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:

Adapting to new business reality

I am at the SIIA Educational Technology conference this week. The opening keynote was great. Maybe more of the same messaging I have heard elsewhere (and am often sending myself), but I liked the presenter's approach to conveying the information.

The presenter was Genevieve Shore, worldwide CIO and Director for Digital Strategy for Pearson. Okay -- she is a CIO and leads digital strategy, like me, so admiting biases, that won points in my book up front. Anyway, her presentation was "how do we adapt to new business reality" and she offered five points of advice:

1- Be disruptive.
We must challenge our companies, customers, employees, etc. How do we change everything while holding on to our traditions? She commented, "This is the moment of our lives when we will see the most changes to [learning]. The next 5 years will be mind-blowing." going on to talk about the disruptive trends that would fuel this radical change to learning in the next five years: gaming, tablets, continuous assessment coupled with artificial intelligence, and location.

2- Be global.
As we transition to a more global community, we must do truly global thinking. She then provided interesting data points or perspectives on India, China, Africa and elsewhere.

3- Be social.
Through several examples and discussions of different technologies she boiled down to a couple questions: How can we be social? How can we make many-to-many work, yet at the same time, how do we make and keep it increasingly personal?

4- Be Valuable.
She commented that, "The world has changed. The most important word on the internet is no longer 'search' but 'share'." In discussing business models she noted that you "need multiple business models today to have a business," which suggests to me the need to think openly and broadly about what we do and how we do it -- and recognizing that we might have "multiple business models co-existing at once" and that there may not be any "one" business model for the future. Her point being that things will be more complex in the future, and that looking for the "one" model is probably a fruitless effort. If anything, the one model is a combination that provides several other models simultaneously.

Her other point in here, which I particularly appreciated was "sometimes you have to be wrong to eventually be right." I would have put this observation under "Be Disruptive," but the lesson to be open to failing and failing fast was well made. She noted that we are just starting to see the first ebooks for education -- and that it is a new product that is not really an ebook. Much as I have tried to talk about "digital course materials" as a more accurate term than "ebook." She also suggested that we find time to talk about metadata -- that it is critical to make it easy for students to search and share. She asked the group to think about working toward global, open metadata standards for the benefit of all.

5. Be Trustable.
Her last set of comments reminded me of comments Chris Tabor at Queen's University often makes about trust. She talked about how we must be careful in how we manage the ownership of data about customers, and the importance of trust in our relationships with students.

Overall, a great session. In the panel I chaired today I pulled out several other comments of interesting, but one particularly stuck with me in the context of the points Genevieve made. Matt McInnis from Inkling had a captivating image of a coming "renaissance of learning materials," that he sees as just beginning. I agree, and that is yet another concept I have been promoting for a while.

It is always reassuring to hear, once in a while, that other thought leaders think things are going in the same direction. The future is not yet determined -- but it is taking shape. I will bang my head on that wall one more time and suggest that stores that stores and the store channel have an opportunity to act, and waiting until 2015 to begin adapting to what will clearly be a new business reality for our channel is not a particularly good strategy for making it to 2016, 2020, or beyond.

Reinventing the print business model

While enticing people to come to their conference, Publishing Business' interview with Brian Kelly, editor, U.S. News & World Report is an interesting read. Here are a few excerpts that booksellers might find reminiscent of our own industry:

By far, my favorite quote in the short piece (and what might get me to attend the conference to see this guy) was the following:

Kelly: In moments of weakness, I still wish the good old days would come back, but then I slap myself back to reality. The most unsettling thing was to come to the conclusion—about five years ago—that the old ways were gone for good, that the industry changes were fundamental and nothing would be the same again. Once I accepted that, my job became creating something new, and that made my stomach feel a lot better.

One on how even top companies can be quickly eclipsed by technology-based change:

News weeklies are one category that has been hit particularly hard by shifts in the marketplace, including the way consumers get their news (and what—or if—they’ll pay for it). So, while it may have been a sad day for news weeklies, it wasn’t necessarily shocking when U.S. News & World Report first announced in 2008 that it would shift from its weekly frequency to bimonthly in 2009, and then later announced that it would shutter its monthly print publication entirely, after 60-some years as one of the top news magazines worldwide.

One on changes in business models:

Kelly: We were fortunate that we had developed a strong website and had other print products, so we knew that we had a good business and a large audience beyond print subscriptions. The subscriber business model just didn’t work for us. I thought about having a proper wake, but in this climate you can’t afford nostalgia.

So if I were to take some lessons away from this for the college store environment (and associated/related industries), they might include concepts such as: it is time to stop thinking about how things used to be and begin to embrace new ideas and the future. The importance of having a strong website/ecommerce presence and developing a diversified mix of products. Our future role is to not to shepherd the past to the grave, but to create something new that will will revitalize our businesses and our channel.

What College Students Think

Coming up in February the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) will be hosting a half-day conference in NYC entitled What College Students Think: Making Information Pay for Higher Ed Publishing. The focus will be on the changing needs of college students around course materials.

Julie Traylor (who leads OnCampus Research for NACS) and I will be presenting. However, in addition to speakers, the event will feature an exclusive preview into the findings from BISG's recent student survey: Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education. The survey provides a new look into how students currently enrolled in 2-year, 4-year and for-profit institutions perceive and use different types of educational materials in their course of study.

Kelly Gallagher, Vice President of Publishing Services for Bowker commented that "The timeliness of this event, and the relevance of the data presented, will help academic publishers walk away with tangible insights into these areas." The same is likely true for those of us working in the college store industry, or using textbooks in the classroom.

I hope to see some of you there, and we will report back.

More lessons for stores from Caravan...

I attended an interesting meeting yesterday-- an update on the Caravan Project. There were several interesting takeaways, but one that struck me in particular was a comment by Steve Potash from OverDrive. Paraphrasing, he noted that digital content delivery is not a "build it and they will come endeavor," rather, it is an investment in the future. During other parts of the meeting we discussed how publishers have really begun to move forward, but that retailers have, by and large, not embraced digital content delivery. This, to some extent, has forced publishers to find solutions that bypass the store, and has given other potential players in the market, such as Amazon, a greater foothold on sales, which, in turn has allowed for greater strangleholds to be placed on publishers. Another good quote coming out of the meeting yesterday is that "if we don't solve our problems, someone else's solution will be forced on us." The "us" in this case was a different group than the retailers, but it applies equally to us as anyone else.

So, what are the key takeaways from stores from this meeting:

- You can't expect digital to take off overnight. If you are not already driving traffic to your site and do not have experience handling online transactions, adding digital will not change much.
- If stores continue to play a waiting game to enter the digital market, they may not be part of it. Stores must invest in their futures now, even if initially it is not profitable, so that they have a place and role as the technology and product takes off.

Finally, I heard discussion about the roles of large stores versus small stores, and what some of the different experts had to recommend. I know this has been a concern among the membership since the initial NMS pilots were announced, which includes no small stores among the initial seven. I am working on a posting for this coming week (likely Tuesday), to address this question more directly and that should raise some discussion points.

Innovate! Online

If you missed the Innovate! 2008 conference live in Minneapolis earlier this summer, you have another opportunity to see and hear some of what took place. Participants will also have opportunities to interact and network with their peers around the content.

NACS developed the Innovate 2008 Conference to help college stores explore their environment, promote their role in the marketplace, and create new models for doing business. Via the Internet, the Innovate 2008 Online Conference, Oct. 20-23, makes the Innovate 2008 in-person learning experiences accessible to those unable to attend the live event.

To register or for more information, go to www.nacs.org/public/events/innovateonline/.

More recommendations for stores

For those unable to make it to Innovate in Minneapolis this year, you missed a great event. One of the speakers was Martyn Daniels from Value Chain. You can see these and other presentations you might have missed by signing up for Innovate Online in October. In the meantime, check out this posting on Martyn's blog and some of the recommendations he made for college stores. A more complete copy of his remarks (short the Q&A) is also available online.

Update on Innovate 2008

Sorry for the title rhymes. Innovate 2008 is nearing a close, and it has been a great event. Those who missed it will want to sign up for the online version in October. The online version is not the same as the real thing, but it is the next best to be sure.

If one thing could be said about this Innovate, it would probably be: "We thought a lot." The facilitator led us through how to form some good questions (and I am a big proponent of asking good questions). I particularly like how the process yields not just good or better questions, but how it yields questions that are actionable. When I was a faculty member and taught classes around information management, the core focus at the management or executive level is how to enable or facilitate actionable information. The process over the last few days was not always comfortable, but I think the majority of attendees really learned something from the experience if they did take time to think. And that is (as the facilitator noted) what we are paid to do, isn't it? To think?

I found myself surprisingly opposed to the messages at times, but the more I thought about things, the more I saw some real value in the content. Applying that to some of my daily work, I can see some opportunities to do things better. We came up with an idea for this blog as well, that I plan to put into action in the coming weeks once I test out some simple technologies.

I have quite a few notes from the confence and there is still a closing session to go. Among the news stories this week I will work on posting an item or two that captures a lesson or idea or information from one of the sessions or the event as a whole.

Digital at the AAP meeting earlier in March

I was not able to make it to the AAP meeting about a month ago in DC. I heard there were some interesting sessions. Two of the speakers sound like they were particularly interesting -- Border's CEO (George Jones) who spoke to their process of reinventing themselves, and Amazon senior v-p for worldwide digital media (Steve Kessel) who spoke about Amazon's digital efforts and particularly the Kindle. There is a short synopsis of these talks online. Was anyone there who could share some additional impressions or observations?

Upcoming at CAMEX

Next week one of the biggest NACS event of the year begins -- CAMEX. There will be plenty there to whet your digital appetite.

There will be a great catalyst session on Friday morning with Michael Wesch. Michael is an Anthropology professor in Kansas. He has become well known in the Internet/YouTube world for his videos on students and technology. Check out some of his videos: The Machine is Us/ing Us, Information R/evolution, and A Vision of Students Today. Along related lines, also check out Academia 2.0 and the "are we relevant" videos.

I will have the digital update session: Fighting Fire With Fire: Understanding Opportunities for College Stores in the New Digital Landscape. The title was set about a year ago and many things have happened since, but it should be a lively session this time. Among discussing some important new developments, we will also be laying out some of the elements and proposals put forth by the Digital Content Strategic Planning Taskforce, which will be discussed by the NACS Board the day before. Some of you have seen earlier drafts of that report, but we have some new action items in response to developments within the past two weeks.

At the same time as my session, the NACS General Business Meeting will take place. The general meeting is expected to run longer to allow for questions and recent developments are sure to engender some discussion.

On Saturday morning Todd Anderson will be giving a presentation on Print-on-demand (POD) entitled Espresso Books: Print-on-demand in the College Store . This should be a great session and one I hope many stores will attend. POD will be a big part of our strategy for stores this year, so here is an opportunity to learn from one of the most innovative stores in North America.

On Saturday afternoon there will be the E-books, Custom Books, and Print-on-demand - Idea Exchange . I am scheduled to be on a panel for health science stores at that time, but I am looking to hear what comes out of the discussion. I will be attempting to sit in for part of the discussion.

Of course there are many other sessions that are covering digital and retail technologies. I plan to make my CAMEX talk a bit different from earlier talks, and also different from the talks for PSG and LSG coming up in April. There always needs to be a bit of overlap, but I will do my best to provide new content -- this time around that should be easy as there are many new things to discuss.

Hope to see many of you at CAMEX!

Twittering from the road...

Hi folks.

Yesterday and today I am at the OReilly Tools of Change (TOC) conference. I had planned to blog parts of the conference, but yesterday's Blackberry outage put some end to that. See, even tech guys can get stymied by tech now and again.

Yesterday's TOC sessions were great. Many stores could have benefitted from some of the sessions. Over the next week I will post a number of my notes and observations from the conference. Right now I have about 30 pages of notes and a number of ideas and thoughts to include in upcoming presentations.

Some quick-hit themes to perk your interest: the importance of experimentation keeps coming up, as does varying incarnations of Web 2.0 and collaboration. The concept of community and how that figures into the equation has raised several ideas and implications for college stores. There was a great session on e-textbooks yesterday that will be repeated today due to popular and high demand -- something that stores should take away as an important indicator of what is to come. There are other themes and topics too-- but that will have to wait until a future posting. I will verify that this "posting from the road" arrived correctly and then perhaps begin a new posting from the train home tonight. I have lots of good content to post over the next few days.

Have you seen anything interesting lately? Any news stories you would like me to discuss or post more on here? I have another posting coming on clickers suggested by a reader. More to follow-

Happy blogging--
M