Pros and Cons of Inclusive Access

More colleges and universities are offering inclusive-access programs for course materials because they see the model as ensuring wins for many involved.

Students get their course materials at discounted prices on the first day of class, making instructors happy. Publishers are guaranteed 100% sell-through for offering significant discounts on the content, which provides institutions with a way to show they are keeping costs in check. There’s also a role for the campus store because they have established relationships with all the parties involved—faculty, publishers, and students—and have the means to handle the transactions.

However, not everyone sees it as the best or only option.

Proponents of open educational resources view inclusive access as a model that just replicates the same publishing structures that led to rising textbook prices in the first place. Some faculty members also see inclusive access as an academic-freedom issue, limiting their choices on content to just one publisher.

“I do think it is likely that traditionally published content will continue to be used at colleges and universities, although whether or not it is through inclusive access remains to be seen,” said Nicole Allen, director of open education for the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition. “Textbook publishers have been through many iterations of models for proprietary digital content—it is hard to know how long any one will last.”

The 2017 Textbook Affordability Conference is Nov. 10-12 at Georgia Tech. Updates from the conference will be posted on Twitter using the hashtag #TAC2017Ignite.

New Standards Rate E-Books’ Accessibility

Benetech, a nonprofit social enterprise that focuses on scalable technology solutions to improve accessibility and human rights, has rolled out a third-party verification program that lets schools and colleges determine how well e-textbooks meet the needs of visually impaired or dyslexic students or those with other print disabilities.

Called Global Certified Accessible (GCA), the program was developed in conjunction with the U.K.’s Royal Institute for the Blind, Vision Australia, and Dedicon, a Dutch creator of accessibility products and services, and underwent a six-month pilot. GCA is a standardized ratings system for evaluating digital titles based on more than 100 accessibility features. It can be used by publishers as well as school districts and higher-ed institutions, and recommends remediation where content falls short of its standards.

“We find that files improve significantly after first-round reviews and that subsequent files reflect the insights gained from our feedback,” said a Benetech release.

Accessibility is a key issue for schools, both to serve students better and to avoid legal action for falling short. A Blackboard study earlier this year indicated that the average overall accessibility score for college and university campuses hasn’t improved greatly over the past five years, inching up from 27.5% to just 30.6%.

On the publishing side, Ingram Content Group will incorporate GCA into its VitalSource and CoreSource platforms. Elsevier, HarperCollins, Harvard Business Publishing, Macmillan Learning, and Penguin Random House are among GCA’s other early supporters, although the system is now open to all publishers.

“Every publisher should strive to make their content as accessible as possible,” Denis Saulnier, managing director of product design and delivery, higher education, for Harvard Business Publishing, said in a Benetech blog post. “The first step is getting an accurate snapshot of compliance. Benetech’s process is invaluable in identifying areas of improvement and helping to prioritize work.”

Access Codes Have Students Riled Up

College students have always complained about the cost of course materials. The latest target for concern is access codes for digital content.

Such codes typically range from $80-$150 per course and are often required to access homework assignments and quizzes. Since the fees are time-limited licenses, the codes can’t be shared or sold back to the campus store, and that’s generating criticism.

“When we talk about access codes, we see it as the new face of the textbook monopoly, a new way to lock students around this system,” Ethan Senack, federal higher-education advocate for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, told BuzzFeed News. “Rather than $250 [for a print textbook], you’re paying $120, but because it’s digital, it eliminates the used-book market and eliminates any sharing, and because homework and tests are through an access codes, it eliminates any ability to opt out.”

Publishers point out the codes are not only less expensive than printed textbooks, they also provide additional features such as personalized knowledge checks and video. McGraw-Hill Education reported a 12% increase in paid activations for its LearnSmart and Connect programs in 2015, while Pearson showed a 3% gain in global digital registrations for its MyLab programs.

“These digital products are not just mechanisms for students to submit homework, they offer all kinds of features,” said David Anderson, executive director of higher education for the Association of American Publishers. “It’s very robust in helping students understand in a way that you can’t do with a print homework assignment.”

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.

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.”

DRM Keeps Amazon in Driver's Seat

The contract tussle between Hachette and Amazon has been all over the news of late, but the problem is more than Amazon’s tactics. It’s the deal with the devil publishers signed up for years ago when they decided proprietary digital rights management (DRM) was the way to go, according to Ben Thompson in a Bloomberg News article.

Thompson, founder of Stratechery.com, a blog about the business and strategy of technology, wrote that since publishers were so worried about allowing free access to their content, they ended up putting Amazon in the negotiating driver’s seat.

“The problem with DRM, as Nook owners now know all too well, is that it ties your books to a single company,” Thompson wrote. “If you start buying Kindle books, you will always buy Kindle books, because your books will only ever work on a Kindle app.”

Thompson said he thinks publishers could change the balance of power by eliminating proprietary DRM.

“To be sure, this digital future would require a new business model,” Thompson wrote. “Publishers would need to rework their businesses from speculative investment to publishing-as-a-service, with upside directly tied to a book’s success.”

Such change might be difficult. In fact, George Packer wrote in an article for The New Yorker that Amazon executives believe publishers are so woefully behind the times that they probably will never catch up.

“I’ve worked with publishers, and here’s the thing: Amazon is largely right,” Thompson said. “Publishers, as currently constructed, simply aren’t prepared to compete in a world based on Internet economics.”

Saving Publishers, One Strategy at a Time

In view of the impact of online bookselling and self-publishing, technology commentator Guy Kawasaki thinks traditional trade publishers are in danger of going the way of the dodo. That’s the flightless bird eaten out of existence because it couldn’t adapt fast enough.

But, he says in a guest column for Publishing Perspectives, publishers who are able to “add value will profit and survive, and companies who don’t [will] wither and die.” He offers 10 strategies publishers can undertake to bring value to the process of developing, discovering, and distributing quality content.

Among those strategies are ditching the fight for digital rights management, a losing battle in Kawasaki’s view, and making it possible for print-book purchasers to receive a free copy of the electronic version every time they buy. The electronic version, of course, should be readable on any platform.

Kawasaki also thinks publishers need to support authors more, specifically by offering grants to help authors pay bills while they write, setting up a web marketplace for author services, and providing more assistance with marketing, especially in the social media realm. These strategies, he says, will not only boost the quality of books but also give publishers a better chance at unearthing standout authors.

The 10 strategies apply mostly to trade titles, not textbooks. However, given the recent hue and cry over open educational resources, the manner in which instructional materials are sourced and published is likely to shift. Cost concerns may force educational content to be published in smaller chunks that are not only cheaper and adaptable, but also produced by more freelance authors outside of academia.

In Defense of Publishers and Digital

Brian Kibby, president of McGraw-Hill Education, threw down the gauntlet in a recent essay for Inside Higher Education, asserting that there needs to be a complete shift to digital in higher education, and it needs to be done within the next 36 months. He claims lagging grades and student graduation rates, along with graduates not leaving schools with the skills employers need, as the reasons the digital shift is so important.

The problem with this challenge is those paying for the course materials aren’t buying it, according to Daniel Luzer, web editor of the Washington Monthly.

“That’s because students don’t actually like the digital model,” Luzer wrote. “While electronic might work well enough for some forms of reading: novels (particularly the trash sort where you don’t want people to see what you’re reading on the subway or whatever) and magazine articles, it’s not actually all that good for studying, where underlining and marking up the text is part of what enables people to learn. It’s just hard to study using anything other than print.”

He then suggests the possibility of an ulterior motive to Kibby’s challenge.

“What students really want are used or rental textbooks,” Luzer said. “Textbook rentals are very popular on college campuses. But then, McGraw-Hill doesn’t make any money off textbook rentals or used books.”

Making publishers out to be the bad guys may be good reading on a blog, but Luzer seems to fail to understand where digital course materials and education are headed, which is part of Kibby's point. Digital course materials of the future will be not be the “PDF-equivalent” that they are today, and it will not be about “reading” text like we may have in the pre- and early-digital dark ages.

While Kibby’s forecast may be aggressively optimistic, the future of course materials will be more digital, and more value-adding in terms of contributing to student success. What will replace textbooks are products that are interactive, incorporate assessments, and which are tied to improving learning outcomes. Most major publishers, like McGraw, are making substantive investments in higher education gaming solutions, assessment of content mastery, re-envisioned LMS and learning environments, adaptive learning materials, and a range of other digital products that we would hardly recognize as “textbooks.”

Regarding the ulterior motive ascribed to Kibby’s challenge, publishers like McGraw are publicly traded commercial enterprises, and thus have a distinct incentive to maximize financial returns. If current business practices (e.g., used and rental) do not allow them to generate revenue off of products they originally created, then we should expect they will explore and promote products and business models that do.

What students want is value at a reasonable price. That does not necessarily mean “used or rental” textbooks. They are just the perceived best option at the current time.

Our mission should be to improve educational affordability and student success. We should learn to stop bashing the publishers like an autoimmune response to change.

Do I like every publisher business practice?  No.  Are course material prices too high (generally speaking)?  Yes.  Are arguments like this productive or lead to better solutions?  Not likely.

We would be much better served by finding ways to be part of the new technologies and delivery models, and helping find ways to improve them, rather than giving the long-term suppliers and partners for our core product reasons to work against and around us. Let us take some accountability and help create options that address both affordability and student success, recognizing that many of these options will be substantively digital in the possibly not-to-distant future.

Publishers' Maneuvers Signal Need for Change

It’s no secret many colleges and universities are struggling to meet their budgets due to funding cuts and stagnant endowments. Many students, too, are having trouble covering tuition. But academic publishers are feeling the pinch as well, even as schools gear up for the fall term—the course-materials equivalent of the holiday shopping season.

Recent financial moves by two of the biggest college textbook publishers reveal signs of stress, which could redefine relationships with campus bookstores.

Last September, McGraw-Hill said it would spin off its educational publishing from its more profitable financial data publishing, creating two companies. However, the Wall Street Journal reported July 13 that a private equity firm is sniffing around the educational unit and may put in a bid to buy it.

In a separate report by Bloomberg News, Cengage Learning, grappling with debt from its own acquisition five years ago, may be considering an initial public offering to bring in cash.

“The academic publishers are under threat, and campus stores should not assume that they are immune or unaffected by that or similar factors. We should not look at challenging times among the publishers as a good thing,” says Mark Nelson, NACS chief information officer and vice president of NACS Media Solutions.

For independent and institutional campus stores, the situation doesn’t bode well. These stores are already a difficult (read: costly) channel for textbook publishers because each store must be dealt with on an individual basis. Systems vary from store to store, and some stores, astonishingly in this era, still don’t have full inventory management or e-commerce capabilities. Some tussle mightily with publishers who are trying to move into digital course materials.

“The more stores fight against publishers, the more publishers will be pushed to look at alternative channels they can potentially trust, such as direct-to-student,” Nelson says. “If they are working around campus stores as a channel, did anyone ever give thought to the possibility that it is because stores aren’t adding value to them as a channel as they once did?”

Yet the key to survival for both academic publishers and campus stores may lie in stronger partnerships. “The publishers need campus stores, and we need them if we are going to make it through the digital transition ahead,” Nelson says.

“Within NACS, we are developing or considering several mechanisms to improve publisher relations and industry relevance,” Nelson says. “We’re looking at communications that help publishers understand what we’re doing, both as an association and an industry. We’re looking to create a publisher advisory board to provide us with input into how to develop better programs and services, and create a stronger communication channel between stores and publishers.

“Logistically, this may be executed later this year through The Hub, the new online collaboration and knowledge management environment NACS is preparing to unveil at CAMEX 2013,” he adds. “NACS alone cannot solve these problems, however, if stores and publishers are unwilling to change their perspectives. If we fail to do so, we may all fail to transition.”

Incorrect Metadata Is An Issue for Publishers

Publishers understand the information about their e-books, such as author, title, and ISBN number, needs to be right. But, new Book Industry Study Group findings show that 95% of the metadata publishers use on their e-book titles is incorrect by the time it reaches the point of sales of online booksellers.

The research shows nearly half of the responding publishers use an automated system to check if their metadata on an online site is correct. A third check manually, while a fifth don’t bother to check their information at all. The study also suggests that when publishers are aware their metadata has been changed, about half have no idea where the change has occurred.

“When something is wrong at retail, it can be hard to fix because it isn’t clear where the change took place,” said Brian O’Leary of digital publishing consultancy Magellan Media, who is authoring the study. “If you don’t fix it at the source, it keeps coming back.”

Grow Custom: Pearson

Today's sponsor highlight of the Grow Custom Initiative is Pearson Learning Solutions (CAMEX Booth 5309).  CAMEX starts in just a couple days, please be sure to visit all of our Grow Custom sponsors!

1)              What do you see as the future of custom course materials?

a.      The marketplace for custom content will continue to be defined by engaging material that addresses students' unique needs. In the future, customized materials will play a leading role in evaluating student performance in the course. Pearson Learning Solutions (PLS) is at the forefront of this movement towards greater personalization. Our ability to help professors create new content and manage existing Pearson content that specifically addresses these issues is unparalleled. Content, whether print or digital, and technology will exist side by side for the foreseeable future and increasingly, we'll see digitally-based solutions for placement, learning and evaluation of student performance in the course.

2)              What role do you see for stores with custom course materials in the future?

a.      PLS engages with the college store as the concierge for all students' course needs. Whether it's print, digital, or a hybrid solution, the college store on-site or online is the venue of choice for a campus-based or distance learner. The store management team will likely become more proactive in helping faculty and students recognize the value of customized material as a superior offering for all stakeholders in the campus community.

3)              What makes your product or service unique?

a.      PLS takes a holistic approach to the creation and delivery of custom content. Our editors, in conjunction with a talented PearsonONE sales team, make every effort to "dig deep" and find the right solution for every instructor in every course. We partner with faculty to adapt existing materials and find and create additional resources that result in an enhanced print/digital solution that's tailor made to the instructor's individual course. We call those CUSTOM+ solutions.  In addition, we offer a range of world-class educational services "beyond the book" that provide cost-effective and pedagogically sound solutions for almost any adoption at a variety of price points. 
 

4)              What products or services do you offer in this space?

a.     PLS offers a variety of print and digital solutions that can be customized to individual faculty needs. For example, we can publish a simple book of third-party readings in black and white with an attractive cover.  Or, if an instructor wants to personalize his or her own textbook, the Pearson Custom Library offers state-of-the art, on-demand publishing solutions. Pearson Custom Library uses a simple user interface that allows an instructor to select from thousands of textbook chapters and third-party readings. Instructors can even upload their own material for additional levels of customization.  For online courseware, Pearson's CourseConnect offers customizable online courses with recommended course descriptions, syllabi, lessons containing rich media, graphics and interactivities, discussion questions and assessment banks.  

5)              Who should stores contact for more information?

a.      More information about PLS products and services can be found at www.pearsonlearningsolutions.com. Don Golini is the PLS Director of Bookseller & Vendor Relations and can be reached via email:  don.golini@pearson.com.

Grow Custom: John Wiley & Sons

Today’s highlighted sponsor of the Grow Custom Initiative is John Wiley and Sons (CAMEX Booth 4800).   CAMEX is now just a few days away.  Be sure to attend the Digital Update on Saturday afternoon, or visit the NMS area within the NACS Opportunity Hub to learn about these and other developments.   We will have information at the booth to help you find your way to each of the Grow Custom sponsors. 

1)         What do you see as the future of custom course materials?

The demand for Custom course materials continues to grow because it answers a need.  Custom publishing allows instructors to create a product tailored to their specific course needs allowing the students to only pay for the content that will be used- whether that’s select textbook chapters, readings, professor created content or some combination.  We foresee Custom moving from Customized Content to Customized Curriculum.   These offerings will integrate assessment elements and media components with the customized print or digital content.

2)         What role do you see for stores with custom course materials in the future?

The campus bookstore provides a one-stop shop for students to easily get access to their custom materials.  Often it is the best (and usually only) place carrying the product.  Wiley continues to see the bookstore as a partner in delivering quality material to students.  

3)         What makes your product or service unique?  What products or services do you offer in this space?

Wiley Custom Learning Solutions is our full-service custom publishing department that offers an array of tools and services designed to put content creation in instructors’ hands. Our suite of custom products empowers users to create high-quality, economical education solutions tailored to meet individual classroom needs. For example, Wiley Custom Select is a revolutionary custom textbook system that allows the instructor to “build” customized materials tailored to their course needs. In a simple 3-step process, instructors create a textbook containing the content they want, in the order they want, and delivered in a printed or digital format of their choice.  To view a demo of this site, visit www.wiley.com/college/wcsdemo.

4)         Who should stores contact for more information?

At CAMEX, please look for Rich Bigger (rbigger@wiley.com), Director of Customer Relations, at the Wiley booth.  Bookstores can also work with their local campus sales representative (www.wiley.com/college/rep).

New Start-Up Publishing Company

Booktype is a new device-agnostic open source publishing company that allows anyone to publish a book by themselves or with others through the web.  Booktype’s tool allows easy attributions, remix and reuse content, translate, use of preset book formats, and sets ISBN numbers for new books.

To read their press release and watch their video click here.

Booktype’s entry into the publishing world is yet another sign that change is happening in this industry and an opportunity area where campus stores need to pay close attention.  With Amazon, Apple, and more recently, Inkling, all offering new publishing tools for authors this is a clear signal that the way and how content is being created and delivered is transforming the publishing industry.  Stores ought to consider how they fit into this new model if faculty wants to adopt content developed in this way.  Some of these models could make it easier to produce and manage OER content as well.

This new trend creates opportunities for stores to engage and educate faculty and students.  Stores, working with these and other vendors can provide publishing services for the faculty on campus in order to better establish its relevancy on campus.  NACS Media Solutions will be announcing a partnership in this area at CAMEX to help stores begin building community-based publishing services.

Grow Custom: Cengage Learning

Once again we are highlighting one of the sponsors for the NMS Grow Custom initiative.  Today’s highlight is on Cengage Learning (CAMEX Booth #4414).  If you are attending CAMEX please remember to visit the Grow Custom sponsors and stop by the NMS area within the Opportunity Hub to learn more about this initiative.

1)      What do you see as the future of custom course materials?

We expect even more faculty to want to adopt course materials that are customized to fit their syllabus.  We are currently starting to experience faculty demand for customized digital content as well as print.

2)      What role do you see for stores with custom course materials in the future?

Given the great advantages that stores realize from custom materials – especially the excellent student sell-through – we expect more and more stores will work with publishers to identify the best custom opportunities on their campuses (those traditional adoptions with low sell-through) as targets to reinvent as custom.  Stores will also partner with publishers to emphasize the student and faculty value through in-class and in-store marketing.

3)      What makes your product or service unique?  What products or services do you offer in this space?

Cengage Learning recently installed state-of-the-art printing capability in the distribution center which is designed to reduce turnaround time on custom titles.  Cengage Learning also has twice the return limit on custom as compared to our competitors (20% vs. 10%) even though the actual returns rate has remained below 10% in spite of larger initial orders from stores.  This reflects the excellent student sell-through that stores are experiencing with custom materials.

4)      Who should stores contact for more information?

Please contact Susan Stout, Cengage Learning’s College Store Marketing Manager at susan.stout@cengage.com, or contact your Cengage Learning reps for more information and to work together to drive more mutually-beneficial custom business.

Grow Custom: McGraw-Hill

Next in our continuing series on the Grow Custom Initiative, today's highlighted sponsor is McGraw Hill (CAMEX Booth

4014).

1)         What do you see as the future of custom course materials?

The adoption and use of custom course materials will continue to increase rapidly because custom course materials can better meet the needs of students and instructors. Instructors can combine their own materials with publishers’ content to create custom course materials that meet the specific needs of their courses. Custom materials allow students to purchase only the materials they actually need for a course.

2)         What role do you see for stores with custom course materials in the future?

Because custom materials are customized for a specific course at a specific school, the best (sometimes only) place for a student to acquire them is their college bookstore. Online and national distributors will not carry custom materials because they cannot be sold at other schools. Students trust the college store to have exactly what they need for their courses, so there is no uncertainty or confusion about which product to buy. Stores are trusted by faculty as well and are a valuable resource when working with instructors to customize course materials.

3)         What makes your product or service unique?  What products or services do you offer in this space?

Our Create custom book-builder product offers instructors the ability to create their own customized textbooks. Create includes McGraw-Hill content as well as valuable “Special Collection” content from third-party sources. Instructors may also upload their own content and include it in their custom text. Create is the easiest custom publishing site available today, with an intuitive and clean user interface. In addition to create, McGraw-Hill’s Learning Solutions team also offers complete print and digital custom capabilities as well as curriculum design and original content creation services.

4)         Who should stores contact for more information?

Please contact Carter Alligood for more information:

Carter Alligood

Channel Manager

McGraw-Hill Higher Education
1333 Burr Ridge Parkway

Burr Ridge, IL 60525

carter_alligood@mcgraw-hill.com

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. 

Pearson to Offer Free Learning Management System

This week Pearson announced a new learning management system that will be free to colleges without having to pay any of the usual licensing or maintenance fees.  The new platform, called OpenClass, will offer free support, hosting and upgrades in addition to the service itself making it very attractive to current open-source users since open source systems still charge for services. 

OpenClass is  “absolutely for free,” says Adrian Sannier, senior vice president of product at Pearson and former CIO at Arizona State University. “No licensing costs, no costs for maintenance, and no costs for hosting. So this is a freer offer than Moodle is. It’s a freer offer than any other in the space.”

“By freeing the LMS, Pearson seems to want to steer higher education dollars away from e-learning platforms and toward e-learning content,” says Phil Hill, executive vice president of the Delta Initiative, an I.T. consulting firm.   In doing so, Pearson is “potentially outflanking Blackboard,” because while Blackboard still relies heavily on revenues from its LMS licenses, Pearson has its “core business in digital content,” says Hill. Relegating the LMS to commodity status, while elevating content, plays to its strengths, he says.

According to the article, “Pearson says it is taking a strategic cue from Google, which offers its cloud-based e-mail and applications suite to colleges for free in an effort to secure “mind share” among the students and professors who use it. Like Google with its Apps for Education — with which Pearson has partnered for its beta launch — the media conglomerate is hoping to use OpenClass as a loss leader that points students and professors toward those products that the company’s higher ed division sees as the future of its bottom line: e-textbooks, e-tutoring software, and other “digital content” products.”

“Whether Pearson can pull off its end-run around the LMS market depends largely on whether it can convince its competitors in the publishing world to play nice with OpenClass, says Lev Gonick, the Case Western CIO.

“Integrating sophisticated digital content into a cloud-based LMS involves a lot of coordination between the platform provider and content provider, says Gonick. So Pearson might have to court its fellow publishers before it can guarantee to professors that OpenClass will support the content they want, he says. “I don’t think that’s a slam dunk,” says Gonick.

‘If the endgame of taking on the LMS market with OpenClass is to up-sell Pearson’s line digital content products,” he says, “Why would any other publisher want to give that advantage to a competitor?” Pearson might be using Google as a model, but Google did not have to partner with Microsoft to get institutions to adopt its suite of education apps, he says.

“Certainly, we’re aware of this issue,” says Matt Leavy, CEO of Pearson’s eCollege, adding that “there’s probably a lot of negotiating and deal-making to come” with both publishers and distributors. But he said he does not think instructors will require OpenClass to support all types of digital content from other publishers as a prerequisite to signing up. “A lot of professors don’t have that expectation of deep integration,” Leavy says, “and shallow integrations” — i.e., embedding simple links inside the LMS — “are still available to them.”

Largest Postsecondary iPad-based eTextbook Initiative

In a recent press release the Eminata Group, one of Canada's larger independent post-secondary institutions, and Pearson are partnering to deliver all of Eminat’s campus’ course content via Apple iPad. This is the largest such initiative in North America.  It currently being piloted in a few programs in four campuses but over the next three years the partnership hopes to bring all programs under a digital delivery system.    The pilot covers hundreds of Pearson texts, and will allow students access to content via iPads or back on Macs/PCs.

The number of pilots continues to increase, and it is important that we keep a broader eye to track experiments or developments that might otherwise fly under the radar.  The for-profit and professional schools appear to be moving toward digital more quickly.  This is likely because of the greater control over curriculum, and student populations that consist more of adult learners and workforce-based learners who tend to find digital course materials more convenient.  Even so, these experiments are worth watching as some lessons learned here will flow into the more traditional higher education market.

Learn from Wiley’s Legacy and Leadership

Guest Blog: Veronica Gancov, Digital Media Specialist, NACS-MS

The transition from print to digital for many publishers can be a difficult one, but for Wiley, a company that has been in business for more than 200 years, persistence has been key to their online success. Their transition from print to digital is examined in the Book Business webinar "Learn From Wiley’s Legacy and Leadership." Wiley began its digital transition more than 10 years ago, and it has honed its online presence into that of a leader in the field of academic and scientific publishing.

Since 1995, Wiley has explored all avenues of online and ebook formats, beginning with “Journal of Interactive Surgery.” In 2010, Wiley launched the “Wiley Online Library,” which is the second most-visited academic publisher web site according to Alexa Web traffic metrics. They have amassed more than 9,000 books, and hundreds of multi-volume reference works, laboratory protocols, and databases.

Under Wiley’s outgoing CEO and President of 23 years, William J. Pesce, Wiley consistently gained market share and profitability, and executed three of the largest and most successful acquisitions in the company’s history. Pesce says that the development work in going digital is incremental, layering on technology along with print.

Wiley has looked for multiple formats and multiple modes of delivery on its path to becoming a digital leader, and has designed and redesigned many workflows to find the optimal one. Wiley also acquired different partnerships with other companies, as well as acquiring other companies outright, and recruited talent from outside the publishing business in order to have greater control over their digital formats.

Stephen Smith, Wiley’s incoming President & CEO, who has been with the company since 1992, commented on the way that Wiley has prioritized what they wanted handled in-house as opposed to outsourcing the digital process. According to Smith, Wiley has always wanted to add value to the customer. He emphasizes that digital strategy is a huge consideration for any publishing business, and that the more flexible the content formats are that are offered, the more value is added to the customer.

When Wiley InterScience was launched, the company knew they needed a partner for the technical project of putting the journal online and developing access controls and search functions. Since Wiley did not have the capabilities in house, they brought them in house and found ways to work with them.

In December, Wiley Blackwell, the STMS and scholarly business publishing division of Wiley, announced the launch of mobile apps for select science journals. Smith sees this as a stand alone revenue opportunity, and he sees mobile as part of the overall mix, with advertising opportunities that will be interesting as well. Smith also states that although they are exploring these new avenues, they have not abandoned print altogether, but utilize POD to handle the lesser print load.

Publishers Try to Come to Grips with Digital Challenge

Publishing executives painted a rather gloomy picture of their world at the first World E-Reading Congress recently in London. According to this article in paidContent UK, the printed book is in trouble and publishers just aren’t yet sure what to do with its digital counterpart.

“The entire publishing industry is going down the drain,” an executive from Siemens told the publishers in a sponsored address about a tablet publishing software service. While most attendees probably don’t actually believe that, they are trying to tell their stories in new ways through technology such as iPhone apps.

They want to learn from the painful lessons of the music industry, but also fear competition that ranges from self-publishing authors to e-tail giants such as Amazon, which recently launched its own publishing imprint for romance novels.

“We need to anticipate and create new business models that give consumers access when they want it,” said Victoria Barnsley, international CEO at HarperCollins.