Site Density May Scare Off College Applicants

Some college and university websites are too complex, use campus jargon, and bury the information students need. As a result, these sites may be damaging the brand of their institutions and prompting prospective applicants to go elsewhere, according to web design consultant Nielsen Norman Group (NNG).

NNG recently tested 57 university websites and found that “users are often frustrated or thwarted by the frequent usability problems on university sites. The best university websites speak clearly, even to yet-to-be students, and make it easy for everybody to find what they want. The rest fail.”

NNG put together a list of its top 10 guidelines for college and university website design. Topping the list is the recommendation to identify the institution clearly on every page. That will ensure that visitors who enter the site on an inner page via search engine will realize where they’ve landed.

Institutions should also test their own sites, without going into a lot of expense. NNG suggested asking just five prospective or current students to perform a variety of small tasks on the site, such as finding information about a major field of study or calculating the cost to attend. The test group should reflect the school’s key audiences.

Other recommendations include using images that accurately reflect the school, creating a powerful summary for the About Us page, highlighting what makes the school different from others, organizing information about academic programs, connecting information about job placements to the alumni section, spelling out the application process and deadlines, avoiding “hip” wording and graphics, and making sure the site has a good internal search engine.

Universities Launch Microcredentials Platform

Six universities have teamed to launch the University Learning Store, a platform that will help job seekers and working professionals earn microcredentials in business and technical fields.

Learners will have to prove their knowledge through verified, hands-on assessments as measures of competencies to earn a microcredential, according to a report in eCampus News. In addition, learners can choose to combine microcredentials to earn larger certification from an institution.

“Although an array of nondegree credentials exist, they can leave employers guessing at their true value,” said David Schejbal, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Extension, one of the founding institutions of the project. “With the University Learning Store, leading institutions have joined forces to introduce credentials that clearly indicate the capabilities of the credential holder.”

Microcredentials, available as a printable certificate or digital badge, can be added to a student’s resume after successfully completing an assessment. Courses on the University Learning Store site cost $50-$150, but are currently being offered at half-price for a limited time. Each credential can be earned in days or weeks.

“This is an innovation in skill credentialing that the workforce, and higher ed, has not seen before,” said Nelson Baker, dean of Georgia Tech Professional Education. “At Georgia Tech, we bring the same rigor and real-world applicability to our nondegree educational opportunities as we do other programs. Industry validation is the final frontier of proving the value of lifelong learning.”

Most Schools Now Use Digital Content

Some college store professionals believe digital content will only become a dominant format when students begin using it in grade school. That day has gotten much closer.

Digital Content Goes to School: Trends in K-12 Classroom e-Learning found that 80% of school and district leaders who responded to the survey said they are using digital content in some way. Of more than 2,000 respondents, 73% had a digital-device strategy and 64% are using digital content with that strategy.

The survey, released by the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development and content distributor OverDrive Inc., also reported that most educators use digital content for English and language arts (74%), science (62%), math (61%), and social studies (56%), according to a report in eSchool News. Respondents added that use of digital content will continue to grow as long as teachers receive professional development.

Equity concerns and lack of Internet access top the list of issues educators have with going digital. Teachers also listed not being comfortable with digital learning, not enough devices in the classroom, lack of funding, and content that doesn’t work on every device as other concerns.

“We believe the paradigm of instruction needs to change,” Kahle Charles, executive director of curriculum, St. Vrain Valley School, Longmont, CO, said in response to the survey. “Devices bring more knowledge to students’ fingertips than the teacher can give, so the traditional lecture model is no longer applicable. We want content that will engage students and the ability to introduce flipped classrooms with content that students can access at any time, at any place.”

Tablet Sales Are Falling Flat

On the sixth anniversary of the Apple iPad’s debut, it appears that the tablet revolution predicted has fallen well short of expectations. In 2011, there were estimates that annual tablet shipments would be more than 300 million units by 2015.

Apple has sold more than 300 million iPads, but it’s taken six years to reach that mark. In fact, market research from International Data Corp. (IDC) shows that Apple only sold 50 million of the estimated 207 million units it shipped in 2015.

Bigger smartphones have proven to be a competitor with tablets. More than one billion of the devices were sold last year, many with large enough screens to make the purchase of a tablet unnecessary. In addition, consumers have shown they aren’t as willing to upgrade their tablet devices as often as their smartphones.

“I fit that demographic exactly: I bought an iPad Air in late 2013 that I still use daily and don’t anticipate an upgrade this year,” Arik Hesseldahl wrote in an article for re/code. “I will, however, probably upgrade my iPhone. I bought my last Mac in 2011.”

The other challenge for tablet computers is the popularity of detachables—tablets that are essentially a laptop with a removable touchscreen. One out of every five tables sold in Europe in the fourth quarter of 2015 was a detachable device.

“Detachables are proving so popular that IDC reckons by 2020 they’ll account for about one-fifth of the entire market for what it calls ‘client computing devices,’ which includes both tablets and PCs,” Hesseldahl said. “It may not amount to the radical revolution that the overly eager analysts of 2011 had called for, but it will do.”

Textbook Data Tells a Varied Story

When it comes to college students and course materials, there are a number of conundrums at work. Consider some of the interesting data that came out of the fall 2015 Student Watch, a survey of 25,000 students from 56 colleges and universities:

• Approximately 34% of students said they didn’t obtain at least one textbook listed by their school as required reading for a course because the instructor told them it wasn’t actually needed.


• Only 55% of students thought the reading materials for their classes were very or extremely useful. However, when professors actively utilized the materials within the course—for discussions, homework, quizzes, and so on—then 72% of students gave high marks to their usefulness. That indicates students need the instructor’s help to see how course materials tie in with their class lectures.


• The average price paid by students per course material was $75.32. However, students are actually amenable to paying quite a bit more than that. Students who felt their course materials had been extremely useful were willing to pay as much as $194.28 per book. Even students who said their materials were not at all useful were willing to fork over up to $143.25 for each.

Student Watch surveys are conducted twice a year by OnCampus Research, the research arm of indiCo, a subsidiary of NACS.

Job Are Top Priority for College Students

Most college students agree that a job after graduation is the most important outcome of a college education. The problem is, too many believe their college and university isn’t doing a very good job of preparing them for that job.

A survey of 770 adults, conducted by Stockton University, Galloway Township, NJ, found that just 35% of recent grads said colleges did “extremely well” in getting them ready for the job market. Nearly 80% viewed internships as the most important factor to success in their career and 84% said an internship was very important in developing a career and finding a job, according to a report in eCampus News.

While 73% said college was worth the cost, 31% added that more hands-on, practical experience would have made the value of their higher education even greater. The group identified problem-solving (84%) as most important skill learned in college, followed by communicating orally (83%), understanding and gathering information (79%), writing clearly (79%), and using technology (77%).

Employers listed problem-solving (32%), teamwork (21%), and writing and speaking skills (19%) as the top skills job-seekers learn in college.

Connecting with Online Learners

There’s no debating the fact that online education is different from the traditional college experience. The online experience will never be able to match the personal interaction and development that is such a big part of campus life.

“It’s true that online learners will not have the same types of interaction as their on-campus peers,” Eric Stoller wrote in a post for Inside Higher Education. “However, we need to stop thinking about what’s ‘missing’ or ‘lacking’ and focus on what we can do to increase connection and build community via digital channels.”

For Stoller, the solution to better student engagement may be social media. Social sites are already being utilized to connect students and expand learner networks, but institutions should be working on programs that use the functionality of social media while the class is in session and as a tool students can rely on for further professional development.

“While online learners might not necessarily be able to meet up at the campus coffee shop with their friends, they can meet up with their peers via WhatsApp groups, Google Hangouts, Twitter hashtag conversations, Periscope live-streams, and LinkedIn group discussion,” Stoller wrote.

'Ban WiFi' Movement Gains Steam

There’s been plenty of discussion about the potential of distractions caused by Wi-Fi usage in the classroom. Now, some are worried, and even going to court, over the possibility of health issues caused by its use.

A lawsuit in England alleged that electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome (EHS), a condition in which electromagnetic radiation emitted from wireless technology is alleged to cause a variety of symptoms, caused the suicide of a 15-year-old who suffered from severe allergies supposedly made worse by the radiation. In France, cellphones are banned from nursery schools and day-care facilities because it’s feared the devices will cause cancer, while a French court awarded a 39-year-old woman disability payments for her struggles with electromagnetic hypersensitivity.

The movement is gaining momentum in the United States. The Facebook group Parents Against Wi-Fi in Schools has around 2,300 likes and the city of Berkeley, CA, passed an ordinance in 2015 that mandates cellphone shops post notices about exposure to radio frequency radiation. The parents of a 12-year-old boy sued a private school in Southborough, MA, claiming the strength of the school’s Wi-Fi signal caused his illness.

The problem is, EHS isn’t recognized as a medical condition and it’s never been demonstrated that cellphone radiation causes any health risk. Addressing the concerns with transparent policies about Internet usage is one solution. Making it possible for students to opt out of in-school Wi-Fi is another, according to a report in Education Dive.

Amazon Introduces a New E-Reader

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, let all his Twitter followers know on April 4 that a new Kindle was in the works. Just over a week later, Amazon started showing off its completely redesigned Kindle Oasis e-reader.

The new device is close to square with a side grip and a 6-in. screen that contains the e-reader’s central processing unit, storage, and battery. By changing the glass covering, Amazon was able to strengthen the glass and cut down the device’s size, according to a report from Mashable.

Amazon claims the battery life of the Oasis will be two weeks, but the leather case that will be shipped with it includes a backup battery that will extend the life by seven additional weeks. However, the device does not include the Alexa app that provides voice services to a number of Amazon products such as the Echo wireless speaker and voice-command device.

The Oasis is available for preorder and will begin shipping on April 27. It will cost $289.99 for the Wi-Fi-only edition that shows advertisements when the reader is turned on. The unit without advertisements costs $309.99, while a 3G device will cost $359.99 with offers and $379 without.

“The device’s funky new aesthetic is a surprise move for the relatively no-frills Kindle category, and yet it packs the longest battery of any e-reader ever made,” Nick Statt wrote in a review of the Oasis for The Verge. “These changes raise interesting questions for book lovers: What do we really need in an e-reader, and how much should those elements cost us?”

Young Adults See Web Design Differently

Young adults aged 18-25 don’t react the same as teenagers or adults over 35 to website design. That might pose some difficulties for colleges and universities that are trying to use their sites for a mix of purposes aimed at a wide range of ages: recruitment, enrollment management, online courses, advancement, alumni relations, and communications.

A new usability study by Nielsen Norman Group (NNG), a web design consulting practice, confirmed the results of an earlier study with young-adult millennials. When this age group goes online, they generally have a purpose in mind. While teens enjoy finding games and other interactive elements on sites, those features are annoying to young adults unless they have a clear function—a quiz to help the taker determine the best course of action, for instance.

“Young adults are sensitive to tone,” according to NNG’s executive summary of the study report. “They will feel insulted if they suspect the site is talking down to them, and will notice if the site is trying too hard to appear cool.”

Unlike older adults, the younger cohort will open multiple tabs online at the same time in pursuit of the information they seek, a behavior NNG dubbed “page parking.” They also tend to work on more than one task online simultaneously (called “parallel browsing”).

Because they’ve grown up with the Internet, those 18-25 “tend to be extremely confident in their own ability to navigate digital interfaces, even when encountering radically new design patterns,” NNG noted. Whereas older adults will take their time in exploring a new interface and exercise caution before clicking, young adults will plunge right in and click away.

However, if they run into problems as a result, they’re apt to blame the site’s owner and view the online difficulties as representative of that organization. 

CBE Is Not Only About Technology

The competency-based education (CBE) model can provide flexibility and accessibility to personalized learning while allowing some students to complete their studies in much less time than the traditional on-campus model. Technology helps make it possible, but it can’t be the end of the conversation.

Technology makes it easier to engage students, puts content in front of learners at the moment it can be most effective, and measures when they are ready to move to the next level. However, the content and educator are still at the center of the learning experience, according to an article in eCampus News.

A focus on content first enables technology to be used to provide information to the learner. Then, technology can provide the assessment tools necessary to understand how students engage with the material.

“CBE today is redefining the delivery of education, providing new learning opportunities that place value on the skills and knowledge a student has gained through their life experience outside of the classroom, or in prior classrooms throughout their learning journey,” wrote Jade Roth, CEO of Flat World Education. “It can remove some of the roadblocks that have stood in the way of their education. To truly serve those students, we must always remember why they are there: not to try our new technology, but to build the knowledge and skills they need to achieve their professional and personal goals.”

E-Sports Find a Home at UC Irvine

The University of California, Irvine, is taking gaming to a new level with its e-sports and gaming initiative, which will include a state-of-the-art arena with high-end gaming computers, a stage for League of Legends events, and live webcasting. The arena is scheduled to be ready for use by the fall.

League of Legends is among the most popular video games in the world, according to a report for Tech Insider. UC Irvine will also offer up to 10 academic scholarships to students on the team, while providing nonteam students with a place to play.

“UCI e-sports will be built on four pillars: competition, academics, entertainment, and community,” Thomas Parham, vice chancellor for student affairs, said in a university release. “We hope to attract the best gamers from around the world, and our academic programs in computer gaming science, digital arts, computer science, engineering, anthropology, law, medicine, neuroscience, and behavior create a strong foundation for research and inquiry related to gaming.”

The 3,500-sq.-ft. arena is scheduled to have 80 custom gaming computers equipped with the most popular video game titles. The space will be made available to classes and research projects, as well as serving as a hub for social and competitive gaming.

“It has been a dream for many of us on campus that UCI recognize the importance of e-sports and create a space and a program that cater to the large community of gamers at the university,” said Jesse Wang, president of The Association of Gamers. “The e-sports team and arena will ensure that UCI continues to be a leader and trendsetter in collegiate e-sports.”

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.

There's a Disconnect on Digital Literacy

A February survey of students and faculty members said that neither group thinks much of the other’s digital literacy. The 2016 State of Digital Media in Higher Education Report made the case that learning outcomes would improve if institutions did a better job of providing information and access to digital resources, according to a report in eCampus News.

One of the main findings from the report was 45% of the responding students consider themselves highly digitally literate, while only 14% of the faculty agreed with them. Conversely, 49% of the faculty said they were highly digitally literate, but just 24% of the students agreed.

More than 90% of faculty members and 76% of the students said that multimedia-enhanced lectures were more engaging, but both groups gave low marks to university-provided resources to digital media. Just 20% of faculty and 32% of students said they accessed course-related digital media through university resources.

“Schools are making huge investments in infrastructure, yet they’re cutting at the efficacy of their own institutions by not providing content for students to use in their new digital center or on the cloud,” said TJ Leonard, CEO of VideoBlocks, the digital-resource provider that conducted the online survey. “Schools should be doing everything possible to prepare students for the 21st-century economy, and it’s hard to imagine that without access to digital media. They have to make resources available and give students consistent access to them in the classroom, the library, and off campus to get the full value out of digital media.”

Understanding Bandwidth Usage Is a Must

Today’s college students arrive on campus expecting fast and reliable Internet connection. At the same time, many institutions have implemented bring-your-own-device policies that make providing the connection even more important.

The mix of educational needs and recreational usage is stretching network capacity to the limit. In order to work efficiently, networks must be able to prioritize what usage is important and even block what isn’t, according to a column for eCampus News.

The first step in addressing the problem is to understand current usage, according to Bruce Miller, vice president, product marketing, for Xirrus Wi-Fi Network. Miller identified streaming media, cloud backups and updates, virtual private networks (VPN), and social media as the applications that are the biggest bandwidth hogs an institution must deal with. Streaming media, such as movies, is the largest problem, but cloud backups can also be an issue because they move gigabytes of data at a time.

“True enterprise Wi-Fi systems must have the ability to identify, prioritize, and limit applications appropriately to ensure a good user experience for those who use the network and approach utility-grade nirvana,” Miller wrote.

Tech's Role in Course Content Strategy

How can technology help improve access to education as well as learning outcomes? At the second annual Textbook Affordability Conference, Vic Vuchic, chief innovation officer and executive director of Digital Promise Global, will explore the ways in which tech innovation and collaboration can be harnessed to drive a campus course-materials strategy.

Vuchic will be the keynote luncheon presenter at the conference, to be held April 27-29 at the University of California, Davis. Digital Promise Global is a nonprofit organization working with education leaders, researchers, and learning technology developers to enhance teaching and learning around the world through technology and research.

Other sessions will offer recommendations from a panel of faculty and instructional designers for the successful adoption and use of free and low-cost materials, how campus libraries and IT factor into reducing the cost of course materials, innovative sales and distribution models for capitalizing on the campus store’s business expertise and connection with students, and options for developing “all-source” models of course content.

Attendees will work in teams to discuss the ideas from session presenters and use that advice to start creating course-materials affordability plans for their campus.

Registration is still open for the conference, organized by the National Association of College Stores in collaboration with the California Association of College Stores (CACS), Association of American Publishers (AAP) Higher Education, NASPA: Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, California State University, and OpenStax.

More Malware Attacks on the Horizon

College students love their electronic devices, but that love affair could make them prime candidates for malware attacks. Research from the IT security firm Check Point found mobile malware used against Android devices is now among the most prevalent forms of attacks for the first time, while iOS platforms could soon see a steep increase.

The firm reported that while Android attacks are still more common and will become even harder to detect, the popularity of iPhones and iPads make those devices high-quality targets for cybercriminals. Check Point said it identified more than 1,400 different malware types globally in February, with the Conficker, Sality, and Dorkbot families as the most common variants.

“On top of these risks, we’ll experience a trend of cybercriminals using advanced techniques to not only take over and control individual devices but groups of multiple devices,” David De Laine, regional managing director for Check Point, told the industry newsletter ARNnet. “Controlling one device is fun, but controlling an army of devices is a real moneymaker. Botnets are getting bigger and more well-orchestrated, giving hackers a range of malicious capabilities from massive spamming schemes and heavy DDOS attacks to cryptocurrency mining.”

A denial-of-service (DOS) attack is an attempt to make a device or network unavailable to its user. A distributed denial-of-service (DDOS) is an attack on more than one unique Internet protocol address.

Many Americans Unaware of Online Learning

A new Pew Research Center study found 74% of American adults consider themselves “personal learners.” While that may sound good, the report also noted that only 14% were “very familiar” with the concept of distance learning and just 5% had heard of massive open online courses (MOOCs).

The survey of nearly 3,000 adults also found that 49% of the respondents said they were “not familiar at all” with distance learning in general and 67% said the same of MOOCs.

Access to technology also played a role. More than 80% of the respondents with smartphones or a high-speed Internet connection participated in a personal learning program, compared to 54% who said they didn’t have a home broadband connection or a smartphone.

“It becomes a bit of a double-whammy for less-educated Americans,” John Horrigan, author of the study, said in a report for Quartz. “They are less attuned to seeking out educational opportunities than other segments [of the population], and less skilled at using new technologies that might help them overcome those gaps.”

Help might be on the horizon from the Federal Communications Commission, which recently voted on a plan to modernize a Reagan-era program, known as Lifeline, that provides phone service to low-income individuals. The plan would allow users to apply the monthly support they receive for Lifeline to a broadband service starting at 500 MB.

“It’s taken a lot of work for the agency to get even this fairly modest modernization of Lifeline from a phone-only program in 1985 to one that is broadband-inclusive,” Josh Stager, policy counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute, said in a report for Diverse Education. “But many Americans clearly still need help affording the tablets and laptops that would get them online.”

U.S. Millennials Don't Have the Skills

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) released global data in 2013 on how the U.S. population compared to those of other nations in terms of literacy and reading, numeracy, and problem-solving. The results weren’t pretty, especially for millennials.

The data revealed that the American millennial generation had the highest levels of education attainment of any previous generation, but that they demonstrated relatively weak skills in all the categories under consideration when compared to their international peers, according to a report in eCampus News. The research also found that too many millennials graduated without learning the right skills to enter a technology-based global workforce.

“These findings hold true when looking at millennials overall, our best performing and most educated, those who are native born, and those from the highest socioeconomic background,” wrote Irwin Kirsh, director of the Center for Global Assessments at Educational Testing Service. “Equally troubling is that these findings represent a decrease in literacy and numeracy skills for U.S. adults when compared with the result of previous adult surveys.”

PIAAC surveyed 5,000 people aged 16-65 in 22 countries for the study. U.S. millennials scored lower than 15 of the countries in literacy and ranked last in numeracy and problem-solving skills.

“If we expect to have a better-educated population and a more competitive workforce, policy-makers and other stakeholders will need to shift the conversation from one of educational attainment to one that acknowledges the growing importance of skills and examines these more critically,” Kirsch added. “How are skills distributed in the population and how do they relate to important social and economic outcomes? How can we ensure that students earning a high school diploma and a postsecondary degree acquire the necessary skills to fully participate in our society?”

Ohio Defunds Education Clearinghouse

Ohio has funded an online repository of free educational resources since 2007. Next year, teachers will have to find the content themselves after the state legislature elected to stop funding the Distance Learning Clearinghouse.

Funding was cut in half, to $500,000, last year. The Ohio State University, Columbus, which operated the clearinghouse, has taken no position on the elimination of funding, but did prepare a report which estimated that 82% of the schools in the state had used the resource in some way. The clearinghouse has more than 12,000 lessons in key subject areas, more than 950 reviews of online courses, and more than 1,000 professional-development lessons for teachers, according to a report from The Columbus Dispatch that appeared in eSchool News.

“They’ll have to go to Google and try to do their own reviews,” Janet Herrelko, a math-education professor at the University of Dayton, said of instructors who previously used the clearinghouse as a resource. “It will take a lot longer for them to understand it. If you try to skim this material, you could miss problems with it.”

State politics may also be involved since a liberal advocacy group has charged the administration of Gov. John Kasich used the program to steer contracts toward a major Republican donor. One of the contracts provided an online interface that critics said didn’t work and that most users bypassed.

Most Students Avoid Too-Heavy Loan Debt

The higher-education affordability movement was triggered in part by concerns that students are digging themselves into a lifelong hole of debt by taking out loans to finance their studies. However, a new survey shows that hole may be fairly manageable for most students.

OnCampus Research, part of the NACS subsidiary indiCo, asked students about their current levels of loan debt and other financial matters. Overall, 39% of student respondents said they had accumulated no debt at all toward their education so far.

Students are more likely to take out loans in their upperclassman years after exhausting other sources of money. To compare, 46% of first-year students said they were debt-free while only 30% of fourth-year students could say the same. Many graduate students, despite facing higher tuition costs and possible debt left from their bachelor’s studies, are doing all right; 39% of them currently have zero debt from student loans.

Among students who have borrowed for their education, more than half are deferring payments until they graduate and can get a full-time job. The rest are paying at least a little while they’re still in school.

However, the amount of debt that most students are shouldering appears to be within acceptable boundaries, contrary to numerous news reports about a debt “crisis.” The rule of thumb, according to the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is that a student’s total loan debt should not exceed the annual salary the student could reasonably expect to earn in their particular field in the first year after graduation.

About a quarter of all students say they have less than $10,000 in educational debt and 21% have $10,000-$30,000. Only 6% have accumulated $50,000 or more in student-loan debt at this point and some of those are working on degrees in high-paying fields such as medicine, law, or engineering.

Amazon Is Making Bricks-and-Mortar Work

Amazon turned “showrooming” into a dirty word in retail. Now, the company is making showrooming work in its bricks-and-mortar bookstore, according to author and strategist Frank Catalano in an article for GeekWire.

Catalano visited the Amazon Books store in Seattle and discovered a lot to like. He found a comfortable store that made running across something new to read easier then the Amazon online recommendation engine. Prices were the same as listed online, despite signs that showed books at full publisher list price, and Amazon’s ratings and excerpts from reviews were easy to locate.

“The genius is that Amazon has neatly knocked down the virtual walls between online and physical retailing, carefully bringing online content and transactional expertise to what already works in in-person shopping,” Catalano wrote. “It just happens to be a bookstore.”

Reports have also surfaced about a pilot that places display stands of e-book-specific Amazon gift cards in drugstores in Washington state. The cards can be redeemed for the e-book on the card or turned into general-purpose store credit.

“It seems clear Amazon’s brick-and-mortar ambitions are only beginning,” Chris Meadows wrote in an article for TeleRead. “And if bookstores thought it was bad when they only had to compete with the online version of the site, something tells me their problems are just about to get a whole lot worse.”

Zero-Textbook- Cost Program Considered

California Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed a program designed to allow community college students in the state to earn a degree with no textbook costs. The Zero-Textbook-Cost Degrees program would make it possible for students to earn a degree using only open educational resources (OER).

Under the proposal, community colleges would compete for grants of up to $500,000 to offer associate degrees, certificates, or credential programs that students can complete using only free and open textbooks. All of the materials would be available in the California Open Online Library for Education.

“We believe developing OER degree pathways at the community colleges is a reasonable next step,” Stephen Frank wrote in a post for California Political Review.

California is just the latest state to explore this route. The Virginia community colleges system has already funded three rounds of OER grants and begun development of OER degree pathways at each of the system’s 23 campuses. The University of Maryland University College, an online institution, has also announced that all of its degree programs will have zero textbook costs by the fall.

Pearson to Market Ohio Community College

Cincinnati State Technical and Community College in Cincinnati, OH, is struggling with declining enrollment and a state-mandated tuition freeze. Pearson Education has signed on to find a solution.

In an agreement signed last fall, Pearson will take over marketing, recruiting, and student services for the institution, which saw its enrollment fall to fewer than 10,000 students over the last six years. The 10-year contract provides Pearson with service fees of up to 20% of tuition revenue based on a tiered system that depends on retention and new students, according to a report in Inside Higher Ed.

“We have a tremendous amount of expertise in marketing, digital and traditional marketing,” said Todd Hitchcock, chief operating officer of the Pearson subsidiary Pearson Embanet. “We’re able to leverage everything we know about student acquisition on the front end from years of experience. If you think about the traditional community college, they may have a couple of people in marketing, where we have hundreds. So on the marketing side, we’ve developed a comprehensive plan that really focused on their brand: redesigning, redeveloping it, and defining what it means to go to Cincinnati State.”

Faculty members are cautiously optimistic about the partnership with Pearson, which has been a content provider at the school for years. Pam Ecker, president of the Cincinnati State chapter of the American Association of University Professors, said instructors have been informed throughout the contract process.

“There were a lot of people with concerns about a public college partnering with a for-profit organization, but we’ve been appropriately included,” she said. “We’re carefully watching all the steps, and we never hesitate to have our voice heard.”

Silicon Valley Shares Its Expertise

Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are morphing the concept of massive open online courses (MOOCs) into 10-minute mini-MOOCs. Known as 10 Minute Insights, the series of mobile-enabled, live-streamed videos are hosted by innovators talking about a variety of topics.

One unusual feature of the videos is viewers are able to ask questions directly of the presenters during the live-streaming event, even on their mobile devices, according to a report in eCampus News. The micro-learning classes are hosted on the social knowledge platform EdCast, with many presenters scheduling their broadcasts in advance to notify those interested in participating.

There are no credits or credentials offered for taking the micro-courses. Instead, the goal is to help entrepreneurs, students, and small-business owners develop baseline business skills.

“There is a huge demand for knowledge and skills in entrepreneurship right now, as often it can be more efficient to create a job than to find one in today’s economy,” said Karl Mehta, founder and CEO of EdCast. “Silicon Valley, specifically, is well-suited for imparting advice on how to scale entrepreneurial skills rapidly.”

Students May Be Coming Around to E-Textbooks

This post has been updated.

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

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

So who’s reading digital textbooks?

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

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

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

Unlocking the Potential of OER

Convincing faculty that open educational resource (OER) content is of high quality continues to be a stumbling block for proponents of the alternative course-material model. Providing better tools to find quality material is the next big challenge.

Products are being created to locate independent quality evaluations. More faculty members are using products such as FacultyEnlight from Barnes & Noble College and Hero from Sidewalk and helping to make them better.

“Being able to think about, from a cost perspective, how one textbook compares to another, to be able to see what peers are using the materials, what their reviews are of the materials, and then being able to take those materials and adopt them,” Rich Hershman, NACS vice president of government relations, said in a report on EducationDive, “that’s where I’m really excited about where things are starting to develop in the future.”

The fact that OER content is flexible and can be tailored to fit the needs of individual students should encourage greater acceptance and growth, according to Tom Caswell, director of learning engineering who served as the open education policy associate for the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges during the development of its Open Course Library.

“The next step for OER is to get away from flat resources and put OER in personalized spaces that allow students to really benefit individually from those resources,” he said.

Emails Can Be a Tough Read

College students know they get emails. The challenge is actually getting them to read messages, according to a study from Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH.

Researchers polled 315 students about their email, social media, and text-messaging habits in the 2015 survey. They found that 85% said they check their university email daily and will open messages that interest them, particularly from faculty.

On the flip side, 72% said they avoid messages from organizations on campus, viewing those emails as spam. The survey also found that 39% of students don’t always read emails from academic advisers and 54% will skip emails from the university or academic departments.

Just over 50% of the students said they used text messaging for most of their communications, followed by social media (35%), and email (12%). Those students most active on social media were least likely to avoid emails.

“Text messaging and many social media tools seem to carry a greater expectation that viewing and responding happen as a real-time conversation,” Bernard R. McCoy, associate professor of journalism at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, said about the BGSU research in a report for Inside Higher Education. “You send a text message, you expect a quick reply. You receive a text message, you expect to read it and reply to it.”

Email gives users the freedom to read and respond or ignore, according to McCoy. Besides, students also know they are getting far more junk emails than junk text messages.

Napping Is the Next Big Thing on Campus

Colleges and universities have put up rock-climbing walls and state-of-the-art recreation centers to attract and retain students for years. Now, some are starting to promote napping.

Students at some major universities across the country can reserve space in specially designated nap zones that prioritize sleep. There’s even a high-tech option called an EnergyPod that vibrates, plays music, and has a helmetlike visor to help students nod off while others in the area are busy working on assignments and talking to friends.

“It’s fair to say that students are more stressed and anxious than ever before because of uncertainty about their futures and high expectations set for them by friends and family,” Ishtpreet Singh, vice president of the University of Miami student government, said in a report in USA Today. “Even 20 minutes [of sleep] can provide additional stamina.”

The student government at the Coral Gables, FL, institution pushed for the pods in an effort to improve mental health on campus. The university responded by placing napping stations in the Shalala Student Center and the Whitten University Center, adding a massage chair near the pod in the Whitten building.

“We worked with student government leaders, who presented a compelling case to purchase the nap pods for our student center complex,” said Pat Whitley, vice president for student affairs at Miami. “Research shows that having the ability to take a nap can enhance well-being, have a positive impact on mental health, and can help boost academic performance. Our students, especially those who commute, will be able to take advantage of these safe and private rest stations, which provide an opportunity for a quick, 20-minute nap.”

Campus Retail Innovation: Book Options, Store Design

Innovation comes in many forms for collegiate retailers. Two campus stores were recognized at the 2016 Campus Market Expo (CAMEX) March 4-8 in Houston, TX, for their very different approaches to supporting their institutions.

UC Davis Stores, University of California, Davis, received the $5,000 Innovation Achievement Award prize from the NACS Foundation for its Inclusive Access program, which has saved students up to 70% off the cost of their course materials in some 40 classes. The stores negotiated with textbook publishers to provide students with access to digital versions of their books. Students pay a fee that’s much lower than the price of a print book; the publishers are able to drop the price because nearly all enrollees are guaranteed to pay, rather than buying used copies.

The stores focused on courses using more expensive books (typically $100 or more for used books or rentals) with low sales. Due to the cost, some students tried to complete the course without a book or at least waited a couple of weeks before purchasing. The program ensures students have their reading materials right on the first day of class and don’t get behind.

Honorable mention for the Innovation Achievement Award went to the USD Torero Store, University of San Diego, for its creative use of technology and contemporary retail-space design concepts to transform the traditional campus bookstore into a destination spot on campus. The store, renovated in 2015, now features large video screens, elaborate lighting, a virtual mirror, a technology support desk, and movable fixtures to enable use of flex space.

The store also offers up-to-date mobile checkouts and e-commerce kiosks. There is a demonstration area with free classes and room for live performances.

A NACS webinar discussing how the USD Torero Store undertook this renovation metamorphosis, even reducing its size in the process, will be held Thursday, March 31, beginning at 1 p.m. Eastern. For more details, visit the description page for The College Store of the Future webinar; registration is required in advance.

MOOC Instructors Need More Support

A new study found that teaching massive open online courses (MOOCs) takes its toll on instructors. The research concluded that supporting instructors may be as important to creation of successful courses as attracting students, according to a report on phys.org.

When researchers from Penn State University and the University of Central Florida interviewed 14 MOOC instructors for the study, they found only four who expressed interested in teaching them on a regular basis. Two instructors said they won’t teach another MOOC and another four worried about the demands of teaching a MOOC as well as a regular class.

Instructors said they struggled to find new ways to teach a MOOC and needed support in course preparation, implementation, and feedback. Dealing with teaching a class the size of a MOOC can be a challenge. One instructor told researchers that the preparation for a course took nearly 400 hours on top of regular teaching responsibilities.

“Most of the research on how we can make MOOCs successful has focused on the student side—how do we attract and retain them, for instance—but now attention is starting to switch to instructors, who make the MOOCs happen,” said Sajing Zheng, a doctoral candidate in information sciences and technology at Penn State who helped conduct the research. “So it’s important to know the motivations of the instructors for teaching this new format and their experiences and challenges when they teach these MOOCs.”

Fitness Trackers Are Still Top-Sellers

Fitness trackers continue to post strong increases as a product category, according to a new report from International Data Corp. (IDC). Fitbit led the growth with 29.5% of units shipped, while Apple was a distant second at 15%.

One reason for Fitbit being ahead is consumers aren’t sure what to make of smartwatches, tending to view the device as an expensive notification center with insufficient battery life.

“People don’t quite see the value in smartwatches just yet,” Jitesh Ubrani, senior research analyst for IDC Mobile Device Trackers, said in a report in E-Commerce Times. “People understand the purpose of a Fitbit or a fitness tracker, but they don’t understand the importance of a smartwatch.”

That should change in the next three to five years as the cost of smartwatches comes down and features improve, Ubrani said. Style will also eventually help smartwatches become more important.

“Fashion and style is important,” said Billie Whitehouse, CEO of Wearable Experiments. “We’re seeing all kinds of new materials crop up, and I think that’s part of the evolution. It’s going beyond these big boxes on our wrists.”

Pindex Launched as 'Pinterest for Education'

A new social media site launched in February allows users to collect educational materials on pinboards. If the concept sounds familiar, Pindex bills itself as a “Pinterest for education.”

“I started Pindex out of frustration with the dull, dry material my 10-year-old daughter would bring home from school,” John Leaver, one of the co-founders of the startup, told British newspaper The Telegraph. “Making every topic engaging is a huge task—too much for any one person. Pindex enables teachers and professors to share their best materials. Working together like this is the only way to solve the problem.”

On the site, a bookmark button captures content from the web and adds it to the users’ “boards.” Instructors can post quizzes on the boards and visitors can earn grades on the tests, according to a report from Campus Technology. One of the co-founders of Pindex is British actor and writer Stephen Fry, who narrates videos for the site.

Topics already on the site range from Fry’s video on the Large Hadron Collider to drones, robots, and colonizing Mars. As the site grows, the founders expect the Pindex library to collect more content from educators and researchers.

“At a time when it is easy to lose faith in an online world that seems to center around trolling, bullying, hating, trivializing, and belittling, it is worth remembering the incredible power of the Internet to inform and educate, lucidly and entertainingly,” Fry said.

Policies Needed to Curb Digital Distractions

Plenty of studies have shown that digital devices cause distraction in the classroom. However, other reports indicate that while students understand their devices are distracting, they don’t want them banned.

That led Joshua Kim, director of digital learning initiatives at the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning at Dartmouth College, to propose three principles of digital usage in his blog for Inside Higher Education. His proposals are aimed at finding ways to effectively use the technology distraction.

To start, Kim suggested that instructors determine and enforce classroom technology policies.

“The authority of the educator in the classroom must be understood and agreed upon by all parties,” he wrote. “This does not mean that the educator can abuse that authority, as that will be the quickest way to break trust with the learners. Being able to direct the students about when technology is used—even if the answer is that technology is never used—is necessary and appropriate.”

Use of student devices must also be intentional. Technology allows students to create things in real-time and is much closer to the way students will use technology in the workforce.

“Use class time to have students or groups do research, create quick presentations, and lead classroom discussions,” Kim wrote. “An amazing amount of actual work can be accomplished during class time—especially if the professor can walk around and coach.”

Finally, class time should be devoted to discussion to help students understand why the policies are in place and to think about the way they use their devices in their lives.

“Your students will be much more likely to accept (if not embrace) you classroom technology choice if you talk about the reasons behind those choices,” he wrote.

Faculty Not Sold on OER

The news is full of reports about digital learning and open educational resources (OER), and yet faculty members don’t seem to be on board. Nearly a quarter of faculty members responding to a new survey said digital will never be used in their classes and 27% said if it did happen it wouldn’t be for another couple of years, according to a report in Campus Technology.

When it comes to OER, 75% said they either never heard of them or know little about them. Another 10% said they have reviewed OER content and decided against using it.

The survey, conducted for the Independent College Bookstore Association, also found that 97% of faculty members said they consider their own assessment of course materials as either important or very important, with 86% specifying cost of the material as important. However, just 36% said course materials in digital format were important.

Most faculty members (79%) said they believed digital content “generally costs less,” but just 44% said they thought students preferred it. Fewer than 30% said digital could have a “beneficial impact” on learning when compared to print.

“While the transition from print to digital course materials may be inevitable, these new survey data make two things clear: First is that the pace of this change is much slower than anticipated by publishers, administrators, and campus IT professionals,” Kenneth Green, head of the Campus Computing Project, said in his report Going Digital: Faculty Perspectives on Digital and OER Course Materials. “And, second, most faculty are not convinced that digital products have a positive impact on student learning outcomes.”