Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

Professor starts eText company to electrify textbook field

Professors are gravitating toward digital textbooks.

M. Ryan Haley, a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh economics professor, has started a company he hopes will undercut the academic textbook publishing industry and help college students save a lot of money.

CoreTxt Plus Inc. is distributing a free digital statistics textbook to UW-Oshkosh students.

“We bypassed the middleman, which is the people making all the money off our students,” Haley said. “They’re putting new editions out every few years now, and it’s absurd. Statistics hasn’t changed in 150 years.”…Read More

Community colleges take a closer look at eBooks

Digital books could save students hundreds every semester.

Major universities aren’t the only schools testing the eBook market. Tarrant County College (TCC) in Texas is the latest small campus to study whether a shift to digital textbooks will lessen the financial burden on students while allowing them to rely on tools that make learning more interactive.

The college district’s move to explore the advantages of digital textbooks comes as more higher education institutions and students turn to this medium for their lessons. Students would carry their textbooks on a portable eBook reader, Apple iPad, or laptop computer instead of their backpacks.

A shift to digital, an idea that first formed with input from TCC faculty, also comes amid continuing increases in tuition.…Read More

eBook pilot could save college students a ‘huge amount of money’

The eTextbook pilot program will cost $20,000.

The University of Wisconsin (UW) Madison campus and five other major universities announced plans this week to try buying electronic textbooks in bulk, an experiment that officials say could help rein in burdensome textbook costs and bring eTextbooks into the mainstream.

The university will try it on a small scale at first, in five courses involving about 600 students at the start of the school’s spring semester.

At UW-Madison, students will spend an average of about $1,140 on books and supplies this year, up from $680 in 2001-02.…Read More

Online book-rental business evolves from college experiment to full-time venture

Textbook rental companies are flourishing as college students seek alternatives.

Some may call it “Netflix for textbooks,” but what David Comisford really wants to call his new venture is “successful.”

Frewg — pronounced , not coincidentally, like the first syllable of frugal  — was quietly launched online, evolving from an enterprise that Newark native Comisford developed as a scrappy Capital University undergrad.

Read more about online textbook rental in higher education……Read More

Viewpoint: Digital learning tools fulfilling their promise

College students are more easily able to communicate with young professors accustomed to technology.
College students are more easily able to communicate with young professors accustomed to technology.

A recent Student Watch survey conducted by the National Association of College Stores (NACS) found that while most students still prefer textbooks to eBooks, sales of digital learning products are expected to quadruple by 2012 “if content is made more interactive and faculty become more comfortable using it.”

That first condition has already been met; the most recent digital products on the market have become far more interactive, customizable, and engaging in just the past year.

New learning platforms are not just more interactive or intuitive, they also provide a pedagogical road map that allows instructors to tailor their assignments and exams while giving individual students more options in how they approach and pace their own learning.…Read More

Vendors link e-textbook content with LMS software

CaféScribe eBooks are available online and on more than 850 college campuses
CaféScribe eBooks are available online and used on more than 850 college campuses.

As digital textbooks become more common on higher-ed campuses, providers are making it easy for professors to share textbook notes and resources with students through their class learning management system (LMS) software. The latest provider to do so is Follett Higher Education Group, which announced May 19 that a new standards-based system would integrate its eBook material with popular sites such as Moodle, Sakai, and Blackboard.

Educators who use textbooks supplied by Follett’s CaféScribe, which also brings students together through social networking to form online study groups, can take detailed notes in the web-based format, pointing out the most important lessons to students and fellow faculty.

Until recently, those notes couldn’t be shared on a college course’s LMS, where students go to see class assignments, chat with peers and faculty members, and watch class videos online.…Read More

Online textbooks let students share notes across the globe

One-third of students surveyed said they were "comfortable" with eBooks.
One-third of students surveyed said they were "comfortable" with eBooks.

Florida State College at Jacksonville faculty have created 20 electronic textbooks that are accessible on a free online platform that lets students take notes in the margins, search for key terms, and share notes with peers and professors through an interactive social-networking feature.

Students don’t need to buy any additional hardware to use the college’s eBook program, officials said. Instead, they simply download an eReader application called CafeScribe, which also brings students together through social networking to form online study groups.

And students who use the CafeScribe eBooks aren’t limited to contact with their professors and fellow students. Any student from any campus in the world can share content and study notes with any other student if they’re using the same web-based textbook, according to an April 21 announcement from Follett Higher Education Group, the Illinois-based used book supplier that makes CafeScribe.…Read More

Virtual Symposium examines worldwide growth of online access

The Virtual Symposium focused partly on keeping open source technologies free.
The Virtual Symposium focused partly on keeping open-source technologies free.

Online learning, open courseware, eBooks, wikis, and many other innovative technologies have forever affected education by connecting any topic in any discipline to any learner in any place. Even individuals in remote communities now can access unlimited information free of charge, if they have an internet connection. This also provides more possibilities for international collaboration, knowledge building, and sharing of best practices.

Drexel University’s School of Education capitalized on these possibilities during its second annual live and online Virtual Symposium, in conjunction with Wainhouse Research and the World Bank Institute’s Global Development Learning Network (GDLN). This year’s Virtual Symposium built upon the theme Education for Everyone: Expanding Access Through Technology.

The symposium highlighted education technology innovations, and it examined challenges to access—for example, among poor and rural communities—and possibilities for overcoming them. A major feature of the symposium was the ability for participants to share experiences among peers in both developing and developed countries.…Read More

Ohio bill calls for electronic versions of textbooks

Saying they could save more than 50 percent off the cost of textbooks, some House Democrats want to give Ohio college students the chance to trade in their piles of expensive books for laptops or other electronic readers, reports the Columbus Dispatch. Supporters of the bill—as well as the Ohio Board of Regents, which says it is neutral on the plan—say the key is convincing university faculty members that digital textbooks can work as well as the paper versions. Individual professors are responsible for choosing the textbooks used in their classes. Under the bill, the regents would have two years to require publishers to offer electronic versions of textbooks. Publishers also would be required to provide textbook formats for students with disabilities. “Our bill will use technology and common sense to lower the cost of textbooks on Ohio’s campuses,” said Rep. Matt Lundy, D-Elyria, who is sponsoring the bill with Rep. Matt Patten, D-Strongsville. “We can’t ask students and families to shoulder the unnecessary costs of excessive textbook prices.” Lundy said textbook costs increased an average of 6 percent per year from 1986 to 2006 and have risen 10 percent a year since. By delaying the electronic-materials requirement for two years, “we’ll be giving the publishers more than enough heads-up,” he said…

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Amazon threatens eBook publishers as Apple looms

As Apple builds its electronic bookstore, Amazon.com is trying to use its clout to hold on to its early lead in the market, reports the New York Times. Amazon.com has threatened to stop directly selling the books of some publishers online unless they agree to a detailed list of concessions regarding the sale of electronic books, according to two industry executives with direct knowledge of the discussions. The hardball approach comes less than two months after Amazon shocked the publishing world by removing the “buy” buttons from its site for thousands of printed books from Macmillan, one of the country’s six largest publishers, in a dispute over eBook pricing. Amazon is the largest online seller of printed books and the biggest eBook seller in the United States. The company is pressuring publishers just as Apple is also preparing to sell digital books for reading on its iPad tablet, which will reach the market in early April. Five of the country’s six largest publishers—Macmillan, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, and Penguin—already have reached deals with Apple to sell their books through its iBookstore, which will be featured on the iPad. (The holdout is Random House…)

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