Las Vegas—In his keynote address at the Higher Ed Tech Summit, Walt Mossberg, the influential technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, told an audience of higher-education officials and company executives that their future held many tablet computers. And not just the iPad, but some of the 70 or so new tablet devices that have been announced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show here.
Speaking yesterday, Mr. Mossberg noted that CES this year should be renamed “TES” because there were so many of the things. (There was Motorola’s new Xoom, for instance, and Dell’s Streak 7, Lenovo’s IdeaPad Hybrid—a laptop with a detachable tablet—and devices from Samsung, Toshiba, Motion …)
And tablets will matter in higher education, Mr. Mossberg said, because students will bring them to campus, and colleges and—in particular—publishers will need to meet their needs. “The actual users, like students and faculty, will barge in,” he said.
Books should cost less, and they should be digital, Mr. Mossberg said. He is a trustee of Brandeis University, and “I vote on cost-cutting at every meeting. So the idea of having to spend a fortune on books is just primitive.” Course materials, including books, are less expensive in digital form, and tablets make them easy to use. “The multi-touch tablet computer has a serious chance of challenging the mouse-based interface, which has been around since the 1960s and came to fruition in the 1970s,” Mr. Mossberg said.
The technology columnist pointed out that the other major trend that will affect colleges is cloud computing, or the use of Internet-based software. Now, it may seem this news is less than surprising, as software companies have been beating this drum loudly for years. Still, colleges have not been listening. The latest Campus Computing Project survey, completed in the fall of 2010, reported that only 15 percent of campuses have a strategic plan to address cloud computing. So perhaps the reminder from the Brandeis trustee was timely.
24 Responses to Expert Predicts a Deluge of Tablet Computers on Campuses
fergbutt - January 10, 2011 at 6:56 am
“the idea of having to spend a fortune on books is just primitive” — but not as primitive as ignorance of supply and demand! College books cost a lot because of economic forces that some people refuse to notice. In addition, willingness to pay is a factor. Students will pay more than they should and sell-back for less than they should, because they are accustomed to high prices and frequent turnover of editions, so anyone involved in re-sale would have to be stupid to ignore perceived market value.
wbgleason - January 10, 2011 at 9:39 am
Willingness to pay through the nose is yet another consequence of “easy money.”
Supply and demand has led to saturation of high enrolment classes with many more textbooks than are actually necessary. The opportunity to make a killing has actually forced book prices up.
Mossberg is right and the pressure point is getting faculty to use e-textbooks. Many of them already exist and could be used quite satisfactorily, even for organic chemistry.
See for example: http://lifehac.kr/h6ui7X (Lifehacker)
Bill Gleason
ghsmith76 - January 10, 2011 at 9:51 am
Preach IT Walt – You foretell change that we are beginning to plan for on campus. Tablets in abundance will cause change not only for how IT offers support but for how publishers adapt to customers. The keyword may just be “Textbook” – why does it need to be a book?
eupher61 - January 10, 2011 at 10:41 am
Accessibility is a huge issue. Visually impaired students may have a problem using tablets with only virtual keyboards. Even plugging a physical keyboard could be problematic. All videos included would need captioning for hearing impaired students.
And, what does this do to the campus bookstore? Do they set up large numbers of servers for downloading? Single user DVDs maybe, with kill files at the end of each semester?
mottgreene - January 10, 2011 at 11:04 am
Tablets may work for textbooks, generally divided by chapters in assignment (not by inclusive pagination), and read and employed OUTSIDE of class. Even here, the graphics are generally too small to read and too poorly resolved on tablets – many of which do not support color – for the needs of say, biochemistry, or architecture. Moreover Kindle books, for instance, do not have the original pages (I have a Kindle) and in a class employing a book as a basis for discussion, there is no way to get everyone “on the same page.” Additionally, there is no way for the student to cite the page source of the evidence in a paper. This is not just a disadvantage but a crippling obstacle to adoption, as is the fact that you purchase but do not OWN what you buy on Kindle, and that(remember the poor kid with the Orwell book?)your annotations may be lost at any time – since you can neither download nor print your remarks in situ, and you have no guarantee whatever that the book will exist when you go back to it.
My respect for Mossberg notwithstanding, this is not ready for prime time. The technology is currently at the LCD (not the display technology, the status of the denominator) level: aimed at batch process information delivery entry level settings, where much of what goes on can indeed by automated – but not much beyond that, currently. A quick trip to the forums and discussions on this topic across the web will soon show what an obstacle the current eformat choices (aimed at device builders and vendors, not end-users, )are.
softshellcrab - January 10, 2011 at 11:08 am
What do the rest of you think about e-books? I have to say, if I were a student I would hate them. I find it much, much faster and easier to use a regular old fashioned paper textbook. You can put your feet up, read in your chair, make notes in margins, mark in yellow where you want, etc.
I know in theory you can also do the above things with a tablet, but I think it’s awkward, and slower, and a lot more “hassle”. But maybe it’s just me! I know the cost of books is certainly huge, and that is certainly a factor also.
lwalters - January 10, 2011 at 11:28 am
Mr. Mossberg is wrong about the cost of electronic books. Electronic books actually cost more than print books because you typically have to pay an access fee in addition to the cost of the book, which is normally priced as the same as a print book.
steiny - January 10, 2011 at 11:57 am
I am always amazed how unwilling most faculty are to change. Is this why American education is falling behind so many other countries?
22024621 - January 10, 2011 at 12:44 pm
How many of the 70 or so tablets announced last week are actually available now? Probably fewer than the number of fingers on your right (or left) hand. How many will still be around this time next year? Probably about the same number.
wmartin46 - January 10, 2011 at 1:11 pm
Most of the complaints about today’s Tablets that have been raised in previous posts are as correctable with software. Screen size is a bit of an issue for some texts, but with a little additional hardware–even these issues can overcome.
The problem at the moment is that this technology is disruptive, and offers to reduce the total revenue, and the size of the publishing industry. So, there has been little motivation to provide the necessary hardware/software for the higher education market.
There is a huge opportunity here for universities and colleges to develop “wish lists”/specifications for the kind of device they would like to see, and then approach the Tablet makers with a little money to help them get the R&D done to implement the features/functions needed for the classroom.
As useless as the US DoEd generally is, this is one of those areas that it could provide a few dollars to help kick this ball down the road a bit.
Tablets have opened the door to mobile computing in a way that we all have been waiting for. Time to walk through that door and begin to develop that future as quickly as possible.
softshellcrab - January 10, 2011 at 1:24 pm
@ steiny
I don’t think that’s the reason, and that reason (that we are just unwilling to change) seems too sweeping and too simplistic to be correct. What are we, a bunch of dopes? I have made huge changes in how I teach, including use of online support for the course, use of online graded quizzes using a service that comes with the book,and many other changes. We are seeing our students learn so much more than previously. But… I still like the old paper books, and my students say they do, too. That’s okay, isn’t it? And using paper books in class does not preclude the teacher from also using modern technology at the same time! It’s not mutually exclusive at all.
I think if the cost is the same, 90% of the students will prefer a paper book, it is a cost issue rather than a technology issue.
kwrigley - January 10, 2011 at 4:38 pm
Electronic books do not always cost less, particularly science & technology texbooks. On top of the cost of the book, libraries often pay a service fee to use the platform on which the book is stored. While we can acknowledge that the trend is toward electronic books and mobile devices, it is going to be a mixed bag for a long time.
dboyles - January 10, 2011 at 5:12 pm
@softshellcrab
Agree completely. A book is portable and I don’t have to have battery power (electricity = the single largest cause of global warming, say my physics colleagues). I have a tablet PC purchased years ago and find it increasingly a nuisance what with its tiny screen and the necessity to scratch (write), tap, clean off, etc. Not to mention “paging” through screen after screen of notes (which cannot be densely written as I can do on paper with pen). With a book I can open up and go almost whereever I want without copious electronic “bookmarks.” Sheer overkill once the novelty wore off. The hidden costs of technology in terms of the expense of infrastructure and continuous requirement for software upgrades, licenses, wireless, etc. have become an industry of their own.
itchair - January 10, 2011 at 7:02 pm
Walt is correct; tablets will become an essential component of the educational system. Tablets will become a factor because of consumerization of devices and because of empowerment of users. In the traditional model IT would select the device and users have to adapt to it; the trend is reversing, users are bringing in their devices (smart-phones and tablets) into the organization and IT has to adapt to them. The former approach focused on standardization; the newer trend focuses on integration.
Walt is also correct in his predication about eBooks; the driving factor for adapting eBooks is cost. One can only carry a limited number of hardcopy books because of their sheer weight; on the other one can carry several hundred eBooks in a small device that weighs under a pound. Besides,, eBooks can save a lot of physical shelf space. Also, eBooks allow you to hyperlink to reference materials and to rapidly perform semantic searches without having to flip and search a page at a time. Granted, we have lived with bound, hardcopy books for several hundred years; and nothing can replace the noise of flipping pages in a hardcopy book. We should not allow our love affair with hardcopy books to deny the advantages of eBooks. I have deployed eBooks in several courses at my university, and students love it.
cravenfop - January 10, 2011 at 7:29 pm
The cheapest ipad with wifi costs $629 in Australia. Students would still have to buy content on top of that. e-books aren’t that much cheaper than the print version and there is no second hand market in them either. Students will still need a computer to do any significant writing–the tablet is fine for short messages but not for longer form writing. So I echo the sentiment that this could cost students more not less. (ON top of this many ebooks are often territorial–if its not licensed in your country you can’t access it.)
Also, having taught courses in recent years where all the reading material is online vrs courses where students had a print reader, it was fascinating to note that students preferred a print reader. There was no confusion about what had to be read and the temptation to check facebook when the reading got tough was reduced.
On top of that, as a adjunct I can’t afford one.
okieinexile - January 11, 2011 at 10:27 am
Guys, guys, the typical traditional book costs maybe 5 bucks to print. (I am speaking metaphorically here.) The rest of it is distribution, marketing, etc. With an ebook, you save the 5 bucks; this is if you don’t count the overhead in obtaining a reader and so forth.
If you want cheaper materials, support open source efforts.
cheard - January 13, 2011 at 3:20 pm
@dboyles: One textbook is portable. Three textbooks are luggable. Five textbooks are popping the seams on students’ backpacks and sending them to the chiropractor. In physical form, the reading material that I have on my iPad right now would require at least three of the shelves on the bookshelf beside which I’m sitting as I type. I can be pretty sure about this because I own physical copies of many of these materials, predating my iPad purchase. If portability is an important criterion, digital readers have physical books beat six ways to Sunday.
scmprofessor - January 16, 2011 at 9:55 am
Some have mentioned the Kindle, and mottgreene writes that “– since you can neither download nor print your remarks in situ,”
Actually, this is not correct. You can find a Word based macro that will not only allow you to use your notes and highlights, but it also will sort them by book, and sequence them as they appear in the book. A great little tool for studying, and writing, as an academic. Check it out over at TheProfessorNotes dot com (http://theprofessornotes.com/archives/543)
Also, concerning textbook pricing, I have a paper accepted for presentation at Western DSI where I show that textbooks could be priced significantly lower than they are today, and still generate the same revenue (at potentially greater profit) or for even LESS if publishers would wish to simply retain the same levels (dollars) of profit.