Netflix, Smartphones Eat Up Bandwidth

The Netflix video-streaming service and smartphones are the two biggest drains on campus bandwidth, according to a report on residential networks (ResNet).

Netflix was named the biggest content threat to bandwidth capacity by 88% of the IT, housing, and business officers who participated in the State of ResNet 2018 Report, while smartphones were listed as the largest consumers of bandwith by 73% of respondents.

The smartphone percentage was an 11% increase over the 2017 report, with desktop computers and laptops finishing second (65%) and smart TVs in third (59%). At the same time, online learning tools and interactive digital textbooks were considered a threat by 33% and 14% of respondents, respectively.

Almost every respondent said their institution viewed “high-performing” ResNet as essential to attracting and keeping students on campus. Ninety-six percent of housing administrators said quality ResNet was “very important,” while 92% of IT respondents and 90% of business officers said the same thing.

At the same time, 41% of the respondents admitted their schools were shaping and limiting bandwidth, up 10% from the year before. There was also a double-digit increase in blocking activities such as peer-to-peer sharing and music downloading, from 34% in 2017 to 44% in 2018.

Schools Might Sidestep Repeal's Impact

Before the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted Dec. 14 to repeal 2015’s “net neutrality” orders, some higher-education organizations, including the American Council on Education, expressed concern about the impact on online research and distance courses. They worried institutions might end up in the Internet slow lane if business interests priced faster service out of reach.

John Harrington, CEO of Funds for Learning, a financial consulting firm for schools and libraries, told SmartBrief he thinks the repeal “is unlikely to have any significant impact on schools.” He conceded the repeal could affect web content aimed at consumers, but he noted that educational institutions typically don’t subscribe to those types of services (although students may do so).

If the repeal does spur more competition among Internet service providers, as some (including the FCC chairman) have predicted, Harrington said schools could take advantage of that to select a provider that will ensure speedy service for the campus, including online courses. The institution could even opt for faster service for learning content, and not-so-fast for less-critical content.

“This might give schools an opportunity to prioritize live Internet video feeds above emails and other web traffic that does not require real-time interaction,” he said.

Digital Use Trails Awareness

The vast majority of students, faculty, and administrators say they believe digital course materials will play an important role in meeting systemic challenges faced by higher education, according to the report Digital appetite vs. what’s on the table: Student attitudes toward digital course materials in 2016, derived from a recent Pearson Education survey.

More than 80% of both students and faculty view digital materials and courseware as the future of education. In addition, 78% of faculty realize that digital courseware benefits students and 70% see the migration from print to digital content as important to themselves personally. However, implementation and use has some catching up to do, as only 56% of students and instructors said half or more of their courses had used digital materials in the past six months.

“Educators’ appetites for digital course materials and courseware are growing, the capabilities are available, but the stark reality is that they—and their students—just aren’t biting,” the report said.

Forty-four percent of students said they still prefer to have all their learning materials available in a print format. Almost 60% declared that it’s the learning institution’s responsibility to help them shift from a reliance on print to greater use of digital content.

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.

Little by Little, Faculty Moving to Digital

College and university faculty are slowly warming up to digital course materials, even though the vast majority (93%) primarily used print textbooks in the last academic year, according to the first Faculty Watch survey conducted by NACS OnCampus Research.

Despite the high use of print last year, fewer profs are sticking with print this fall. Just 81% are planning to require paper course materials for their classes this year. In lieu of some or all of their print materials, 63% of instructors are asking students to log into digital materials through the institution’s learning management system, 36% are adopting digital textbooks, and 28% are requiring access codes for publisher-produced content online.

All in all, most faculty have reached a fairly high level of ease with digital technology in the classroom. Only 7% of Faculty Watch respondents said they are not at all comfortable with e-technology, while at the other end of the spectrum 29% feel extremely at home with digital tech. Most are in the middle: 23% are very comfortable, 25% slightly, and 16% moderately.

Still, faculty expressed some concerns about the efficacy of some digital formats. Almost one quarter of them said e-textbooks were not as effective as their print counterparts in aiding students to absorb and comprehend information. However, they hold a higher regard for online content accessed through a code: 49% of instructors felt this type of material actually helps students to learn better.

The difference may lie in the fact that much of the access-code content has been developed specificially for online consumption with extra bells and whistles to assist students and instructors, while some e-books are still little more than PDFs.

More highlights from the Faculty Watch results are available in the key findings report. In addition, the press release includes downloadable infographics.

Duo Developing App to Create Open E-Books

A small startup based in Ann Arbor, MI, is trying to raise money to develop an open-source application called PageKicker that would find open content online and repackage it into an e-book almost immediately.

“The problem we are solving is one that most people take for granted: Writing and publishing a book takes months of effort and costs tens of thousands of dollars in fully loaded labor costs,” says the PageKicker website. “We are changing that, and the world of writing and publishing will never be the same.”

The app would use an algorithm to search for relevant topical content, analyze the material, convert everything into an e-readable format, assemble the finished product, and deliver it within a few minutes. “Push a button, build a book,” PageKicker promises.

Founders Fred Zimmerman and Ken Leith claim to have a prototype ready, but are looking for investors to help complete development of a 1.0 version for Android and iOS.

New Concept for Digital Textbooks

Concept maps, which represent topics that are connected in a circle or square, are normally used as a study or review tool. An assistant professor of engineering at Pennsylvania State University, Mont Alto, decided to put the map to use as a primary course resource.

Jacob Moore created the Adaptive Map Digital Textbook, which shows the topics covered as points on map. Each topic is connected with related themes and when students click on the point, they are taken to a content page that includes video lectures, example problems, and diagrams.

“A lot of people focus on students making concept maps at the end of semesters to review what they know,” Moore said in an article on Penn State News. “But another way you can use them is as a guide to help students fit smaller topics into the big picture of the course.”

The digital textbook is available on all devices and it’s free. Moore uses a Creative Commons noncommercial license to keep all code and content open-source.

“It’s not uncommon to see students skip buying textbooks just because they don’t have the money, or they split the cost with a roommate and they have to pass it back and forth all the time,” he said. “If you remove those cost barriers, everyone will have better access to these tools. With the Adaptive Map Digital Textbook, as long as students have access to a computer, they have their textbook.”

Digital Sales Are No. 1

Some of the largest education publishers say that most of their sales and revenues are from digital products. Both McGraw-Hill Education and Cengage Learning are releasing financial information for 2015 that backs up that claim.

This shift to digital would represent a major milestone for the industry, but there are questions about how publishers define “digital sales.”

According to Carl Straumsheim of Inside HigherEducation, digital sales at Cengage can mean selling access to a digital product, but also selling an e-book, a textbook bundled with online components, or digital supplementary material. McGraw-Hill also counts bundles, but only reports the portion of the sales value of the digital component. Pearson does not differentiate between digital and print sales.

Publishers have even started promoting themselves as providers of digital course material because it sounds better than saying the firms are still driven by print, according to management consultant Joseph J. Esposito. He added that digital course materials give publishers a way to sell directly to students, lowering their costs and subsequently textbook prices.

“No college publisher likes to talk about this because they don’t want to alienate the retail channel, which they need right now,” Esposito wrote in an email to Straumsheim.

Students May Be Coming Around to E-Textbooks

This post has been updated.

It’s well-documented that most college students would opt to acquire print textbooks instead of digital if cost wasn’t a factor. However, students are slowly warming up to digital course materials.

Some One publisher reported that 20% of its total book units sold are in digital formats, according to Tim Haitaian, co-founder and COO of RedShelf, in his 2016 CAMEX session (E-Textbooks: The Trend is Happening Now. Are You Ready?) on March 5. While others fall more in the 2%-5% range, that's still an indicator of growing acceptance.

So who’s reading digital textbooks?

Students in the traditional college-age bracket (18-24) are more likely than older students to use digital materials for class, with this age group accounting for approximately 60%-70% of digital text sales. About 55% of digital sales go to female students, Haitaian said.

Digital readers tend to “crack” their e-books in the morning, usually between 10 a.m. and noon, and they spend around 35 minutes on average per reading session. That’s about 10 minutes longer than just a couple years ago, Haitaian noted, indicating students are getting somewhat more comfortable with studying from a screen.

However, despite the extra bells and whistles most digital materials offer, students still typically treat their digital books like print ones. Highlighting sentences is the most popular digital tool, followed by the ability to highlight entire sections. 

Digital Library Textbooks Not an Ideal Fix

Sooner or later, any discussion about making course materials more affordable comes around to this question: Why not publish all textbooks in digital format and make them available through the campus library?

That always seems like the perfect solution to people who aren’t actually involved in creating, acquiring, or using textbooks. For college students and researchers, digital materials via the library represent a mixed bag. The campus newspaper at the University of Virginia-Wise aptly highlighted some of those plusses and minuses.

On the up side, through database subscriptions, libraries can provide access to digital materials that they wouldn’t be able to acquire in print. Conversely, the Highland Cavalier noted, some older databases are stored on CD-ROMs, which makes them inaccessible to users of new computers that don’t have a CD slot.

Unlike print copies, libraries don’t own all of the digital works in their catalogs. Access is lost when the subscription lapses or if a publisher terminates a title. In any case, many textbooks don’t tap into the extra functionality offered by digital technologies because they were created specifically for print consumption.

“Most textbook authors do not have the expertise to create this kind of [digital] content,” a mathematics professor and textbook author told the Highland Cavalier article. “As long as a book exists in both digital and paper form, there is a desire to keep the two versions similar.”

Teachers Want More Say in Ed Tech

There have been numerous reports on the growing use of technology in K-12 schools—tablets issued to students, educational software and games, online course materials, and much more—and a lot of speculation on whether it improves teaching and learning.

A new study, however, indicates that the majority of K-12 teachers say they weren’t included in decisions about educational technology at their schools, according to T.H.E. Journal. Yet, 63% of teacher respondents felt they really should lead the exploration of ed-tech platforms and applications to choose which are the best for students.

In most cases, the teachers pointed to school and district administrators and other leaders as responsible for making technology decisions, often with limited input from the teaching staff. “Forty-eight percent of respondents said they believe cost is the primary influence on ed-tech selection—much more so than student outcomes (22%) or teacher buy-in (9%),” said T.H.E. Journal.

Most teachers (62%) would prefer for someone else to do the basic research on ed-tech systems and provide a list of options to them for a final review and decision; only 26% would rather do all the legwork themselves. However, they don’t see much of a role for parents. In ranking all the stakeholders in order of importance in educational technology decision-making, 49% of teachers put parents dead last.

The survey of 4,300 teachers was conducted by TES Global, an online community for teachers, and the Jefferson Education Accelerator, which develops ed-tech solutions.

Students Do Just as Well Using OER

Studies continue to find students saying they prefer printed textbooks over online course materials. New research, though, has found the type of course material may not matter all that much.

The study by Brigham Young University and the Michigan State Department of Education reported students who used open educational resources (OER) online did just as well or better than those assigned commercial printed textbooks. The findings compared the success rates of 5,000 students using digital OER to a control group of 11,000 students using traditional textbooks enrolled in 15 undergraduate courses.

Researchers found no significant difference between the groups when it came to completing a course. In the area of passing with a grade of C- or better, both groups passed at the same rates in nine of the courses while digital OER students did better than the control group in five other courses. In the 15th course, students using printed textbooks did better than those using digital content.

The average credit load for the OER students was 13 in the fall and 11 for the winter, while commercial textbook users averaged 11 credit hours in the fall and nine for the winter. Students using OER enrolled in more credit courses the following semester as well, according to a report in Campus Technology.

“Hundreds of millions of dollars and person-hours have been invested in improving in-class instructional designs, intelligent tutoring systems, adaptive instructional systems, and other design-related innovations intended to improve student outcomes,” the researchers wrote. “The current study demonstrates that at least one noninstructional design option exists that can effectively improve student outcomes.”

Study Finds Students Need to Read

Students may not like this, but some digital textbooks can tell instructors just how much of the course reading they are actually doing. The digital text can even determine if a student fell asleep with the book open.

Not surprisingly, a new study found students who spent more time actually reading their textbooks—not just speed-skimming—got better grades. The survey of 269 undergraduates at Texas A&M University-San Antonio using digital content reported that the number of minutes spent reading was an important factor in getting better grades, but that students averaged less than three hours of reading per class.

“It’s not that students were overworked or required to read a crazy amount,” Reynol Junco, the Iowa State University professor who conducted the research, said in a report for Bloomberg Business. “The reading was pretty fair for college students.”

The good news, according to Junco, is that checking study habits can also help faculty identify students who are in trouble before they get a bad grade.

Too Much Tech Doesn't Help Learning

A study from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that moderate use of technology by students tends to produce better learning outcomes. The research also noted that students who use computers frequently often have much worse learning outcomes.

The report, Students, Computers, and Learning: Making The Connection, evaluated students from 31 countries in areas such as digital skills and comparing reading comprehension between print and digital formats.

Students from Singapore, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, and Canada were the top performers in the digital skills assessments. Students from the United States and Canada performed better in digital reading, while those from Poland and Shanghai were stronger in reading print formats.

“School systems need to find more effective ways to integrate technology into teaching and learning to provide educators with learning environments that support 21st-century pedagogies and provide children with the 21st-century skills they need to succeed in tomorrow’s world,” Andreas Schleicher, OECD director for education and skills, said in an article in eSchool news.  “Technology is the only way to dramatically expand access to knowledge. To deliver on the promises technology holds, countries need to invent more effectively and ensure that teachers are at the forefront of designing and implementing this change.”

Frequent Web Users Also Like E-Textbooks

A study of college students required to use digital textbooks for an online course revealed something that should have been obvious: Students who typically spent a lot of time online—whether for studying or socializing—preferred the e-texts over hardcopy books, while students who went online less often would rather use print textbooks.

The study, which appeared in Education magazine and was conducted at the University of Texas at El Paso, also determined that the students who favored print were at no disadvantage in the class due to the digital requirement. Students preferring p-texts earned about the same average grades as the other students, suggesting they managed to get over any discomfort with the digital format.

Some students in the class had previously taken at least one other online course with e-textbooks, while for other students it was their first experience with a totally online class. As with the format preferences, though, there was no difference in student performance. The researchers also found that age, class year, courseload, and English-language skills had no impact on student success in the online course.

The heavy online users were able to understand instructions for accessing course content and e-texts more quickly than students who didn’t have as much experience online, although ultimately that didn’t affect their class performance either.

However, students did have a number of quibbles with digital textbooks, which led the research team to recommend some fixes for publishers and instructors.

“E-texts should be absolutely free of technical glitches,” stated the study report. “It also should provide tools that students can use for studying, such as highlighting, page marking, making notes in a text file, and a launch path (or a progress bar) to access another section quickly.” Both publishers and professors should provide supplementary print booklets and resources to aid students with e-texts.

For students, the study advised “it is wise to order an e-text with the optional free loose-leaf and hole-punched print version. This would enable students who find it difficult to read for long periods of time on the computer screen, or experience difficulties when their Internet is not working, to have access to material which is comfortable to use while learning.”

Students Still Want Print Textbooks

Another survey of college students reported a significant number prefer using print textbooks over electronic versions. In fact, 72% of more than 500 current college students said they would rather use traditional textbooks in a poll conducted by Direct Textbook, a textbook price-comparison search engine.

Printed textbooks were easier to read and the fact that students normally ended up printing e-book pages anyway were among the reasons given for preferring traditional content. Students also cited the ability to highlight passages, their own lack of focus and concentration when studying with digital content, and classroom bans on tablets and laptops as reasons for wanting traditional textbooks.

The weight of e-textbooks and the fact they didn’t have to be returned were among the reasons 27% of the respondents preferred electronic textbooks. Those students also liked that e-books are more environmentally friendly, searchable, and can convert text to audio, but some of the students indicated they preferred e-books for recreational  reading and rather than for learning.

The report noted that Student Monitor research has found that 87% of the textbooks purchased or rented in 2014 were print editions, while e-textbooks made up just 9% of the market. One surprising outcome of the Direct Textbook poll was that both students who preferred print books and those who wanted e-books cited lower costs as a reason for their format preference.

“Given the ubiquity of e-book-reading devices on college campuses, it’s interesting that students prefer print textbooks over e-books, and that purchasing behavior supports that sentiment,” said Morgan MacArthur, chief technology officer of Direct Textbook. “What’s even more interesting are the differences in perception: Both students who preferred textbooks and those who preferred e-books cited lower prices as a reason.”

UT Offering First All-Digital Degree Program

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, Edinburg, launched a new degree program that eliminates the need for traditional textbooks. Freshmen enrolled in biomedical sciences were given iPads at orientation and all course materials for the program will be delivered to them on the device.

The program, designed by the UT System’s Institute for Transformational Learning, is the first step in a competency-based education initiative by the institution. Courses will be delivered in a combination of online, classroom, laboratory, or clinical formats, according to a report on the My Harlingen News blog.

“Using elements of the competency-based approach and student services supporting creativity, determination, and drive, UTRGV students are going to be better prepared to take the MCAT, enter medical school, and be successful medical students,” said Francisco Fernandez, dean of the UTRGV College of Medicine. “What this will result in is more qualified doctors coming from the Rio Grande Valley who have the power to transform this community.”

Students will use their iPads to access classroom and online content through a mobile-first application designed by the UT System known as the total education experience or TEx. The TEx app is highly personalized and allows students to speak with classmates and faculty online anytime.

“The most exciting moment for all of us will come in the following years when we see students succeeding by graduating, entering medical school, and becoming knowledgeable and talented biomedical researchers and health-care professionals,” said Marni Baker Stein, chief innovation officer for the UT System.

Lynn Launching New iPad Programs

Lynn University has been a pioneer in the use of iPads in education. The Boca Raton, FL, institution is at it again, using the device to offer an online bachelor’s degree program that will cost students about the same as the average state university tuition.

The iLynn program, which will begin in the fall, is designed to provide personalized learning and unlimited access to its collaborative tools. The school is also launching the Lynn University Digital Press to publish scholarly works for its iPad and iTunes U academic content.

Lynn faculty members have already created 24 e-textbooks and are working on another dozen. Instructors receive a new laptop with iBooks Author software and a $2,000 stipend for participating in the program.

“We’ve felt we really needed infrastructure around our faculty so they could concentrate on the right content and not necessarily on being experts in being an author or editing or rights and permissions,” Chris Boniforti, chief information officer at Lynn, told Inside Higher Education.

Why Students Prefer Print

Surveys have shown that readers, particularly college students, still prefer print. A University of Washington study even found that a quarter of its students still bought print versions of e-textbooks that were available for free.

Researchers have found the location of information on a printed page plays a key role in comprehension. The problem for on-screen reading is that users tend to skim and comprehension suffers because of it, according to Naomi S. Baron, a linguist at American University and author of Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital World.

“These are people who aren’t supposed to remember what it’s like to even smell books,” she told The Washington Post. “It’s quite astounding.”

Online distraction is another issue. Baron found that 90% of the students reported they were more likely to multitask while online. Students also seem to have a lazy streak. Many told her they preferred renting textbooks that have important passages already highlighted and have notes in the margins.

Students do prefer digital for science and math classes, especially course materials that include online portals to help them work through problems. They also prefer digital materials that help them locate information quickly and—no surprise here—content that is free, even though Baron found that many would take the printed book if price wasn’t a factor.

Purdue Expanding It's Use of OER

Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, recently partnered with Amazon with the intent of saving its students money on everything from soup to textbooks. Now, the institution is working to take textbooks out of the equation altogether, or at least some of them.

The university is hoping to save geometry and calculus students up to $1 million by expanding its use of the Learning Online Network with Computer-Assisted Personalized Approach (LON-CAPA), according to a report in The Lafayette Journal & Courier. Professors can use the open education resources (OER) that make up the LON-CAPA program instead of textbooks or the university’s WebAssign program, which offers online lessons and grades assignments based on content from major publishers and can cost more than $100 per course.

Purdue’s biology department has been using LON-CAPA since it was developed by Michigan State University in 1992; physics, chemistry, and political science are also using similar programs. With 4,500 students enrolled in geometry and calculus, Purdue will be among the first to launch the program on such a large scale.

“It used to be a student could get by maybe without buying a book or buying a used book or sharing a book,” said Frank Dolley, vice provost for teaching and learning. “Now, these courses have access codes. You have to have the code to get into the class because you have to have that system to submit your homework. The students are somewhat trapped.”