Textbooks of the Near Future

by Larry MacPhee, Associate Director

When I went to college, back in the 1980s, each of my new hardcover textbooks weighed over 5 pounds and cost over $100.00. Cheaper used and softcover texts weren’t yet readily available. Since that time, increasing numbers of students have been selling their textbooks back to the bookstore or other re-sellers in order to get a wad of cash to fund a keg-party or the next semester’s textbook purchases. The increased availability of used textbooks has driven publishers, they argue, to raise the prices of their new texts and, at least to my skeptical eye, to make numerous small changes to each edition and release these new editions at ever shorter intervals to try to reduce the usefulness of old editions. So, for decades, students and publishers have been locked in an “arms race” that hasn’t been particularly good for either side. That’s about to change.

Enter Amazon.com, the model for a disruptive new relationship between students and textbook publishers. Amazon is the world’s largest bookseller and they now sell more eBooks than paper books. They deliver their eBooks via the Kindle, but also through the free Kindle reader app for Android phones, iPhones, and iPads because Amazon only cares that you buy their content; not what you read it on. I bet not too many college students own Kindles, but they sure like their smartphones! I recently asked a fairly typical group of over 100 university students how many of them owned “smartphones.” Almost every hand in the audience went up, so most students already have a mobile device capable of reading eTextbooks. I also asked them how many were currently using electronic textbooks. Not a single hand went up. In the business world, this is what people call an “opportunity.”

The big academic publishers in K-12 and higher-ed, including Wiley, Pearson, Cengage, Benjamin Cummings, Houghton Mifflin, MacMillan and all the rest, are ready to get into the game. They’ve been watching Amazon long enough now to see that it’s a winning strategy. According to the publishers, and I don’t doubt their numbers, about one third of textbooks purchased annually are used, not new. Each of those re-sales is lost profit for the publishers. But because of something called DRM, or “digital rights management,” students won’t be able to re-sell their eTexts. While there are plenty of ways in which eBooks might be superior to paper books, the big one for the publishers is DRM. With eBooks, the used textbook market is dead. It’s also possible that the publishers will profit from not having to print and distribute physical books, but at least some of those profits will be offset by the need to publish online editions, and maintain servers and a larger IT infrastructure. Publishers will tell you that students are going to love eTexts for the mobility, reduced weight, the ability to get corrections, updated content, and for the multimedia elements that make the eBook a richer learning experience. While both paper and electronic editions exist side by side, you can even expect the eText to be cheaper to drive customers into the new market. So students will like eContent, and publishers will profit from it. But convincing faculty, most of whom don’t particularly like technology or change, that eTextbooks are worth the effort will be a challenge.

Faculty control the textbook adoption process, and they remain somewhat skeptical that moving to eTexts is worth the effort. Publishers could try to pressure them by eliminating the paper edition, but that might drive an instructor to select a competitor’s product. They could use student demand, by making the eText cheaper than, and different from, the paper edition. They might even try to convince faculty with incentives like a free iPad, or by encouraging faculty to “build your own book” by assembling chapters of pre-built content. In the days of the printed text, especially in the K-12 market where California and Texas heavily influence content decisions, the publisher sometimes faced the challenge of trying to satisfy diverse customers with the same content. Now the “controversial” chapter on Evolution or Global Warming or the Big Bang or Birth Control Methods can be easily deleted or replaced, because the customer is always right! In higher ed, the ability to easily mix and match digital content may also appeal to instructors who want to customize their courses. Apple hopes faculty will start writing their own eBooks for iPad using their free tools. I don’t think the faculty will go willingly into this brave new world, but it’s probably going to happen whether they like it or not.

On the Horizon

by John Doherty and Lorraine B. Elder

The annual Horizon Report, published by the New Media Consortium (NMC), describes educational technologies that are ripe for adoption in the coming year, the next 2 to 3 years, and 4 to 5 years out. The 2011 Horizon Report is now out. The full report (.pdf) is available on the NMC site. The work that went into the report is documented in NMC’s Horizon Report wiki.

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2011 Horizon Report Predictions for
Educational Technology Adoptions During the Next One to Five Years

1 year or less	2 to 3 years	4 to 5 years
Electronic books Mobile devices	Augmented reality Game-based learning	Gesture-based computing Learning analytics

Dead on or dead wrong?

Past Horizon Reports have included some notable hits and misses, perhaps stemming from the biases and interests of the researchers, many of whom inhabit the leading edge of educational technology and are removed from the laggard community. For example, the 2005 Horizon Report said social networks would be adopted within education in four to five years. Social networks went mainstream long before that but have seen less adoption in education than expected, perhaps partly because until recently they weren’t well integrated with learning management systems, and partly because many educators often viewed—and still view—social networks with suspicion.

Another element of the 2005 report suggested that educational gaming would be widespread by 2008. The 2011 report says that game-based learning is still two to three years away, evidence that prognostication is an inexact business.

Still, it’s worth contemplating some of this year’s predictions.

Electronic books and mobile devices

These two technologies do seem to be obvious choices, and they’re not unrelated. For example, Amazon Kindles and Apple iPads are good devices for displaying ebooks, and both are popular with consumers (the National Federation of the Blind’s lawsuit against Arizona State University for its Kindle use notwithstanding). Last July, Amazon’s ebook sales outpaced hardcover sales, with 143 ebooks sold for every 100 hardcover books.

However, digital rights management still acts as a bottleneck for adoption of ebooks in education, especially for books published outside the U.S. For example, the Kindle edition of Jerusalem: The Biography, by Simon Sebag Montefiore, is receiving very good reviews in British publications but is not yet published in the United States and won’t be available here until at least November 2011, a year after its British publication. Fortunately, some publishers realize the value ebooks can bring to teaching and learning, and they are decoupling the purchases of ebooks and printed books. McGraw-Hill now allows students to buy or rent—for much lower cost—an ebook without forcing purchase of its physical counterpart.

A new report by Rob Reynolds of Xplana indicates projections for the digital textbook market over the next five years. Their projections agree with the Horizon Report regarding coming adoption of ebooks, but their time frame is more conservative.

The 2011 Horizon Report notes that some tablet devices, such as the Apple iPad and the Samsung Galaxy Tab offer enough compelling additional features to make ebooks “a potentially transformative technology” because they can now include rich media and supplemental material not possible in a printed book. Inkling’s edition of Raven Biology is cited as one example of a title that “brings the study of this science to life with detailed illustrations and animations, in-line keyword definitions, and interactive quizzes embedded in each chapter.”

On the mobile device front, the 2011 Horizon Report notes three converging points:

• Within the next year, Internet-capable devices will outnumber computers.
• In Japan, 75% of Internet users already choose mobile devices as their primary means of access.
• By 2015, 80% of people accessing the Internet will do so from a mobile device.

The Pew Internet & American Life Project has an interesting infographic showing rates of ownership of several types of mobile devices by age group. Tablets and ebook readers show comparatively low rates of ownership, but laptops, MP3 players, and cell phones show high rates of ownership across age groups. Only 9% of adults don’t own any of the devices, and 63% of those non-owners are age 66 or older. Take a look at the full-sized graphic for details.

Many educators are already challenged by the presence of mobile devices in classrooms, with some instructors issuing blanket bans on phones and tablets. We think that’s the wrong reaction. Instead, instructors should capitalize on the devices. Have students use mobiles to search for, create, and present content and to collaborate and interact with each other and with the instructor. For example, envision students examining 3D models of chemical structures while they work on lab experiments, or consider getting feedback from students by polling them and letting them respond from their mobile devices. Instructors who object to mobile devices in the classroom are missing a golden opportunity.

Augmented reality & game-based learning

Think about the benefit of using augmented reality applications on anthropology or geology field trips. Star Walk, a popular astronomy app by Vito Technology, puts a virtual planetarium on your phone or tablet, showing you a real-time view of the night sky with informative overlays. These kinds of applications have obvious potential in higher education, and their cost is often low, once you discount the initial expense of purchasing devices capable of using them. Many developers have already jumped on this bandwagon, so the choices should increase rapidly.

Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library augmented an exhibit, Route 66 in Arizona: Don’t Forget Winona!, with a Google Maps add-on that lets users look at photo archives of towns highlighted along the route. The map works in web browsers and on smartphones.

Game-based learning has spawned several conferences and studies (.pdf), a sure sign that the topic is gaining traction among educators. However, given the time and cost of developing high-quality games across the many academic disciplines, as well as possible bias against games among faculty, we suspect widespread adoption of this technology will take more than three years. Pioneering educators are gaming already, but the masses will follow more slowly.

Analytics

At the 2011 ELI Annual Meeting, David Wiley, Associate Professor of Instructional Psychology and Technology at Brigham Young University, defined learning analytics as a way “to harness the power of advances in data mining, interpretation, and modeling to improve understandings of teaching and learning, and to tailor education to individual students more effectively.” As an example, he described the development of strategic tutoring, which relies on data to help predict the need for proactive student support. You can view a video or download his slides for that presentation and others on analytics and openness in education.

Businesses have already capitalized on analytics. Think of the recommendations you get from Amazon or Netflix or the coupons you receive when you pay for your groceries. Given the current budget-slashing climate for higher education, analytics are a no-brainer, and savvy institutions are getting on board now, using the data they already have and not waiting five years. Any university seeking funding or even tuition dollars is going to have to rely on data to demonstrate the effectiveness of its programs. No convincing numbers? No dollars.

Northern Arizona University has already started using analytics in its Grade Performance Status (GPS) tool, which uses data on students’ academic performance, grades, attendance, and positive feedback to identify students who might be headed for trouble in their courses, and to prompt instructors to reach out to those students to assist them.

So what’s the immediate message of all this for educators? We think it’s get moving on getting mobile, look toward ebooks, and start analyzing your data now.