Publishers Share Views in CAMEX Panel

Executives from six of the largest college textbook publishers offered their thoughts in a panel discussion at NACS’ Campus Market Expo (CAMEX) 2018 in Dallas, TX.

Ashley Gordon, a digital content strategist and founder of Mockingbird Publishing, moderated the discussion, sponsored by Cengage.

On the future of academics and course materials:

“There will be continued movement to digital,” said Scott Virkler, chief product officer, McGraw-Hill Education, “and pressure on schools to show outcomes.”

“I believe print will be around for some time to come. For a lot of students, that still makes a lot of sense,” said Mike Wright, vice president and director of sales, W.W. Norton & Co.

“The student consumer will have more choice” but will expect materials to directly contribute to their personal and professional success, said Tim Stookesberry, senior vice president, education, Wiley.

On ways publishers can work with campus bookstores to build stronger relationships with faculty:

“Stores have so much knowledge about students, you could help faculty make the best decision about what materials to adopt” and which format options are available, said Cheryl Costantini, vice president, content strategy, Cengage.

“Help faculty in understanding affordability. Faculty don’t care where students get materials and sometimes think students are getting a better deal,” said Bill Franck, senior vice president of sales, nursing and allied health, Elsevier-Health Sciences.

On ways to sustain inclusive access (programs that provide digital materials as part of a course fee):

“Be willing to change and adapt,” said Nik Osborne, senior vice president, strategy and business, Pearson. “We’re looking for opportunities to grow. By starting early together we can build out roles for each to play.”

Use of OER Could Rise Dramatically

The use of open education resources (OER) could triple over the next five years, according to a new report from Cengage Learning, while use of OER as supplemental learning materials might quadruple over the same period.

Cengage surveyed more the 500 faculty members, industry experts, and OER adopters for the report, Open Educational Resources and the Evolving Higher Education Landscape. Of faculty not already using OER, 77% said they either expect to use it or would consider using it in the next three years.

The main problem for OER adoption continues to be a lack of understanding by educators. The study found the most significant barrier to OER is “faculty perception of the time and effort required to find and evaluate it.” More than half of the respondents said the lack of a comprehensive catalog was an issue, while 42% cited challenges in finding what they needed as the biggest obstacle.

“If OER is to become truly mainstream, it will need to be integrated with personalized and adaptive learning technologies—including assessment and analytics—that help to improve student performance by mapping objectives to outcomes,” wrote the report’s authors. “Quality content can only go so far; it must be ‘wrapped’ in an instructionally designed framework that creates a cohesive and effective learning experience.”

OpenStax Working on Personalized Textbooks

OpenStax was founded to lower the cost of course materials through peer-reviewed open textbooks made available in print and digital formats. Now, it is trying to craft individualize textbooks for each student.

The nonprofit organization based at Rice University has received a $9 million grant to develop personalized, interactive textbooks for advance-placement Biology and high school physics. The new textbooks will be housed in the cloud and employ the same sort of algorithms Google and Amazon use to provide course materials that match the learning pace of individual students.

“Imagine a digital textbook where because I’m a different person and learn differently, my book is different than your book,” said OpenStax founder Richard Baraniuk. “Because I understand things in a different way from you, the book itself should change.”

Baraniuk envisions textbooks that will provide students with quizzes that pop up while they work through a topic to gauge their comprehension. Additional study material would also be available, depending on how the student does, and teachers could receive automatic email messages to track students’ progress.

“You know which page a student is on. You also know as they’re scrolling around where they might be within the page,” Baraniuk said. “You know when they’ve clicked on different simulations, practice problems, videos, etc. You have a sense of whether they’re playing those videos through to the end, going back to review material.”

OpenStax will spend the next two years working on these new textbooks, which will be viewable from a variety of digital devices and will go through the same sort of vetting process traditional textbooks go through to ensure quality.

Printed Textbooks Still Have a Future

There must be a reason why new surveys keeping finding that students prefer physical textbooks to digital formats. It could be that paper is just a better way for human beings to learn, according to technology writer Brandon Keim in an article in Wired.

A 2013 study showed that a group of Norwegian teens comprehended content better from books than from electronic devices. Other studies have suggested that’s because the feel of paper is important to learning, according to Keim.

“Reading experts say that sense of position is important,” he wrote. “It provides a sort of conceptual scaffold on which information and memory is automatically arranged, and the scaffold is strongest when built from both visual and tactile clues.”

An Israeli study showed that learning on screens was less effective than on paper and led to overconfidence in students. However, the same report also found that when students preferred using an electronic device, they learned less when required to read from paper, suggesting there’s room for both formats.

“Maybe it’s time to start thinking of paper and screens another way: not as an old technology and its inevitable replacement, but as different and complementary interfaces, each stimulating particular modes of thinking,” Keim wrote. “Maybe paper is a technology uniquely suited for imbibing novels and essays and complex narratives, just as screens are for browsing and scanning.”

Bill to Expand Use of Open Textbooks

Rep. Ruben Hinojosa (D-TX) introduced legislation that would create a grant program for colleges and universities to create and expand the use of open-access  textbooks. The Affordable College Textbook Act would give the public the right to access, customize, and distribute the online content in an effort to curb the rising costs of supplies and course materials.

Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Al Franken (D-MN) have introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

If passed, the law would establish a grant program to support efforts to create and expand the use of open-access textbooks with priority placed on those pilots that achieve the highest savings. It would also guarantee that open educational material would be easily accessible and require institutions to report on the effectiveness of any funded program.

“Simply put, this is about making college more accessible and more affordable for students who are eager to earn their college degree,” Hinojosa wrote in a guest column for a South Texas newspaper.

Digital Textbooks Cheaper But Not Easy

It’s a given, many in the education world say, that almost all textbooks and other course materials will go digital within a few years. Paper texts will be as dead as the trees from which they’re made.

That seems likely if you consider indicators such as the financial statements from major publishers. Pearson, the largest of the textbook producers, reported a few weeks ago that digital publishing and services now make up half of its income—a first for the company. Other textbook publishers are also experiencing rises in digital sales.

Yet, college students aren’t all that crazy about digital textbooks, even though they prefer digital formats for personal communications and entertainment. A commentary in Carnegie Mellon University’s campus newspaper, written by a CMU student who first experienced online course materials in high school, describes how the negatives of digital textbooks ultimately cancel out the positives.

In short, the student writer says, it’s simply harder to study course materials on a digital screen. Even homework is often online now, he notes, and some multiple-choice exercises can be gamed, undermining retention of concepts.

If sales of digital course materials are growing, it’s probably because they frequently cost less, a persuasive factor. The Educause/Internet2 e-textbook pilot conducted during the 2012-13 academic year found that lower prices was the biggest incentive for using digital materials for both students and faculty members. 

Report: Students Moving to Digital

While some studies suggest students are still happy with printed textbooks, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) has found the movement to digital content is gaining steam.

In its latest installment of the ongoing study Student Attitudes Toward Content in Higher Education, BISG reports a 12% drop in student preference for print over digital text, from 72% preferring print in November 2011 to 60% late last year. At the same time, student satisfaction with digital textbooks slipped from 30% in the 2011 survey to 26% in the newest report.

“Simply transferring a print textbook to a digital format doesn’t work with this crowd,” said Angela Bole, deputy executive director of BISG, in a release. “This is a market that’s tremendously dynamic and changing rapidly. It’s essential to watch it closely.”

The study also found that only half of the students in the survey were willing to buy the latest version of their assigned textbook, while rental as the preferred option has increased from 8% of respondents in 2011 to 13% in 2012. In addition, the use of tablet computers to read digital textbooks grew to 37% of responding students in 2012, while the use of laptop computers fell to 72%.

Publishers Find Ways to Make iBooks Work

Apple made a splash when it partnered with the three largest K-12 publishers to provide textbooks for its iPad devices through the iBookstore. McGraw-Hill Education has released six titles for the iPad since that January announcement, with Pearson Learning contributing six math and science texts, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) adding two social studies textbooks to the total.

So far, it’s been a good experience for students, who seem to enjoy the enhanced learning experience, and for publishers, who have found new ways to incorporate graphics, audio, and video into their textbooks.

“Really, what an iBook is, at the end of the day, is freed from the constraint of the traditional page as we know it,” said Bethlam Forsa, executive vice president for product development and publishing operations at HMH, in an interview with T.H.E. Journal. “And it’s allowed us to make significant user enhancements around it.”

The publishers have been able to better understand the concerns schools have about the new technology, including costs associated with providing the tablets and the existing infrastructure with which schools must work. Schools will adopt the technology at different rates and the publishers have to keep an eye on making that transition as smooth as possible.

“In terms of purchasing the electronic versions of the content, it follows our same types of sales and licensing and use model,” said Vineet Madan, senior vice president of new ventures at McGraw-Hill. "What usually happens is the school districts will purchase them for a few school buildings or individual school buildings, and then manage provisioning of the associated devices that have access to that content.”

Should Printed Textbooks Be Obsolete? Maybe Not.

Education Secretary Arne Duncan recently told the National Press Club that “textbooks should be obsolete” and replaced with e-readers and multimedia web sites. While an appealing idea, digital materials are still unproven as an effective learning platform, according a New York Times opinion piece by Justin Hollander, assistant professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University.

Hollander wonders if examples such as American cities bringing back streetcar lines after years of dismantling to make room for highways or the way consumers have started buying vinyl records again suggests that “We shouldn’t jump at a new technology simply because it has advantages.”

Hollander points to a study by Tufts colleague Maryanne Wolfe, an expert on the origins of reading and language learning, that looks at the effects of digital reading on learning. The results so far have been mixed. Her concern is that Internet reading could be the kind of distraction that cancels out other benefits from web-based e-learning.

Some of the other benefits of digital learning material can also be called into question. Hollander write that roller backpacks are a solution to the problem of students toting around heavy books. He adds that with all the talk of the cost savings of e-textbooks, very little is said about the price of the device, technical support, or software updates.

It took just two days for Dan Eldridge of TeleRead to respond to Hollander.

“It’s a bit of a stretch to suggest that digital books are ‘still unproven,’” Eldridge says. “But Hollander’s essay makes a good (if clichéd and overused) point: When advancements in new technologies lead us to discard the old ways of doing things, we often come to regret it. And while Hollander probably is guilty of making way too much out of a couple of sentences uttered at a press club, the point he makes may eventually lead to a conversation that’s very much worth having.”

Future of the textbooks: Publisher view

The Chronicle has a 9 minute podcast interview of William D. Rieders, executive vice president for new media at the publishing company Cengage Learning. It is a worthwhile podcast to listen to as it lays out some of where publishers see the future of etextbooks -- and it is not the PDF of the traditional textbook. As with many publishers, the company is focusing on interactive software programs -- like assessment tools and study tools.

One of the best quotes, also quoted in the summary:

Print textbooks are still healthy, but they function now as a reference for professors and students, while these other materials are taking center stage in the learning experience.

That the core function for textbooks is recognized as changing should be of concern to anyone whose core business is selling that product. It signals that the time is right to be moving toward models and capabilities that enable selling the "replacement product." Cengage has been very innovative in the past couple years, as have some of the other educational publishers, in experimenting and testing out different approaches to what the future of digital course materials might really look like.