Is 3-D Printing Just a Fad?

Will 3-D printing be the future of educational technology or is it just the latest fad? As prices for the units fall, more schools and universities are pondering the possibilities. This PBS video shows how it works and may offer some answers.

Watch Will 3D Printing Change the World? on PBS. See more from Off Book.

Imagining a New College Store

Albert Greco, professor of marketing at Fordham University, has predicted the market for printed textbooks will tumble about 95% by 2017. While that certainly paints a bleak picture for bricks-and-mortar booksellers, it doesn’t necessarily mean college stores should transition completely to being clothing outlets, according to Tony Sanfilippo in his Content Storage Unit blog.

Sanfilippo imagines a new campus store that partners with the library to offer students the option to either purchase or borrow their course materials. Librarians would be in charge of distributing the books and would help faculty find lower-cost or free alternatives.

He sees a store that utilizes a patron-driven acquisition business model where publishers find campuses with the most interest in their new text and make it available essentially on consignment basis for a fixed number of months. Stores would also become a dedicated place on campus where students and faculty go to locate alternatives to commercial publishing.

“Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with textbook prices, perhaps all faculty already see all the new scholarship in their respective fields at conferences, and maybe writing and publishing centers aren’t something campus communities need. Maybe,” Sanfilippo wrote. “But it seems much more likely that what most folks on campuses don’t need is another opportunity to purchase a tee shirt.”

Up for Discussion: Future of Course Materials

Not so long ago, the textbook supply chain looked something like this: An author, often a professor, would write a textbook. A publisher would edit and print it. Faculty would select the book for class. The campus bookstore would order it. Students would come to the store to buy a copy. If the store could snag used copies, students would buy those first.

The digital era upended all that. And as new technologies emerge, there will be even more disruptions to the supply chain. No one knows how it will all turn out.

In an effort to encourage a broad and open exchange of views, ideas, and information about course materials delivery and digital content, NACS has launched an online discussion for all interested stakeholders. That includes campus bookstores, faculty, administrators, publishers, intellectual property experts, and any others who want to contribute to the conversation or monitor developments. You don’t need to be a NACS member to participate.

This new Collaborative Industry Discussion—dubbed Course Materials, Digital Content, and Supplying the Campus Community—is expected to focus more on higher education but may also explore trends in course materials for K-12 and lifelong learning.

The discussion will be housed within NACS’ new online community, The Hub. If you’re not a NACS member, you must register for login credentials first. Once you have set up a password, join the discussion community by logging into The Hub and clicking “Join Communities” in the Discuss and Share menu.

Discussion participants can receive and post messages to the group, browse archived messages, and share documents in the library.

Campus Store Could Provide Tech Playground

Matt Reed recently wrote in his Confessions of a Community College Dean blog for Inside Higher Education that it would be a great idea if college campuses had a “dedicated lab/room with plenty of up-to-date technology where faculty could go to learn” how to use the latest gadget for their courses.

“The idea was that the best way to learn a technology is to play with it—I strongly believe that, just as I believe that the best way to learn a concept is to teach it—but that playing with it requires the presence of both the tech itself and a safe space,” he wrote.

Reed went on to list funding as a major obstacle to such a lab, adding that he doesn’t have a solution for the idea. He even solicited his readers for their thoughts. Hopefully, the college store on his campus read Reed’s post and replied.

That’s not to suggest that a campus store has unlimited space or funding, but many already stock the technology products or have the contacts to the experts who could come to campus for periodic “faculty night” events to demonstrate devices. For example, the KSU Bookstore, Kennesaw State University, Kennesaw, GA, recently took part in an e-book fair, bringing together major publishers and the school library for an event that featured hands-on demonstrations of e-books, electronic devices, and associated technologies.

So, Mr. Reed, that partner for your dedicated tech lab might be closer than you think.

Study Finds Social Media Use Can Hurt GPA

A report last year from the University of Toronto showed how using an electronic device in the classroom is a distraction not only for the student user but also for peers sitting nearby. Now, research from The Miriam Hospital’s Center for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine has found a link between social media use and poor academic performance.

Study participants said that social networking and watching television negatively affected their academic performance. At the same time, the researchers found that freshman women spent nearly 12 hours a day using one of the many forms of social media.

The study said students who spent the most time using social media had “fewer academic behaviors, such as completing homework and attending class, lower academic confidence, and more problems affecting their schoolwork, like lack of sleep and substance use.”

In addition, a 2011 study from e-textbook provider CourseSmart found that four in 10 college students said they couldn’t go 10 minutes without checking their mobile device. Ninety-eight percent of the students surveyed owned a digital device, with 85% claiming the device saved time while studying.

The Miriam Hospital report also found that listening to music and reading the newspaper were the two media-related activities linked to higher grade-point averages.

A final post from Mark

As many readers of The CITE may know, in March I decided to resign from my positions at NACS and NMS (now indiCo).  April 30 will be my last day.  This was a very difficult decision to make as I both learned and accomplished a great deal during my time here, and even more importantly made many friends. 

The progress and changes that moved through the college store industry and course materials market over the past eight years continue to excite me.  This blog reflects many of those developments, and The CITE passed its fifth anniversary earlier this month.  In that time more than 85,000 unique visitors from 178 different countries visited the blog.  By the time you read this entry, The CITE will have passed its 1,500^th posting. 

The coming years will be full of change for those interested in course materials, innovation, technology, and education.  Whether MOOCs, adaptive learning systems, emporium models, gamification, or something else, it is clear that innovation and technology will comprise a progressively larger part of education and course materials.

Learning anywhere will continue to grow in effectiveness and scalability, and learning may increasingly be measured more by its outcomes than classroom contact hours.  Big data, learning analytics, neuroscience, and other advancements will yield new insights from data, helping each student reach his or her full potential, and creating possibly more efficient channels for designing and delivering new products and services.

And those are just the beginning.  If you still think that change is three to five years away, then you are already five to six years behind. 

College stores, particularly independent stores, are at a strategic inflection point.  Whether the future is more promise than peril depends on how the industry positions itself.  The industry must address a range of retail technology shortcomings, and get better at communicating its story and value to a wide range of stakeholders.  The incumbents who survive disruptive or breakthrough innovations are those who create networks of strategic partnerships, and experiment both creatively and with strategic intent.  They are willing to admit that they must change, and then do.  Put another way, “Smart goes up.  Stuck goes down.” 

I often joke that I am unable to say “hello” in under 50 words.  Saying goodbye is certainly no easier.  Thanks to my many colleagues and friends in NACS, among the college stores, and well beyond.  I have so enjoyed experimenting, teaching, learning, collaborating, and debating with many of you.  I was pushed more than once to reconsider a viewpoint or perspective, and I hope I encouraged the same in return on more than one occasion.  I hope that many of our paths cross again, with everyone able to report a happy and successful story.

Many warm regards,

Mark

Mark R. Nelson, Ph.D., MBA, CAE

Service Turns Books into PDFs

1DollarScan turns a physical book into an electronic copy, supposedly for a dollar, as long as the customer agrees to allow the book to be destroyed and recycled. The company, based in San Jose, CA, markets itself as a service that archives documents and photographs, while also clearing space used to store old books.

The service has grown from scanning thousands of books in its first year to several hundred thousand books in its second year, according to CEO Hiroshi Nakano in a report in Publishers Weekly. The company claims its process produces a high-quality PDF file that can be read on a variety of devices.

The Authors Guild isn’t thrilled with the business model, claiming that turning copyrighted print content into an e-book without an author’s permission is copyright infringement.

1DollarScan counters that it only digitizes books purchased by a customer, who then uses the service to create more space in an eco-friendly way. The company requires a signed agreement prohibiting the online sharing of the PDF, while offering a way for publishers and authors to either approve or disapprove of scans.

But copyright infringement could be just part of the issue with 1DollarScan. One person commenting on the Publishers Weekly article who uses the service wrote, “The result is nothing I would want to share anyway since it’s usually got formatting and readability errors, but it’s good enough for me.”

He also goes on to report that the actual cost is $1 per 100 pages, so the service would cost $5 for a 500-page book.

MOOCs, OER, and Community Colleges

A new survey of distance-education officials at community colleges found that more two-year institutions are looking into using massive open online courses (MOOCs) and open educational resources (OER). It also showed a majority of the responding two-year institutions remain skeptical of such models.

The study, conducted by the Instructional Technology Council and released at the American Association of Community Colleges annual conference, found that just 1% of community colleges are offering any sort of credit for MOOC completion. It went on to report that 44% are starting to investigate the possibility of using MOOCs, while 42% said they have no plans to incorporate MOOCs into their programs.

Just 36% of the schools see OERS as having a “significant impact,” according to the report. Lack of time for faculty members to find and evaluate OERs and lack of faculty awareness were seen as the biggest reason for not using OERs.

“As would be expected with something so new, campuses are cautious in their approach,” the report noted. “Many community colleges are skeptical that a large-enrollment solution is appropriate for campuses that believe in smaller, more personalized instruction.”

However, the conference opened with a keynote address from Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, promoting open online courses and resources as a way for cash-strapped community colleges to reach more equally cash-strapped students.

Community college students are often adult learners who must contend with time constraints that limit study or are students with remedial needs. Khan said free online tutorials, such as the ones offered by his nonprofit organization, allow students to watch the material as many times as necessary to facilitate learning.

“If we let students work at their own pace, big jumps in achievements are possible,” Khan said.

A Different Look at MOOCs

Just when it seemed like nothing new could be written on the subject of massive open online courses (MOOCs), along comes an article with a unique spin. The Boston Globe interviewed a Lexington, MA, author and entrepreneur who is trying to cram 32 MOOCs into a single calendar year to earn what he believes is the equivalent of a bachelor’s degree in philosophy.

Jonathan Haber, 51, earned a degree in chemistry from Wesleyan University in 1985. He founded and sold a company that did computer testing and training, and is now a stay-at-home dad. Since January, Haber has completed or is currently taking about a dozen classes from edX and Coursera.

Haber, who is blogging about his experience at degreeoffreedom.org, has already found that discussion boards work best when fewer people contribute and that they often become political rants when more students participate. He is also taking a literature course with 25,000 students enrolled that uses peer-to-peer grading where students are each required to grade three other papers based on specific instructions.

“Peer grading can be used to get people to stay focused on the message, but it also means somebody who wants to spread their wings a little bit, they can’t do it there,” Haber said. “[MOOCs are] definitely going to make a big contribution to changing education. The risk is, everyone is so excited about them now, it will be one of those angel/devil things when, in fact, they are an interesting work in progress.”

SJSU Launches Blended Learning Training Center

Last fall, San Jose State University became the first institution to try incorporating edX’s massive open online course (MOOC) content with the teaching concepts of a flipped classroom. Now, the university is opening its Center for Excellence in Adaptive and Blended Learning, a program to train faculty members in the California State University (CSU) system to use flipped learning in their classrooms.

The university also announced it will expand its edX pilot program to as many as 11 of the 23 schools in the CSU system. The effort is being driven, in part, by the completion rates from the pilot program started last fall. Nine of 10 students completed the blended engineering course offered, while just six of 10 finished the traditional course.

The center will show CSU faculty members how to run a flipped course, which allows students to watch online lectures and take quizzes outside of class. Classroom time is used to provide students with assistance on the material covered in the videos and homework.

“We’re placing the instructor front and foremost, rather than facing the blackboard [with their back to students],” edX President Anant Agarwal told eCampus News. “The real value is in helping students learn and helping students process information.”

The program is also seen as a possible way for universities in the state to speed up degree completion while keeping costs under control.

“These digital natives cannot be educated like we were educated,” said Lt. Gov. Gavin Newson during the SJSU press conference. “The old system has run its course, like the industrial age has run its course.”

HackEd Takes a Crack at Facebook Apps

Can 150 young developers, working in 24 teams, create educational apps for Facebook to help college students manage their campus experience better? Facebook and the Gates Foundation seem to think so.

The two organizations paired up for HackEd 2.0, the second annual competition for developing apps that students can access through their Facebook accounts. The U.S. contest recently concluded, but another is planned for London in late April.

The developers were charged with dreaming up apps to make going to college easier, from financial aid to academic support. Participants could work on apps for one of three areas: college, social learning, and out-of-school study.

Bloomberg TV reports on HackEd 2.0, including remarks from Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, in this video.

Follett Adding New Technology Platform

Follett recently announced plans to acquire BetterKnow Inc., a web-based platform that assembles college course materials and delivers them to students for purchase online. Follett will have the BetterKnow course material technology integrated for use this fall.

The BetterKnow technology gathers course materials from a variety of sources, including traditional textbooks, digital materials, open-source content, and video, and allows instructors to select the items that work best for them. Students then go to eFollett.com to find the required materials, compare prices across content formats and channels, choose their preferred format option, and make their purchases.

The integrated technology will also support includED, a program Follett launched in January to provide college students with required course materials as part of tuition or fees. The program delivers both print and digital materials from any publisher and can be used for individual courses, across a department, or for the entire institution.

In addition, if Follett has an existing on-campus location, that store will be able to coordinate the purchase with a student’s financial aid account.

PC Market Continues Its Decline

Market research firm Gartner recently reported that PC shipments in the first three months of 2013 declined 11.2% over the same period in 2012. International Data Corp. (IDC) found the tumble to be closer to 14%, but both firms suggest Windows 8 deserves some of the blame.

The problem is that PC makers are producing higher-priced devices to take advantage of the touch-centric start screen used by the Microsoft operating system, according to an article in PC World. For instance, the Samsung Series 9 ultrabook has state-of-the-art features and a price tag of $1,400, making it less attractive to many consumers.

“At this point, unfortunately, it seems clear that the Windows 8 launch not only failed to provide a positive boost to the PC market, but appears to have slowed the market,” Bob O’Donnell, IDC program vice president, clients and displays, said in an article in SlashGear.

Budget machines that offer touchscreens, along with low-cost hybrid PCs and notebooks with longer battery life, could offer relief, according to PC World. However, Stephen Baker of the consumer market research firm The NDP Group said higher-priced devices may be the right way to proceed.

“Right now, we are seeing a shift in sales volume away from under-$500 PCs towards tablets in that same price point,” Baker wrote to PC World. “We don’t see the same level of shift between the two in products above $500.”

Bleak future for Netbooks

Netbooks were created to fill the gap between laptops and smartphones, and they sold like hotcakes for a while. Now, a study has found that the category is in freefall.

IHS iSuppli predicted just 264,000 netbooks will be shipped in 2014 and none will go out in 2015.

“Netbooks shot to popularity immediately after launch because they were optimized for low cost, delivering what many consumers believed as acceptable computer performance,” wrote Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for computer platforms at IHS, in the report. “However, netbooks began their descent to oblivion with the introduction in 2010 of Apple’s iPad.”

The IHS study reported that netbook shipments were 32.14 million when the iPad hit the market, but just 14.13 million last year. This year, IHS predicts only 3.97 million will be shipped, a drop of 72% in just 12 months.

“The problem is netbooks aren’t better at anything,” the late Steve Jobs was quoted as saying once. “They are slow, they have low-quality displays, and they run clunky, old PC software. We don’t think they’re a third-category device.”

Samsung to Open Mini-Stores in Best Buy

Samsung has announced plans to open mini-stores in 1,400 Best Buy stores by the end of June. The Samsung Experience Shops will showcase the manufacturer’s electronic products and accessories, and provide a customer support area similar to the Genius Bar in Apple stores.

The new mini-stores will allow Samsung to have its products on display in one location with more space available for customer demonstrations. Best Buy employees will also be trained to help shoppers with purchases and activation.

Apple already has store-within-a-store boutiques in Best Buy locations, along with partnerships with Walmart and Target. However, Samsung doesn’t see Experience Shops as a swipe at Apple.

“At the heart of who we are, this is about responding to consumer needs and requests and ensure they’re delighted and empowered and happy with their choice of Samsung as a brand,” said Ketrina Dunagan, vice president, for retail marketing, in an interview in The New York Times.

Coursera Begins to Make Money

The idea behind massive open online courses (MOOCs) is that the courses are free to anyone interested in signing up. That has led to concerns about how companies offering MOOCs could give away their services for free and remain afloat financially.

Now, Coursera reports that it brought in $220,000 during the first quarter of 2013. The company has 3.2 million registered users, up nearly 700,000 since mid-February.

Part of that revenue came from an Amazon.com affiliate program that pays when students purchase books suggested by the instructor.

The other part of the money came from Signature Track, a program that allows students to receive verified completion certification for a nominal fee. By using Signature Track, students pay a fee ranging from $30 to $100, are tracked by their “unique typing pattern” to ensure they are doing the work, and receive end-of-course recognition from the university offering the class through the platform.

Some of the money collected from the fees will be shared with the universities, according to reports. Coursera is also trying to create ways to raise money through proctored exams and matching students with employers, plus is set to launch an app platform which will allow universities to add instruction tools to enhance their MOOCs.

EdX Introduces Automated Grading Software

The latest news from edX is that the massive open online course platform, founded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, is introducing automated software that will grade essays and short answers from students on exams.

The assessment tool is free on the web to any institution that wants to use it. The process begins with human teachers grading 100 essays or essay questions, with the software using artificial intelligence to train itself to grade essays automatically.

The software assigns a grade depending on the scoring system started by the teacher. It can also provide feedback and allows the student to revise the work immediately for a better grade.

“There is a huge value in learning with instant feedback,” said Anant Agarwal, president of edX, in an article in The New York Times. “Students are telling us they learn much better with instant feedback.”

Coursera and Udacity are also trying to develop automated assessment because of the value of instant feedback, while the Hewlett Foundation sponsored two $100,000 awards for improving software that grades essays. More than 150 teams competed for each prize, with one of the winners landing a job with edX to design its assessment software.

Of course, not everyone is so sure an automated grading system is a good thing. Les Perelman, a researcher at MIT, is among a group of educators who have drawn up a petition against the software. The group, called Professionals Against Machine Scoring of Student Essays in High-Stakes Assessment, has already collected nearly 2,000 signatures in opposition.

Part of the group’s statement says, “Let’s face the realities of automatic essay scoring. Computers cannot ‘read.’ They cannot measure the essentials of effective written communications: accuracy, reasoning, adequacy or evidence, good sense, ethical stances, convincing argument, meaningful organization, clarity, and veracity, among others.”

Device Divide Tips Commerce to Phones

Laptops are from Mars, smartphones are from Venus. Or to put it another way, computers are for school and work tasks, while smartphones are for leisure and socializing.

At least that’s the way young people see it. Shopping falls in the smartphone bucket, by the way.

In a post for Internet Retailer, writer Amy Dusto describes how she came to realize that she and her husband, both in their 20s, were differentiating the use of their electronic devices. This one for work, that one for fun.

Then the point was driven home for Dusto by the 17-year-old son of a business colleague. The boy left his laptop, where he’d been doing homework, to walk across the room to pick up his cellphone and make a clothing purchase. He was dismissive when an adult suggested he could have made the transaction right from the laptop.

Another Internet Retailer commentator, Bill Siwicki, points to data from an IDC survey in March showing that smartphone owners aged 18-44 spend 84% of their phone usage time doing everything but making calls. NACS OnCampus Research, in its latest Student Watch survey of college students, discovered similar findings.

A lot of that phone time is devoted to shopping, whether that involves checking e-mail or texts for special offers, researching products or sellers online, scanning QR codes for information, reading or posting personal reviews on social media, or actually placing orders. Siwicki’s point is that retailers need to understand this behavior and make sure their e-commerce operations can handle mobile shopping.

It’s still unclear whether the younger crowd views tablets as small computers or large phones. Maybe that’s yet to shake out.

High-Tech Approach to In-Store Services

With more and more consumers shopping with their smartphones in hand, bricks-and-mortar retailers are looking for ways to offer more in-store services, such as mapping inventory and mobile advertising networks.

Retailers are trying to better understand their customers through the use of indoor location technology, which can measure how shoppers move through the store. For instance, Walmart is working on a hyperlocal in-store search component for its mobile app that will make it possible for customers to find out the availability of specific items.

Apps are also in the works to deliver special promotions to users based on their location in the store, and in-store mobile advertising could be the next step for big stores, according to Patrick Connolly, senior analyst for ABI Research.

“That is the long-term goal, certainly for the big retailers,” Connolly said in an article in Mobile Commerce Daily. “They will look to launch their own smartphone apps and start building indoor location and mapping, and, ultimately hyperlocal advertising.”

But for the time being, this is technology for large retailers with deep pockets.

“The big retailers are going to make their own decisions and they are going to want to be on the cutting edge,” Connolly said.

Student Aren't Learning About Ed-Tech

A recent study has found that while college students may be proficient in the personal use of electronic devices and social media sites, those studying to become teachers aren’t getting much instruction on the classroom uses of the gadgets.

The study, Digital Experiences and Expectations of Tomorrow’s Teachers, is part of the Speak Up survey from the 2011-12 school year conducted by Project Tomorrow and Blackboard Inc.  It included responses from nearly 1,400 students in teacher education programs, as well as 36,000 in-service teachers and 4,000 administrators.

Despite familiarity with electronics and social media, two-thirds of students in the survey said they learn more about using technology through field experience rather than classroom assignments. In addition, 45% of principals surveyed said they want new teachers to use social media in their instruction, but just 25% of the students said they’ve learned how to do it.

The study found that two-thirds of the principals want new teachers to create and use video and other media and 45% want them to find ways to use student-owned mobile devices in their lessons. However, only 44% of the responding students said they were being taught about the use of video and just 19% said they were learning how to incorporate mobile devices.

Students said the technology they are learning about is word processing, spreadsheet, and database software (71%); creating multimedia presentations (64%); and the use of interactive whiteboards (55%).

“While these are arguably valuable skills for teacher productivity, principals have a different set of expectations about the technology experiences they want to see in potential teaching candidates,” authors of the report wrote. “Principals want new teachers to know how to use technology to create authentic learning experiences for students (75%) and how to leverage technology to differentiate instruction (68%) before they apply for a position at their school.”

Udemy Launches iOS Learning App

The online learning web site Udemy already offers both free and paid courses in its effort to differentiate itself from the other massive open online course platforms. Now, Udemy has released an iPhone app to make it easier to access courses from smartphones.

From surveys of more than 600 students, Udemy found that nearly 50% said on-demand access was the most important thing about online learning.

The app will allow users to browse, then sign up for either free or paid courses. It will also provide access to video lectures, articles, and presentations in a mobile format, save the courses for offline viewing, and let users watch videos at multiple speeds.

“We talk to our students constantly,” Dinesh Thiru, vice president of marketing, said in a statement. “We find that Udemy students are taking their courses from planes, trains, and buses, during lunch, from the comfort of their couch, or before bed. With the Udemy iPhone app, we want to empower even more students to learn where and when they want to learn.”

One thing the iOS app does not yet offer is the social element to allow students to interact with peers, although that should become available in a future update. The company is also looking to bring its online marketplace to Android in the coming months.

New SIIA Report Focuses on OER

With more and more educators using open educational resources (OER), the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA) created its Guide on the Use of Open Educational Resources in K-12 and Postsecondary Education. The 34-page manual provides information on various copyright and licensing issues involved in using open educational resources.

“SIIA expects that educational needs will be addressed moving forward by a mix of instructional materials, including OERs,” the authors of the guide wrote. “SIIA and this guide are focused on helping public officials, instructors, and content providers better understand the various OER models, as well as the total costs to consider in determining the appropriate strategy for developing and implementing a particular educational resource.”

The report details some of the pitfalls of OER, including the resources necessary to scale their use and concerns over cost shifting instead of cost savings. At the same time, it presents some of the highlights of OER, such as their long-term value and having teachers more involved in developing curriculum and resources.

“It appears that OER and the related educational, business, and intellectual property license models are here to stay,” the authors wrote. “In the end, the greatest value of OER may not be in cost savings, but in changing the relationship of educators and students to their learning resources by empowering them to help author, customize, and share them. Either way, all stakeholders will need to carefully consider and appropriately adjust to OER as an important educational element.” 

Consequences of the MOOC Movement

As with almost everything, there are two sides to the massive open online course (MOOC) debate. Proponents see MOOCs as a revolution providing high-quality education to more people at less cost, while opponents are concerned about the quality since classroom instruction is lost.

Michael A. Cusumano, a professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, sees a future where elite schools weather the disruption of MOOCs because they are well off financially while a larger group of colleges and universities won’t survive.

“My fear is that we’re plunging forward with these massively free online education resources and we’re not thinking much about the economics,” Cusumano said in an interview with The New York Times.

Cusumano sees similarities between the strategic mistakes of giving away content made by media companies between 1998 and 2006 with the giveaway pricing of education by MOOCs. He wrote in an article that appeared in the monthly magazine of the Association for Computing Machinery that free online education could become the norm if enough colleges and universities join the movement.

“Stanford, MIT, Harvard, et al. have already opened a kind of Pandora’s box, and there may be no easy way to go back and charge students even a moderately high tuition rate for open online courses,” he wrote. “Free learning via the Internet seems here to stay. It is probably most valuable in moderation and as a complement to traditional university education and degrees, not as a substitute. It also will probably force educational institutions to bring down the rising cost of education, as well as the rising prices of tuitions. This seems positive, but may lead to potentially negative effects and unintended consequences: Elite universities need to ensure the true costs of their MOOCs do not become too high for society as a whole by destroying the economic foundations of less-prominent educational institutions—or of themselves.”

Window Shopping Goes High-Tech

Digital services agency United Future has developed a system that turns a retailer’s storefront into an interactive, touchscreen shopping experience. The company believes the technology will attract more customers, particularly tech-savvy ones such as college students, and increase sales.

The system uses a touch-sensitive film attached to the storefront glass, along with a projector and laptop. The touchscreen display can be customized for each retailer, who can change information displayed on an hourly basis if they choose.

The shopper uses the window touchscreen to drag and drop apparel items onto mannequins sized to fit their personal measurements. Customers can then complete a purchase through QR codes linked to secure store web sites. United Future is trying to enhance the system to enable payments using a smartphone by tapping on the glass.

“Our product extends the shelf by helping educate the consumer and bringing the retail floor to life,” Scott Holmes, president of United Futures, said in an article for a National Retail Federation publication. “That, to me, is the future of where retail is headed: toward more experiential shopping. We must connect across all retail channels to succeed in the future.”

MHE Turns Government Into a Game

Studies have shown that gaming could be an effective tool in education. McGraw-Hill Education is betting on it, launching its McGraw-Hill Practice suite that includes Government in Action.

The 3-D multiplayer game is an American government course designed for college freshman which takes the player through the intricacies of being a U.S. representative and explains the difficulties in getting legislation passed.

“The ability to interact rather than just reading a text in this technology-driven age will probably drive more interest,” Rep. John Tierney (D-MA) told CNN about the game. “Video games with a core educational component may supplement traditional materials, such as textbooks, and may enable students to improve their understanding of certain subjects.”

The goal of the game is for each player, who begins with their election to the House of Representatives, to build enough political awareness and capital during their two-year term to be re-elected. The game assigns students a political affiliation and allows them to meet with the president and go to the Supreme Court.

The game was tested at colleges and universities across the United States where instructors found students enjoyed the game enough to play it often. The iPad version was introduced at the 2013 South by Southwest education conference, with an Android version in the works.

“Educators seem to have more tools available to them than ever before and there’s no doubt that, when appropriately utilized, technology has the capacity to enhance the classroom experience,” Tierney said. “The key, of course, is to familiarize and excite teachers to maximize its use in the most positive way.”

Moving to digital Textbooks

Public K-12 school districts spend $7 billion on textbooks each year, even though most textbooks are 7-10 years old before they are replaced, according to data from the Digital Textbook Playbook that was created by the Federal Communications Commission. In addition, 81% of teachers believe tablets can enhance student learning.

Despite the interest and any possible savings, moving to digital isn’t as easy as it may look and OnlineCollege.org has created an infographic that brings some of the difficulties into focus. The graphic points to areas administrators must consider before making the swith to digital.

They include: 

• Intensive planning and creating clear goals.
• Teacher training and involvement.
• Collaborative leadership.
• A commitment to continuous support.
• Determining current and future connectivity needs.

Brookings Report Cites Ed-Tech Successes

A new report from the Brookings Institute features massive open online courses (MOOCs) as one of five educational technology “success stories,” in large part because of their potential to cut costs of higher education.

“Tuition has risen steeply over the past five decades, and the resulting cuts have negatively impacted students and restricted access by poorer students,” the authors of Education Technology Success Stories wrote. “MOOCs could dramatically decrease the costs for universities and offer courses to students all over the world.”

The savings are derived from instructional productivity because of MOOCs have the potential to reach so many more students. The report suggests that MOOCs could decrease the number of introductory courses and free professors to teach other classes.

In addition to MOOCs, the report lists robot assisted language learning, the independent computer game Minecraft, computerized adaptive testing, and stealth assessments as educational success stories.

“Providing students more opportunities to learn and to demonstrate proficiency will allow for a more meritocratic education system,” the authors wrote. “Assessments don’t have expectations for students. Any student, regardless of background, can use technology to earn accreditation for their learning.”

Professors Surveyed on Teaching MOOCs

A survey of professors who have taught massive open online courses (MOOCs) by The Chronicle of Higher Education found that 79% believed MOOCs are worth the publicity that has been generated, while 64% said they believed MOOCs could help reduce the cost of attaining a college degree to some degree at their particular institutions.

The results show professors are beginning to accept and embrace MOOCs, according to The Chronicle. It’s surprising because surveys of chief academic administrators have found that just 30% thought that their faculty members accept the value of online education.

Online questionnaires were sent in February to 184 professors who have taught MOOCs, with 103 responding. The Chronicle was quick to admit the results were unscientific, but two-thirds of the professors who did respond had taught for more than a decade and would not be considered a group of MOOC “true believers.”

The survey found that 97% of the instructors used original videos in their courses and 75% used open educational resources. However, professors also reported spending more than 100 hours on MOOCs before the first class and up to eight to 10 hours each week keeping the MOOC materials up to date and answering students.

“I had almost no time for anything else,” said Geoffrey Hinton, professor of computer science at the University of Toronto. “My graduate students suffered as a consequence. It’s equivalent to volunteering to supply a textbook for free and to provide one chapter of camera-ready copy every week without fail.”

While The Chronicle research shows professors may be starting to embrace the idea of MOOCs, there’s still some convincing left to do. Although the professors felt MOOCs could cut college costs, 72% felt that students didn’t deserve formal credit.

Multitasking During a Lecture Distracts

One concern instructors have about students using electronic devices in the classroom is that they can be a distraction. A new study from York University, Toronto, found that it’s not only a distraction to the student using the device, but also to their peers nearby.

The study asked undergraduate-level students to use a laptop to take notes during a class lecture. Half the class was assigned to do tasks that mimicked what a typical student might do while browsing the web as the class was going on. The entire class was given a comprehension test at the end of the lecture, with the multitasking students receiving lower grades than the other half of the class.

While those results are not particularly surprising, the study also found that students sitting close to multitasking students also did poorly on the test, even though they had been instructed to take notes with pencil and paper.

“The results of our experiment confirm that multitasking on a laptop reduces a student’s ability to comprehend lecture content,” Tina West, co-author of the study and doctoral student at York University, said in a release. “A more surprising finding was that students sitting nearby a multitasker also underperformed, despite actively trying to focus on the lecture. These students were placed at a disadvantage because of the choices of their peers.”

As part of the study, the researchers created a list of frequently asked questions which describes the problems and provides solutions teachers can consider to help keep their students’ attention during lectures.

EdX Releases Its Source Code

EdX was launched to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs) to a worldwide audience at no cost. Now, anyone can develop independent course components on the edX platform.

The nonprofit, founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, made the source code that support the edX course content available to all with the release of its XBlock SDK.

XBlocks are the application programming interface for combining edX courseware components, such as video players and learning sequences. The source code, available for download at github.com/edX/XBlock, allows developers to create collaborative learning tools and online laboratories by combining independent XBlocks.

“When we released our XBlock code last week, it represented the first step toward our vision of creating an open online learning platform that mirrors the collaborative philosophy of MOOCs themselves and leverages global community developers to deliver the world’s best and most accessible online learning experience,” Anant Agarwal, president of edX, told Technapex.  “We believe that the open source path is the right one to help us achieve that goal because it allows us to tap the brainpower of the entire world’s developers to constantly enhance and improve the edX platform.”

Research Finds Online Achievement Gap

A recent study from the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Columbia University suggests that while low-cost online courses may provide more opportunity to try college, the achievement gap can also be widening among students.

Adaptability to Online Learning: Differences Across Types of Students and Academic Subject Areas studied 500,000 online courses taken by 40,000 community- and technical-college students in Washington state. It found that students taking more online courses were less likely to earn a degree, particularly among the demographics of black students, male students, younger students, and students with low grade-point averages. Older students with families and female students fared much better, according to the research.

“We found that the gap is stronger in the underrepresented and underprepared students,” said Shanna Smith Jaggars, assistant director of the CCRC. “They are falling farther behind than if they were taking face-to-face courses.”

On the other hand, Kathy B. Enger, director of the Northern Lights Library Network, suggests online education gives minority students more freedom of expression and that problems students may have are  probably because the instructor isn’t reaching out to them in the right ways.

“If it’s not working, find out what’s not working. Then make it work,” Enger told The Chronicle of Higher Education.

'Textbook-Free' Degree Being Offered

Tidewater Community College (TCC), with branches in Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth, and Virginia Beach, VA, is planning to offer an associate of science degree program in business administration that won’t require the purchase of any textbooks. The school says it’s the first program of its kind and could reduce the cost of the degree by a third.

“I think we have a responsibility as a college to do what we can to help control the costs of textbooks, because we know there are students who can’t afford them,” Daniel T. DeMarte, TCC vice president for academic affairs and chief academic officer told eCampus News. “We know there are students who are not successful because they can’t afford them.”

The fall pilot will use open educational resources (OER) instead of traditional textbooks, a move the college estimates will save students who complete the degree about $2,000. Additional academic advising will also be made available to students in the OER courses.

“When a student hears it’s a textbook-free course, that doesn’t mean they don’t have to read,” said Kimberly Bovee, associate vice president for strategic learning initiatives at TCC. “That doesn’t mean they don’t have to engage in the course material and maybe read even more than they’re used to.”

Virginia State University, Petersburg, already uses open digital textbooks in all of the core courses in its business program, while the state community college system is trying to expand the OER courses offered through grants to instructors who develop material for high-enrollment classes that can be shared across the system.

“I think it’s one of the biggest rip-offs in this business,” Glenn DuBois, chancellor of the Virginia community college system, said of the cost of textbooks. “I say that not as a chancellor: I say it as a father who just had to give his daughter 600 bucks to buy this semester’s textbooks at a public university.”

Supreme Court Rules Against Publisher in Copyright Suit

The U.S. Supreme Court delivered a blow to publishers Tuesday, ruling that purchasing books and goods legally abroad and then reselling them in the United States doesn’t violate U.S. copyright laws. In a 6-3 decision, the court threw out a lower-court ruling against a graduate student who sold bought cheap textbooks created for foreign markets by a U.S. publisher at below-market prices.

The court ruled that once goods are lawfully sold, publishers and manufacturers lose the protection of U.S. copyright laws.

The case started when John Wiley & Sons successfully sued Thai grad student Supap Kirtsaeng for selling $900,000 worth of international textbooks to other students in the U.S. A New York court ruled Kirtsaeng sold the titles without permission and awarded Wiley $600,000.

Advocates against the lower-court ruling claimed that if allowed to stand, it would hamper the sale of many goods sold online and in discount stores. Retailers estimated that most of the more than $2.3 trillion worth of foreign goods imported in 2011 were bought after they were first purchased abroad.

Dissenting justices argued the court ignored Congress’s intent to protect companies against low-priced foreign copies of copyrighted works.

“We are disappointed that the U.S. Supreme court has decided in favor of supap Kirtsaeng and overturned the Second Circuit’s ruling,” said Stephen M Smith, president and CEO of Wiley, in a statement about the decision. “It is a loss for the U.S. economy, and students and authors in the U.S. and around the world.”

Making Higher Ed More Productive

According to Bruce Guile, president and co-founder of Course Gateway, and David Teece, executive director of the Institute of Business Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley, a professor of today is really not that much more productive than his or her counterpart from the Middle Ages.

The problem even has a name: “Baumol’s cost disease,” after economist William Baumol, who helped identify the issue in the 1960s as a root of the rising costs of higher education.

Guile and Teece suggest that is changing as new innovations, such as massive open online courses (MOOCs), become more popular. MOOCs make it possible for teachers from some of the most prestigious universities in the world to deliver high-quality instruction to thousands of students at one time, increasing productivity and potentially lowering costs.

MOOCs give students the opportunity to take a statistics class from the best instructors at Caltech and learn Shakespeare from professors at Cambridge. At some point, though, this may lead to a “modularization of higher education,” in which each school packages its best instruction for worldwide delivery.

“Both during and after this restructuring in U.S. higher education, universities, governments, and companies in emerging economies will be able to tap low-cost, high-quality online education to leapfrog the slow and painstaking process of developing education capacity to meet critical national needs,” Guiles and Teece wrote in their Leadership Forum post for Forbes. “They will rebundle modules for their purposes and populations to create certificates and degrees that meet local demand.”