readers for their thoughts. Hopefully, the college store on his campus read Reed’s post and replied.

That’s not to suggest that a campus store has unlimited space or funding, but many already stock the technology products or have the contacts to the experts who could come to campus for periodic “faculty night” events to demonstrate devices. For example, the KSU Bookstore, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, recently took part in an e-book fair, bringing together major publishers and the school library for an event that featured hands-on demonstrations of e-books, electronic devices, and associated technologies.

So, Mr. Reed, that partner for your dedicated tech lab might be closer than you think.

High-Tech Approach to In-Store Services

With more and more consumers shopping with their smartphones in hand, bricks-and-mortar retailers are looking for ways to offer more in-store services, such as mapping inventory and mobile advertising networks.

Retailers are trying to better understand their customers through the use of indoor location technology, which can measure how shoppers move through the store. For instance, Walmart is working on a hyperlocal in-store search component for its mobile app that will make it possible for customers to find out the availability of specific items.

Apps are also in the works to deliver special promotions to users based on their location in the store, and in-store mobile advertising could be the next step for big stores, according to Patrick Connolly, senior analyst for ABI Research.

“That is the long-term goal, certainly for the big retailers,” Connolly said in an article in Mobile Commerce Daily. “They will look to launch their own smartphone apps and start building indoor location and mapping, and, ultimately hyperlocal advertising.”

But for the time being, this is technology for large retailers with deep pockets.

“The big retailers are going to make their own decisions and they are going to want to be on the cutting edge,” Connolly said.