Student Loophole or Opportunity for Publishers to Create A New Textbook Model

Currently, there are subscription-based electronic databases that legally house 1000's of complete textbook titles that can be accessed by both students and faculty. One example is Books 24x7, which mainly focuses on business and IT discipline titles.

Out of curiosity, I have worked with library faculty to develop embedded links to this database to offer students a textbook option that delivers high-quality textbook content electronically... At no cost to them. With a clear course plan of key terms and concepts that students need to achieve course objectives, we mapped each key term and concepts, via embedded links, back to no less than 16 textbooks housed in the Books 24x7 ebook database.

This exercise has been an amazing learning experience for me as an instructor and as a consumer of textbooks.

For many faculty, textbook reps show up individually, present us with updated editions of textbooks that are accompanied with any number of course supplements that include, companion websites, test banks, power points, videos, sample syllabi, etc., etc.

In general, this model has worked... Faculty receive vetted content to share and distribute to students and student expectations are met because they receive a syllabus, a required textbook and marching orders for the course.

This is not a poor model, but it is difficult for me not to only question this model but to challenge it by providing students with an option that satisfies or exceeds course objectives, becomes a "click away" for users, requires no additional money from students and takes advantage of an existing electronic library resource.

It's silly to even say, "things have changed." Available high-quality content for numerous disciplines is not only readily available but can be fed to us based on individual interests via RSS feeds and simple permanent URLs.

Linking students to key terms and concepts in my current Introduction to Marketing course may be a short-term loophole that only current and near-future students can benefit from.  Surely, publishers who contribute licensed content to Books24x7 did not envision their texts being accessed in such a way, and my fear is that, as much as I would love this model to catch on, if it does, publishers may be less willing to participate in these ebook aggregators.  In the meantime,  I will continue to improve this model with colleagues to maximize the potential for sharing relevant content from existing ebook databases.

However, I realize there is still a large market of my colleagues that benefit the traditional textbook model. My challenge would be for publishers to reevaluate their model to identify how they can develop and sustain a system where electronic textbooks from multiple publishers that support multiple disciplines can be available to students and accessed in this manner without the loophole closing.

GA Considers Replacing Textbooks With iPads

Being a true New England snob I tend to give "The South" a lot of grief, and it's mostly unnecessary. Case in point: as a Massachusetts resident in 2002 I enrolled at the University of Georgia (Go Dawgs!) and was charged the measly Out of State Tuition of something in the range of $10,000 (at present, tuition and fees for out-of-staters is $26,946 according to the CollegeBoard). Meanwhile, when I transferred to the University of New Hampshire in 2003 I paid in the ballpark of $15,000 as a resident. Public Universities in the South have a great reputation for keeping education affordable for their in-state students (and even vagabonds like myself). Moreover, Georgia afforded (and still does, although there's news of cut-backs) its in-state students the ability to attend one of their public universities (including UGA) for free courtesy of the HOPE Scholarship, as long as they had a 3.0 coming in and maintained that average throughout college career. To me, Georgia's HOPE Scholarship represents real forward thinking in terms of students' right higher education and reminds me that it's incredibly ignorant to assume that New England is the Mecca for evolutions in education.

And now Georgia is joining the ranks of schools in New York, Virginia, and California by considering ditching print textbooks in Middle School classrooms and equipping every student with an iPad (story here). While there are concerns over the infancy of the technology and the near future introduction of other tablet products, GA Senator Tommie Williams notes that students are becoming accustomed to learning in a digital environment and schools must evolve to meet their changing needs. Which is more risky: allowing students and teachers to experiment with new technologies and ways of learning or handing students out-dated, sometimes inaccurate content? At least the former provides a learning opportunity for the entire community...a "let's try this together and see what works" approach.

While the Senator and others involved are reportedly just "in talks" with Apple to go through with this initiative, I'm impressed by their willingness to adapt and experiment. The potential success of these initiatives in New York, Virginia, California, and now Georgia should nudge those of us in higher education to ask, "what happens when these students wind up at our institutions in 5-8 years?" How will we evolve and innovate to be able to sustain the learning styles these students will be accustomed to?