Podcast: The Future of the Textbook, as Seen by Publishers

February 25, 2011, 6:40 pm

“An e-book is not an engaging experience, merely replicating a textbook,” say William D. Rieders, executive vice president for new media at the publishing company Cengage Learning. At the 2011 Higher Ed Tech Summit, he said this major publisher sees little future in e-books, despite the proliferation of Kindles and other e-book readers, and tablets like the iPad. The biggest areas for Cengage, he says, are software programs like homework solutions and assessment tools. Print textbooks are still healthy, but they function now as a reference for professors and students, while these other materials are taking center stage in the learning experience.

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http://www.facebook.com/anthony.o.hardy Anthony Hardy

Online tools are certainly in wide-spread use. However, the push to reduce costs may cause books to move to electronic formats.
scobb1154

Actually, we need both!
tulsadean

One of the first things I thought about after getting an iPad last summer was the ability to create e-textbooks that incorporated video, audio, computer graphics, etc. into the book. I hope some publishers will see this potential as well, even though Cengage Learning does not.
knowledgenotebook

Did I read Mr. Rieders’s mind or the other way around? I think he’s exactly right. In a degree, it also tells us that too many people are simply dumb.,
http://www.writessay.com Essay Writer

Online books are answers to heavy hard bound books. Hope they will do measures to push through with it. http://www.writessay.com
http://twitter.com/Edjudo2011 J Alger

While the ebook may not be any more engaging than a paper based book, it definetely beats having to carry around several hard cover books in your bag. Ideally more educators and publishers will make use of the growing number of good web 2.0 tools and software programs already available to them.
http://twitter.com/KristinRix Kristin Rix

Maybe Mr. McCarthy could be involved in the editing of this article. “…but he loved the book so much that he wanted to make [it] better.”
http://www.facebook.com/people/Zoltan-Newberry/1092405269 Zoltan Newberry

Cormac McCarthy may not know it, but his understanding of human nature helps us counter the liberal-progressive project which denies human nature and bases its agenda on a fundamentally flawed belief system.
darccity

Nope. Only the handful of BCS bowls make money for the teams playing, because they receive 93% of all bowl revenues!!! The other over 2 dozen bowls pay out chickenfeed and cost the schools big time. It’s called a “reward” but actually is just one more way to cheat the system by getting in extra practice and game time advantage for the following year’s season (as well as making recruiting much easier and productive — both because bowls give player national visibility and give teams visibility to recruit). That’s why a national playoff system can’t be adopted despite these money-losing, sparsely-attended games.
pianiste

That nobody holds a gun to any school’s head is part of the problem. Schools want to participate in these vulgar, sleazy, yahoo-driven circuses. Or at least, as darccity points out, the university’s athletic department–a de facto autonomous fiefdom which can and does tell the spineless academic part of the university to go stuff itself–wants to participate.

As for the “millions in publicity value for the school,” all I can say is, “Go, Crotchgrabbers!”
rkaffer

Did someone say “college” or “education” or “student” or “misplaced priorities”?
leftwing_conspirator

Ask any University President what their alumni association’s reaction would be if they turned down an invite to a major bowl. The gun isn’t to their heads, but the holster is unsnapped and the hand is hovering just above it.