ED Proposed Challenge for VR Developers

The U.S. Department of Education (ED) has opened a competition for immersive-simulation concepts that prepare students for the global workforce of the 21st century. The EdSim Challenge will award $680,000 in prize money to the top computer-generated virtual- and augmented-reality educational experiences that work with skill-building content and assessment.

Submissions will be judged on learning outcomes and must have clearly defined goals, a description of the student skills the challenge will help improve, and a way to provide feedback. Five finalists in the EdSim Challenge will earn $50,000 each and access to expert mentorship to build a prototype, with the remainder of the $680,000 prize money going to the winning entry.

“This initiative is an exciting example of how virtual reality and game technologies can be applied to give students everywhere the tools to prepare for future success,” said Johan Uvin, the Department of Education’s acting assistant secretary for career, technical, and adult education. “We encourage developers from all disciplines to answer our call and help define the future of applied learning.”

Challenge entries must be submitted by Jan. 17, 2017. A complete list of rules is available at www.edsimchallenge.com.

Strong Websites Help Attract Students

A recent study found that online information helps students decide on the institution they want to attend. Digital Search for Education surveyed more than 1,500 full- and part-time students in the United States to learn how they interact with colleges before enrolling.

According to the report, 58% of the students said online reviews were highly important to the school-selection process, while 20% said online reviews had the most influence on their choice. The school’s website was the most important factor in the selection process, with 56% of students saying that was their primary source for information about programs of interest.

More than half of the students said they used search engines to research the schools they were interested in attending and 43% reported being most influenced to click on search results that had information that was relevant to them. However, 32% also said they would leave a school’s site if it had poor navigation tools.

The study reported that 32% of students follow the schools in which they are interested on social media, with 62% using Facebook. At the same time, 41% said they contact the school through email directly and 75% added they preferred schools to contact them by email, phone, or text message.

Despite the emphasis on digital communication in the selection process, 31% of the students also cited an on-campus visit as the primary reason for enrolling in a particular institution.

Amazon Is Making Bricks-and-Mortar Work

Amazon turned “showrooming” into a dirty word in retail. Now, the company is making showrooming work in its bricks-and-mortar bookstore, according to author and strategist Frank Catalano in an article for GeekWire.

Catalano visited the Amazon Books store in Seattle and discovered a lot to like. He found a comfortable store that made running across something new to read easier then the Amazon online recommendation engine. Prices were the same as listed online, despite signs that showed books at full publisher list price, and Amazon’s ratings and excerpts from reviews were easy to locate.

“The genius is that Amazon has neatly knocked down the virtual walls between online and physical retailing, carefully bringing online content and transactional expertise to what already works in in-person shopping,” Catalano wrote. “It just happens to be a bookstore.”

Reports have also surfaced about a pilot that places display stands of e-book-specific Amazon gift cards in drugstores in Washington state. The cards can be redeemed for the e-book on the card or turned into general-purpose store credit.

“It seems clear Amazon’s brick-and-mortar ambitions are only beginning,” Chris Meadows wrote in an article for TeleRead. “And if bookstores thought it was bad when they only had to compete with the online version of the site, something tells me their problems are just about to get a whole lot worse.”

Competing with the Tennessee Promise

The Tennessee Promise allows high school students to earn an associate degree at the state’s 13 community colleges, providing they are full-time students, maintain a 2.0 grade-point average, meet regularly with a mentor in their field of study, and complete at least eight hours of community service.

The Promise helped community college enrollment jump 14% this fall, the first year the program was offered statewide. Tennessee’s four-year institutions had to compete with the free-tuition program, but enrollment figures still appear healthy.

“We beefed up our efforts,” Glenda Glover, president of Tennessee State University, Nashville, said in a report for Nashville Public Radio. “All of us have done extra work, but it looks like we overdid it because TSU enrollment is up this year.”

Enrollment figures across the six Tennessee Board of Regents schools were flat, which was actually an improvement over the trend of the last five years. Enrollment for the University of Tennessee system slipped at UT Martin and Chattanooga, but UT Knoxville reported one of its largest freshman classes ever.

Website Helps Chinese Grads Find Jobs

Colleges and universities around the world try to help students find employment after graduation. A university in China has taken that effort online.

The Kunming University Talent Shop is an online site that features top graduates on the Alibaba retail platform, Taobao. Students are divided into four categories that “promote Chinese infrastructure investment and manufacturing power,” according to a report from CNBC.

The site includes a photo, a summary of career goals, and salary expectations for each student. Prospective employers are then able to bid for the right to offer a student a contract. The bidding fees start at $160, according to a report in People’s Daily Online.

Chinese officials expect more than seven million graduates to be looking for jobs in the country in 2015. At the same time, the number of new jobs created has fallen from 3.44 million in the first quarter of 2014 to 3.24 million during the same period this year.

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.

Text Comparison Plug-In Causes a Stir

A textbook price-comparison tool has been making a lot of news, particularly after reports surfaced the tech start-up that developed the Chrome plug-in was threatened with a lawsuit by a campus retailing company. Texts.com only had about 200 downloads for its add-on software before news of the lawsuit went viral, which swelled to 15,000 downloads within days of the report.

The Chrome plug-in is an opt-in feature students can install that will show prices from third-party vendors such as Amazon, Valore, and Chegg. It interacts with the end-user’s browser and works with bookstore websites maintained by Barnes & Noble College, Follett Higher Education Group, and Nebraska Book Co., according to The Wall Street Journal.

WSJ also confirmed that Follett sent an email to Texts.com expressing concern that the extension was changing “the presentation of information on the screen.” The start-up rebuilt the extension and rebranded it as #OccupyTheBookstore.

Media Company Looks to Profit from Education

The Association of American Publishers estimates the K-12 textbook market approaches $3 billion in the United States, with an additional $4 billion spent on teacher guides, testing, and reference material. So it should come as no surprise that companies other than traditional publishers are looking to grab a piece of that pie.

Discovery Communications, which owns the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC, is doing just that with the introduction of a line of digital textbooks called Techbook that will provide video, virtual labs, and downloadable content, according to a report in The New York Times.

“It’s kind of perfect for us,” Discover Communications CEO David M. Zaslav told the Times. “Educational content is core to our DNA, and we’re unencumbered—unlike traditional textbook publishers, we’re not defending a dying business.”

Tough words perhaps, but education publishers are not going to concede their turf without a fight. Pearson, McGraw-Hill Education, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have all introduced digital educational products and recently teamed with Apple to sell high school textbooks through its iBook store.

“Over the last 10 years alone, we’ve invested $9.3 billion in digital innovations that are transforming education,” said Will Ethridge, CEO of Pearson North America. “One way to describe it would be an act of ‘creative destruction.’ By this I mean we’re intentionally tearing down an outdated, industrial model of learning and replacing it with more personalized and connected experiences for each student.”

In the meantime, Discovery has a staff of 200 working on its Techbook project. The cloud-based technology works on any hardware a district might be using and will cost about $38 per student for a six-year subscription, compared to the $70 average price for a traditional textbook.

“Television is always going to be our primary focus, but we’re incredibly excited about the business potential of the Techbook,” Zaslav said. “Education is an area of solid, sustainable growth.”

Techbook is only targeting K-12 students for now, so it’s just scratching the surface of education’s “business potential.”

MHE Offering LearnSmart Directly to Students

McGraw-Hill Education announced plans to make its LearnSmart adaptive learning program available directly to students in time for fall 2012 classes. The plan, an effort to open new revenue streams for the company, is the first time MHE has marketed and sold technology directly to students.

“Making these study tools available directly to students—and their parents who want to help them succeed—signals a new era for our business as we work to ensure that more students are getting the most out of their college education,” Brian Kibby, president, McGraw-Hill Education, said in a press release.

Use of LearnSmart has grown to more than 40 introductory courses since it was introduced in 2007, with MHE reporting more than 800,000 students use it to answer questions each day. But many college store professionals view publishers bypassing them in favor of selling directly to students as a threat instead of just “good business” on the part of the publisher, according to Mark Nelson, chief information officer of NACS and vice president of NACS Media Solutions.

“On one level, it is a threat, but if stores were providing sufficient value to publishers, particularly on the digital side, the publishers would have no need to go around the stores,” he said. “Stores have good mechanisms when it comes to print, but their mechanisms for handling new business models and technologies are inadequate.”

Another issue is that MHE plans to continue to sell the product in campus stores as part of the McGraw-Hill Connect online course-management platform, which combines digital learning with class materials. But rather than a call to arms, Nelson sees the news as an opportunity for stores to work with publishers to define better solutions.

“Publishers themselves would be stronger working with us,” he said. “If stores want it to stop, then they must more effectively demonstrate value. Complaining or continuing to do things the way they have always done them or resisting change does not do a whole lot to get the publishers to alter their practices.” 

Beyond the Bookstore for Publishers

Yet another sign that it is time for stores to change many of their traditional ways of doing business.  A recent article encourages publishers to increase sales and profit through non-bookstore marketing, particularly in light of the trend toward decreased unit sales in print books from traditional outlets.   Here is an excerpt from the article:

“Given the choice, there are advantages to focusing only on non-bookstore marketing.  Here you can sell your content in any format – e-books, printed books, audio books or booklets.  You can also sell it in many more places, including retailers, libraries, corporations, schools and associations.  And in nonretail segments, book sales are sold on a non-returnable basis and you are generally paid more quickly.  If that were not enough, even more benefits accrue through special sales.” 

Here are ten reasons why the author says publishers should invest in the non-bookstore markets.  You can read the details of each recommendation in the article.

1) Compete in a marketplace larger in size than the bookstore segment.

2) Experience growth that is virtually limitless.

3) Take your titles to the potential buyers rather than waiting for them to go to a bookstore.

4) Reduce the competition.

5) Minimize discounting since buyers do not have immediate access to competitive pricing.

6) Sell books on a non-returnable basis.

7) Stimulate increased exposure. 

8) Increase your flexibility in negotiations

9) Improved cash flow, since some businesses purchase your products at list price.

10) Do what you do best.

Now I am sure many stores could articulate reasons back to publishers to encourage continued investment in the channel.  A couple obvious arguments come to my mind, however, that is not the thrust or focus of this posting.  The point here is that stores that want to succeed in the future must look at the trends and begin transitioning to new markets.  Continuing on a path to merely extend or defend what we have always done is a fast path down the spiral of decline.  We must rethink our value, or not be surprised when those who were once our partners are suddenly our competitors.  To paraphrase Wayne Gretzky once again, we must learn to skate to where the puck will be -- not where it is now or has been in the past. 

Amazon's latest marketing effort

Amazon is offering $5 off on items if you take a picture of that same item at any brick and mortar store and you purchase through their online store.  You are permitted to three items on Saturday December 10^th.

Here is a not so happy indie bookstore owner, who writes in PW,  

“To encourage people to snoop at other stores and report back  . . .  so they can keep their prices competitive is pathetic.  Here’s what I do: I pay sales tax, I donate thousands of dollars to local schools, charities, Little Leagues, church pie suppers, school trips, Geobee prizes, etc.  I support my community and that means going to local stores and buying things there. Price is not the only factor for me”

In response to this promotion some indie owners have started an Occupy Amazon movement on the same day.

Saving the bookstore

An eloquent posting in The Platform by Peter Osnos last week. It starts with the story of a recent community bookstore that was damaged by fire in a neighboring restaurant. It turns to the common plight of bookstores of all types in an era of online competition and other competitive changes. Peter offers two strategies for stores pulled from his observations from more than two years of looking closely at bookstores as part of The Century Foundation’s Caravan Project. The strategies (focused on old-fashioned and new fangled basics) are ones that college stores should take to heart as well. These appear in the last three paragraphs of the posting, which I will replicate here:

Old Fashioned: Service. Service. Service. For a variety of now seriously out-moded reasons, booksellers are reluctant to take customer’s cash or credit cards until the books ordered actually arrive at the store. That uncertainty no longer satisfies in competition with Amazon and the other online retailers, where you can close the sale with a date for delivery. Customers should never leave the store, having asked for something, without buying it, unless, of course, it can’t be found anywhere. One of the biggest complaints book buyers have is the difficulty of finding what they are looking for. Something in the culture of bookselling reinforces the sense of erratic supply. “It’s out-of-stock” and similar explanations from clerks inevitably grate when the competition customers can access from home says they’ll get what they want, even if it takes awhile.

New Fangled: Stores should invest in the relatively simple upgrade of their Web sites, which virtually all now have to include shopping carts for ordering e-books, downloadable audio, and print-on-demand versions of all kinds of books, including large print and out-of-copyright titles. Backing up the brick-and-mortar premises with the vast array of books in various formats now available from distributors gives even the smallest store access to the same supply as the biggest chains and online outlets. Somewhere in the store, a "kiosk” (actually a computer terminal) supported by a knowledgeable employee can make any customer conquer the fear that they won’t find the book they want. The pleasures of finding something unexpected while browsing the stacks will never be matched by a screen search, so stores should stuff as many titles as they can on to shelves, but only one copy, with the full assurance to the customer that there are many more where that came from.

What these ideas have in common is the notion of a bookstore as less a repository of goods on hand than a showroom of what’s possible. The cozy familiarity of a good bookstore and the role these stores play as community assets are cherished by readers. Updated concepts of service and supply will reinforce those facts rather than diminish them. And in the meantime, for those great booksellers who cannot overcome their troubles, we will mourn your passing.

Certainly there are other ideas out there that will help college stores remain vibrant, vital, and valuable to the communities they serve. How about some of the readers out there contribute some points of view or suggestions?

Online textbook rentals...

Yet another competitor enters the textbook market. It seems hard to keep track these days. This one is another online textook rental company. You can learn more about the company in an posting I came across in another blog this week. The most interesting thing I saw in the blog, was not the main posting, but the final tagline. It said:

In a perfect world, of course, all these textbooks would be available as digital
downloads for you to consume on your preferred reading device. But until that
day, you might as well free up some beer money by renting the textbooks you
don't need to keep.

Hmm... any course content in any format so that students could choose which content and which device. Keep that thought in mind -- there is more news to follow later this week.

Knowing where the digital market share is going...

I read an article (reads like a press release) this morning about some new offerings by ebrary. ebrary is just one example of many companies in this space, but they are a good example of the types of companies college stores should be more aware of in the digital content space. They have a software-based e-reader technology and likely work with many of our campus libraries. While the article spoke mostly to new content databases being offered to the corporate community, what is of interest is what content was being offered. The articles notes:

ebrary(R) today announced the availability of two new subscription databases of e-books, manuals and other authoritative content in Engineering and Business. With contributing publishers such as Elsevier, CRC Press, Pennwell Publishing, John Wiley & Sons, The McGraw-Hill Companies, Woodhead Publishing, Gulf Publishing, and World Scientific, ebrary's new Engineering Database features popular handbooks, manuals and other technical titles spanning a wide range of engineering topics such as Aerospace, Chemical, Civil, Electrical, Electronic, Environmental, Materials, Mechanics, and Petroleum Engineering. ebrary's new Business Database covers key topics in eadership, Management, Human Resources, Sales & Marketing, Finance, Investment, Accounting, and General Business Skills from such esteemed publishers as AMACOM, Elsevier, John Wiley & Sons, Kogan-Page, Ltd., and Dearborn Trade Publishing.

Do the publishers and content areas sound familiar to to any of the college store readers of this blog? If about a third of students are getting their digital textbooks from libraries now (from the NACS 2008 StudentWatch study), then do you know what digital textbooks your library really offers? Here is an area where you can start to interact with your campus librarian. Do some background research to see what titles they may be offering, and what the readership is like. As we talk about competitive intelligence and understanding what market share we are losing (and where we are losing it), then here is a source of potential information. There may be opportunities for us to work with campus libraries and this information--and there may be opportunities for college stores to work with ebrary and similar offerings as well.

Course material content licensing by campuses is not a new phenomenon, and it is a trend that is likely to grow. Store textbook managers should be monitoring this trend closely and considering ways to work with other campus constituencies and this content.