Major Publishers Join Indiana U. Project That Requires Students to Buy E-Textbooks

September 15, 2011, 7:00 am

A game-changing e-textbook project at Indiana University—in which the university requires certain students to purchase e-textbooks and negotiates unusually low prices by promising publishers large numbers of sales—now has the participation of major textbook publishers, and university officials plan to expand the effort.

Today McGraw-Hill Higher Education announced that it has agreed to join the project, which has been in a pilot stage for more than a year. A handful of other publishers—John Wiley & Sons; Bedford, Freeman & Worth Publishing Group; W.W. Norton; and Flat World Knowledge—have signed on to the effort as well.

Here’s how it works: Students in a select group of courses are required to pay a materials fee, which gets them access to the assigned electronic textbooks or other readings for the course. The university essentially becomes the broker of the textbook sales, and because it is buying in bulk and guaranteeing a high volume, officials say they can score better prices than can the campus bookstore or other retailers.

How good are the prices? Bradley C. Wheeler, the university’s vice president for information technology who is leading the e-textbook effort, says that students save more money through the program than they would if they bought a printed book and resold it at the end of the semester (a common practice among cost-conscious students). A McGraw-Hill official said the deal gave the university a 20 percent discount off its usual e-book prices.

Mr. Wheeler also said that the university’s deal with publishers gives students access to the e-textbooks for a longer period of time than publishers traditionally allow for electronic copies. Typically, the digital textbook files self-destruct after a set period of time, usually a semester or a year. For e-textbooks at Indiana’s program, students are allowed to read the electronic copies for as long as they are enrolled at the university.

The university put out a call for proposals last year asking publishers to participate, and Mr. Wheeler said he still hopes to sign on more publishers. He said persuading the publishers to agree to the price and access terms took some doing, and he described the negotiations with McGraw-Hill in particular as “a very long discussion.”

Officials from McGraw-Hill say that what led them to join was that the model helped them encourage use of the company’s new digitally enhanced textbooks, including its McGraw-Hill Connect line of titles that include online quizzes for students and other features.

This is the first time McGraw Hill has signed an institutional subscription for its e-textbooks, but it hopes to sign similar deals with other universities, said Tom Malek, vice president for learning solutions for McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

He said the Indiana model will help solve another problem faced by professors—that their students often wait to purchase textbooks and are therefore not ready to do assignments at the beginning of the semester. “Now everyone has the materials on the first day of class,” said Mr. Malek.

Each professor at Indiana can decide whether to participate in the e-textbook project. So far 22 courses have done so, and last month the university released a report outlining how those professors and their students (1,700 in all) liked the arrangement. It included data from surveys of students in 12 of those courses—1,037 students.

More than half of them—about 60 percent—said they preferred the e-textbook to a traditional printed copy. But the satisfaction varied wildly by course. In one case, only 36 percent of students preferred the e-textbook, though officials say students in that course were unhappy because the professor made little use of the required textbook so they felt they got limited benefit from the required fee. In another course, 84 percent of students said they preferred the e-textbook to print.

Slightly more than half of the students surveyed—about 55 percent—said they read less of the e-textbook than they would have read from a printed copy, while 22 percent said they read more from the e-textbook than they would have from a printed copy.

Officials were watching closely to see whether students simply printed out the e-books and read from those paper copies. According to system logs, 68 percent of the students printed no pages, while 19 percent printed more than 50 pages.

The report makes it clear that the university is pushing forward with the project: “In summary, we believe that the future is digital and that this model is an important step towards that future.”

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http://twitter.com/muziejus M. P. de Sá Pereira

Awesome. I did not even think there was a market for this kind of thing, much less someone eager to write a script for it. Will certainly check it out.
http://twitter.com/muziejus M. P. de Sá Pereira

Thing is, as in your post, you basically do what you’re used to. I’m used to having things like [187][#fw] in my writing, which gets expanded by MultiMarkdown into a cite[187]{fw} tag in (Xe)LaTeX (I also have things like aS[187]{fw} littered throughout, which is a shortcut to autocite*, but whatever).

I’m not sure how I do things is easiest or most logical, but it’s certainly not impossible to get used to, and it’s free.
http://twitter.com/poesispoesis Rob Sean Wilson

might prove useful– fewer trees destroyed, prices cut, this can work if the system does not get too clunky of access for each student (some are NOT yet that web savy) and over-commercialized with ads all over the place or buys ins to ‘seduce’ the user.
willismg

The real problem from where I sit is that the “books” evaporate when the students graduate. While this might be acceptable in some majors or for some courses, it would be horrible in the sciences or engineering. The textbooks you buy as an undergraduate form the backbone of your personal technical library that you will refer to for years to come. I encourage students to avoid even standard e-books that you get to “keep”. Just how long will it be before readers for these books become obsolete/non-supported technology and your library again evaporates?
davi2665

Here’s a surprise for some of the lovers of all ebased products, including books. Some of us despise the format, cannot gain as much from endless scrolling as from sitting down with a real book, and might actually want to retain the book for future use and reference (gasp!!). Books with excellent illustrations are far more useful as physical entities than as ebooks. Some of the finest books I have in my own library are early editions of texts (mostly biomedical sciences) in which the author had brilliant insight and actually explained his/her thinking in detail, without the relentless pressure to dumb-down and shorten the text for the attention span of a beginning student with many other courses.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Morris-Bayberry/100001305968750 Morris Bayberry

Fight back. Avoid the campus bookstore. Go online if you want cheaper textbooks. As long as some people are still paying retail prices the publishers are not going to be compelled to end their monopoly on student’s wallets. Go online and search for used books, international editions, older editions, rentals, and even e-books to combat the high prices. The only problem with this solution is that there are so many places online promising cheaper books. That’s why I use http://www.bigwords.com They are a textbook price comparison search engine that searches all the online retailers and rental site to find you the best prices, no matter which format you are seeking.
11159766

Is the university participating in the revenue — a conflict of interest?
quacker

The article does not speak to the issue of e-reader devices and their compatibility with all the likely e-text formats, etc. I wonder if Indiana simply assumes that all student in the “select” courses possess at least one compatible, mobile, e-reading device, or will some students be forced to buy one of those as well? The article left lots unsaid.
juris_prudence

Yes! I absolutely agree, and this is also true for many disciplines other than science or engineering. I was a humanities major as an undergrad, and still have quite a few of the books I purchased in college.
juris_prudence

So long as books are available both in print and electronically, I would NEVER participate in a program that *required* my students to buy the electronic version, for the reasons mentioned by willismg and davi2665, among others.

Kudos to the IU faculty who have declined to participate in this misguided plan. There must be quite a few of them … Indiana has 32,000 undergraduates and 9,000 grad students, and fewer than 5% of the students have been involved in this.
leah_shopkow

I used e-textbooks (voluntarily) in the pilot program. The platform the University is using has some very appealing features. For instance, I could ask my students to annotate their readings in specific ways and I could see how they were reading. I didn’t do this all the way through the course, but it was very helpful to see what they paid attention to and what they skipped over. So used creatively, it has considerable pedagogical potential, if they get the price point right. (See below.)

Here’s the downside. I used the system because we were assured we would get textbook prices of 15-35% of the print cost. I wanted to have education students use three different textbooks, so that they would see that textbooks vary considerably (education students tend to think that textbooks are the “best” sort of history). I wanted us to be able to compare treatments of the same issue (sometimes the same images), but it was too expensive to ask them to buy three print textbooks. The textbooks first came in at 40% of the print cost rather than 15%. I pointed out that we’d been guaranteed 15-35% and so predictably they came down to 35%. This is too much. 15% is closer to a proper price. But given what I wanted to do it was still around the price of one print textbook, so I went with it.

The platform, however, was not well suited to what I wanted to do. When I had all three textbooks open, the program crawled. It took a minute to go to the next page. My screen was too small to show a whole page at a time at a resolution that my eyes could cope with, but two of the three textbooks were printed in double columns so one had to inch one’s way up and down to read a page. One day in class we all had one of the books open and no one could change pages at all.

So this spring I will teach the course again and I will ask the students to buy three used textbooks, from one or two generations back. I’ve priced them out through the used book dealers and the shipping costs more than the books. My students will be able to get all three for $25. And we can all turn the pages as fast as we wish.

Leah Shopkow
Associate Professor, History
Indiana University
juris_prudence

One other point. Bradley Wheeler, the IU Vice President who’s pushing this project, probably thinks this is visionary. It isn’t. In fact, it’s reactionary, because the program is being run through the traditional education publishing houses.

If ebooks are the future, then the publishers are obsolete, and the sooner we’re rid of them, the better. The reason they exist at all is grounded in the physical logistics of a printed book. It costs a lot of money to print a book and store it in a warehouse. That money must be spent BEFORE the books are sold, and whether it can be recouped is always a gamble.

But if books are available only in electronic form, the publishers have no real function. They aren’t needed, and there’s no reason why they should collect most of the proceeds from the sale of an ebook.

If Indiana U. was *truly* serious about electronic books, they’d spearhead an effort to further develop the tools needed to eliminate the publishing houses entirely, rather than climbing into bed with them and signing sweetheart deals.
lisasbrown

Quick note: students can print out their ebooks in their entirety and put them in a three-ring binder quite easily. The unfortunate reality is that most students do not save any of their undergraduate texts, because the motivation to get money back from them is very real. The perception is that another book will be available, and they can purchase it if they need it at a later date when it is updated. (From student focus groups I’ve conducted.)
lisasbrown

In response to a few of the comments regarding “Big Business Publishers:” Flat World Knowledge is a small independent publisher with completely open access to its ebooks. They are FREE. Yes, FREE. If a student would like a printed copy, they can order one for @ $35. (More for color versions.) About 25% of students overall chose the free text, and 75% chose to order the print version. The texts are entirely customizable by the instructor. No need to go through a process, and the instructor can add in their own papers, notes, etc… at no additional cost. Why not give students a choice? (And no, I don’t work for Flat World!)
http://twitter.com/melissawiebe Melissa Wiebe

Another problem is that a lot of ereaders are in black and white and the illustrations in text books, especially those in science-related fields, are in colour, giving a much more accurate look at the diagram that a student wishes to look at (unless the student has an iPad or a device that supports colour). As for the humanities, students love to highlight passages that are important to whatever they are studying so that when a test is given, they can quickly look over the important material when studying. Sure etexts may save on the amount of weight that a student will carry around, but a physical textbook has so much to offer than a etext would likely give a student.
http://twitter.com/melissawiebe Melissa Wiebe

But a student could just print off their text book and therefore not save any trees. My mom has found that she prints out more on paper than she would have if not for email.
22086364

Like your mother, I print a great many things (particularly email, which I place in manila folders); however, my young adult children and my students do not. They file things electronically. Thus, while I’m no cheerleader for this specific endeavor, I’m not sure that electronic textbook delivery will yield increased paper printing.
As an aside: I am at a regional campus of IU, and have a child in Bloomington. My students, and my child in Bloomington, protect their “print allotment” the way one would protect a cute puppy. I’m sure the powers that be at Bloomington are banking on that.
22086364

I’d truly be interested in knowing if, 5 years hence, the students in this focus group still think another book will be available. I suspect that it may turn out to be TRUE that selling books back at a loss is actually a sound strategy for a great many students — even in the long term. I don’t LIKE this possibility, but it seems that we’re at a strange moment culturally, regarding information and fact, and the cost, worth, and value of course materials.
22086364

I adore my Kindle, and am a bit indiscriminate about loading things onto it. In the classroom, however, I’m having great difficulty in locating things quickly when students reference texts during discussion. THEY can find things quickly, even using different editions, but I’m still looking over student shoulders, my Kindle simply a pretty toy among their old school competence.
I’m sure I’ll get the hang of it, though.
22086364

They can access them on the computer, whether laptop or desktop, as well as all the flashier things. Some students do not have computers or intern access at home, but the theory is that they all have access to AT LEAST campus desk tops while there.
22086364

Perhaps the fact that the budget for higher education in Indiana is being slashed and slashed again might mitigate against such brave “seriousness”. All we’re doing here in higher ed in Indiana (it seems to me) is trying to respond sensibly to the latest crisis.
mmilkie

One question I’d like to raise is about how much student reading was **lost** in the move to e-books. 55 percent of students say they read less than they would have otherwise, and 22 percent more. How can you assure students will continue to read in this format? As a professor, it’s quite difficult to make sure students do the reading and adding e-barriers to reading is something that needs to be addressed.
http://forgetevolution.com Ralph David Westfall

Do a Google search on the words textbook ripoff to see my satire on textbook costs.
mbelvadi

Everyone is focused on the e-book aspect of this story, but what about the “requirement” aspect? We all like to think that of course students all buy “required” textbooks, but studies (including a recent one reported here in CHE) show that many don’t. Some share with classmates, some profs put a copy on library reserves and some students rely on that. In this story, because the ebooks are paid for through a mandatory class fee, the students have lost the choice. In the case where the students complained that the prof didn’t even use the textbook, that was a serious negative to have forced the students to pay for something they might not have bought otherwise (they might have heard from previous students about the prof’s neglect of the book and chosen not to buy it). Textbook expenses have always been in a gray area between compulsory university fees and optional expenses, and that grayness has a lot to do with the industry getting away with its price gouging. IU has removed the ambiguity and that’s a really big deal that should get more attention.
educationfrontlines

Three problems:

1. Reading speed and comprehension, especially on backlit devices, is slower and less. There are also serious problems with “deep reading,” skimming, and scrolling, all well researched and yet never mentioned by these university decision makers who should be focusing on more than money and teckiness.

2. I give open-book, open note quizzes and tests where students have to answer higher level analysis, synthesis, etc. questions that go well beyond the chuck-back-the-definition. But most e-reader devices also communicate, and therefore cannot be used in these quizzes/tests. Thus they have to print off, which defeats the purported advantage. Decisions to go eText should be made by the teacher, because it alters how we teach.

3. The mythology of “save a tree” persists despite the fact that electronic formats are energy hogs and far more devastating to the environment thanpaper. Paper is now 60% recycled and is a non-toxic renewable resource that consumes no energy to read. The electronics have rapid turnover (both hardware and software) and contain hazardous pollutants that are difficult and costly to dispose of. Indeed, the expansion of electronic devices results in CO2 usage that now exceeds the CO2 production by airlines worldwide.

John Richard Schrock
leah_shopkow

I should add to my earlier post on this subject. After the post, the representative of the company that created the platform met with me to show me the new version. It is MUCH faster (speed was apparently a general complaint), has a less cluttered and easier-to-use interface, and was quite impressive. The pedagogical possibilities were really exciting. I was momentarily buoyed up and asked to find out what the pricing would be if I repeated my textbook selections of last year.

It turns out, however, that Indiana has only signed a deal with SOME of the publishers. In fact, the publisher of two of the books I used was dropped by the University. These books included the textbook that students found most interesting. So I was left with the choice of completely redesigning a class that worked (albeit not optimally) completely, by choosing new textbooks that were on the University’s list, or not using an electronic textbook. In other words, commercial considerations are supposed to drive our pedagogy. This is, quite frankly, insane.

Furthermore, the one textbook that was still contracted with the University cost nearly $50 dollars. That is 35% of the hardcover price for a book that students will have for several years and then it will disappear. Since the students I teach will themselves be teachers (in secondary school), they will need to have a library to support their teaching.

The platform is now much more workable, but the other problems remain all too stubbornly present.

Leah Shopkow,
Associate Professor, History
Indiana University
sand6432

The discounts reported here differ quite markedly from the 20% discount mentioned in the story. (The latter, by the way, is the traditional discount offered by publishers to college bookstores, so essentially the publishers are just bypassing the bookstore and dealing directly with the administration.) So, who is telling the truth? —Sandy Thatcher
sand6432

Publishers obsolete? Does “juris_prudence” really understand what publishers do? And does he/she know how textbook publishers actually create textbooks? It is a much more complex operation than simply accepting a manuscript from a single author. — Sandy Thatcher (former university press director)
old nassau’67

The entitlement and the cowardice of the outraged: Their outrage entitles them to suppress and demonize others – while wearing masks to avoid any repercussions. Not for them the lengthy, arduous, and often unsuccessful candidacy for elective office in a participatory democracy. Wearing a mask, banging a drum, interfering with others, all the while knowing that, unlike say, in China or Syria, you won’t be shot, is so much easier.
badger74

Time for the local cops and campus police/admin to crackdown on this unsupported disruption. The tuition hike is reasonable and proper. If they no longer wish to pay it they are trespassing and should be arrested and banned from campus.