It has been hard to get most professors excited about e-textbooks, but publishers continue to try new ways to sell them on the format. The latest strategy seems to make the e-textbooks even easier for professors to use, by integrating them more tightly into the course-management systems they are already familiar with.
Today Blackboard announced deals with a major textbook publisher— McGraw Hill—and two college bookstore chains—Barnes & Noble College Booksellers and Follett Higher Education Group—to sell textbooks through the tech company’s course-management system and to tie online assignments from the e-texts directly into existing online gradebooks.
And earlier this week, CourseSmart, which distributes electronic editions of books by major textbook publishers, announced a new feature that better links its e-textbooks with the leading course-management systems.
CourseSmart calls its new service the “Faculty Instant Access program,” and it works with the open-source Moodle and Sakai systems, as well as commercial systems including Desire2Learn and Blackboard. So far only 10 colleges have been authorized to test the program, which the company hopes to roll out more widely in the future.
Under its new agreement with Blackboard, McGraw Hill’s series of online textbooks, called Connect, will link seamlessly with the course-management system. “We think the easier we make it to use Connect, the more likely it is that people will use it,” said Mary Skafidas, vice president for communication and marketing for McGraw-Hill Education, in an interview.
14 Responses to Latest Attempt to Hawk E-Textbooks: Make Them Easier for Professors to Use
joeythibault - July 15, 2010 at 8:07 am
I’m curious, the only place that there is information that coursesmart links up with Moodle or Sakia is on this page and in the original press releases. Any additional info on that?
paievoli - July 15, 2010 at 8:08 am
This is not about hawking aything. This is about making it easier, quicker and cheaper for students. Academia had better come to realize that there is no turning back at this point. The digital world is here and we had better embrace it and get use to it. If this had been available when my two children were going thru K-12 you had better believe that I would have been completely in favor of this. I remember seeing them with backpacks that were insane. Now the students can carry all of their books and notes in one simple 1.8 lb device that never goes away…. Stop making it out to be Armagedeon and start realizing the enormous capabilties for teaching and learning. I was in textbook publishing and left it when I saw the first digital encyclopedia in 1987 while at McGraw-Hill. I went towards academia my actual love and passion. I have waited 23 years for this. BTW – It was what I teach so I have a multiple level of appreciation. Can’t wait to put out my next book in eBook format.
roth2451 - July 15, 2010 at 8:11 am
Curiously, I am using an ebook this summer; many students just turned around and printed it. Easier for students??? I guess it is more a matter of preference; it is definitely a matter of price, for both publisher and student.
11174426 - July 15, 2010 at 8:36 am
From a librarian and lab manager point of view, it does seem that students still do print much of the e-textbook and manuals (particularly in the life sciences and allied health disciplines). Perhaps, this will change over time but for now it does impact printing support, staff time, and associated costs. Having said that, there are great advantages to ebook format – logisitcally and pedagogically, however, the research is unclear as to whether learning is improved from screen reading vs print.
dkcpcc - July 15, 2010 at 9:03 am
I agree with most of the comments about how students are most likely to print e-books. However, I do not believe that technology is too far behind in addressing the missing features to make this usable for students. E-books works well if you are reading it for pleasure from cover to cover. Where it fails is the ease of making annotations and then making easily searchable.For those of you are testing iPad for your institution, please consider on testing iAnnotate. It has the best PDF annotation ability. You can highlight, add comments, underline text, and manually write on it. The best feature is when you can email it to yourself, and it summarizes all the annotations unto the email. Features such as these are necessary for students that are not found in most e-book solutions.As soon as this is addressed, I believe the improved integration between e-books and course management systems become even more viable and desirable. Regardless, it is a great step in the right direction, especially if it will reduce cost to students. Now, how can we convince companies to curb their cost of their course management solutions?
vaneblucas - July 15, 2010 at 9:12 am
I really don’t think online print versus actual textbook is the issue here. The issue is how to make online learning come alive – whether that be through the incorporation of multimedia, P2P learning, discussions, etc. I just went to McGraw Hill’s demo e-book site (http://site.ebrary.com/lib/mhebooks/home.action), and I was truly disappointed to see that all they have done to market texts as “e-books,” is publish PDF to the web. How is that any different?
cmorrissey - July 15, 2010 at 9:38 am
why is the college bookstore still involved ?–
tjfarrel - July 15, 2010 at 10:14 am
This is not about making it “easier” for profs to use e-texts. It’s about making it harder for profs to do anything else.
proftucker - July 15, 2010 at 4:06 pm
I would agree with tjfarrel (comment #8) and disagree with paievoli (comment #2). IMHO, this is all about marketing and corporate strategy on the part of the publishers: building barriers to entry and increasing switching costs. If publisher #1 offers their content in eBook form tightly integrated with the school’s learning management system (LMS), publisher #2 is going to have to invest in the technology and know-how to get into that market. Likewise for switching costs — if the publisher product offers testing and the results are auto-magically posted to the LMS grade book and the prof doesn’t have to deal with that admin overhead, it is costly to switch once you’re locked in. I agree with paievoli in that it is “easier, quicker and cheaper for students” — all they have to do is whip out their credit card after logging into the school’s learning management system (LMS) and buy access to the textbook. But is it BETTER for the students? That’s the point 11174426 in comment #4 was making — what is the better alternative for teaching and learning?
tcstanley - July 15, 2010 at 8:41 pm
Sounds like a great idea – the textbooks will be incorporated into their CMS. I believe other publishers are doing this with thier own products – building the textbook into it.Wondering… is the online product ADA compliant (aka: universally designed)? Can the screen readers read the material? If so, colleges would really love it as it would allow for their online products to be ADA compliant and may help them resolve how to accomodate DSR students with materials that maynot be available to them in a print format.
robert_wyatt - July 19, 2010 at 11:31 am
” 4. From a librarian and lab manager… the research is unclear as to whether learning is improved from screen reading vs print.”The research is also unclear as to whether learning is improved from scratchings on cave walls vs chalk on slate vs print.
ychumanities - July 19, 2010 at 1:58 pm
I have to agree with vaneblucas. An electronic copy of a print book will do nothing to convince me that textbooks in general are effective learning tools. When publishers finally revise their idea of what an etext can be, by including video, animations, hyperlinks, quizzes and games, and other interactive elements into the “book,” THEN I’ll be interested.
eslombard - August 5, 2010 at 9:11 pm
(My own passion for the field goes back to 1963 at USC. I retired 30 years ago and had eight more kids). What always impresees and depresses me is that someow the teacher is invariably regarded as a necessary element in our learning designs. It’s as though we don’t want to hurt his feelings or have some union obligation to keep him on until we can find some gracious way of leading him to his elders’playpen. I think that we’re all handicapping ourselves and our projects. First, I think we should design the learning experience with as few givens as possible Second, teachers can mentor students and each other in creating new knowledge by cross polinization of disciplines. Third, they can help integrate the best of open source materials from all over the world into enriching our new designs Fourth, they can help in the evaluation of new designs and collecting data for next generation revisions because no matter how good the latest product, there is invariably room or need for revisions. etc But let’s stop pussyfooting around not wanting to hurt academe’s feelings about being put out to pasture. There’s more than enough work for the creative and congenial spirits.
owenmunger - October 28, 2010 at 10:59 am
The only way for e-books to truly catch on is to make them easier than paper textbooks. Until they do catch on, students still have to purchase paper textbooks. Campus bookstores are charging incredibly high prices for the books, emptying the average students bank account. That’s why I recommend you check out http://www.cheapesttextbooks.com.