August 26, 2008
New Report Says Digital Textbooks Are off Track
A growing number of textbook publishers are offering digital editions these days, but a new study by a student group argues that many of those digital editions do not have the features that students want.
The group, the Student Public Interest Research Groups, a collection of independent statewide organizations representing college students, surveyed 500 students from several campuses for the study. They found that students wanted digital textbooks to be more affordable than print versions, to be printable, and to be free from restrictions on how long they can be viewed. But the report said that the electronic textbooks offered by major publishers through CourseSmart, generally cost about the same as printed versions, limited printing to 10 pages per session, and expire after about 180 days. Publishers put such restrictions in place to try to prevent students from giving copies to their friends for free or trading them on pirate Web sites.
The survey showed that students feel strongly about the printed word. About 75 percent of those surveyed said they prefer a printed textbook over an electronic one. And 60 percent said that even if a free digital copy were available, they would still pay for a low-cost print version.
The report calls on professors and colleges to support more “open textbooks” that are offered free online.—Jeffrey R. Young
Posted on Tuesday August 26, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
Commenting is closed for this article.
Previous: Wired Campus TV: an Innovative Way to Map History
Next: Coming Soon, Online: the Dead Sea Scrolls
Let’s see…the survey showed that 75% of students want a printed book yet —the report calls on professors and colleges to support open textbooks online.
Brilliant.
— j mellett Aug 26, 02:24 PM #
It says open textbooks are free online, not that they are only online. You can print them out without restrictions. That’s the whole point of open source.
— L. Lynch Aug 26, 02:58 PM #
I don’t understand… tell me again how the people who work on open source materials are feeding themselves and their families? Tell me how they take the money they’ve earned through hard work and reinvested it in coffee, automobiles, riding the bus, buying medical care, consuming food, etc…
People who support open source need to provide all of their services for free too, so the people earning nothing making free materials can meet their own needs.
And then we can all go to heaven and have lollipos and pet goats. Utopia. Yay.
Economic children of the world…please grow the hell up.
— John McCain Aug 26, 05:04 PM #
CourseSmart is about 45-60% of the initial print cost, but no buyback.
— Book Guy Aug 26, 05:19 PM #
They want books? In print? To READ?!? Somebody better go tell Mark Bauerlein—quick!
— Uh-oh Aug 26, 05:57 PM #
Open source coders make money by RAPIDLY jumping on the next hot trend We don’t sit and wait around for our business model to be totally flattened before we are already onto the “Next Thing.” All textbooks that are available in ANY format on line are already in the hands of students, move on to the next model – give away the books, give away the readers, sell the scented shaving cream. :-)
— ed potter Aug 26, 06:04 PM #
How do they make money? How do they colllect it? How?
Vote for ME in 2008.
— John McCain Aug 26, 09:58 PM #
Publishers make minor changes to force adoption of new editions. The basic information in most disciplines evolves more slowly; articles can be edited to reflect change, they don’t have to be rewritten from the ground up. The founders of Wikipedia are working on a scholarly equivalent. Society and researchers benefit from the free, rapid flow of information.
I decline to vote for Mr. noun-verb-P.O.W.
— viztor Aug 27, 08:52 AM #
I don’t support McCain, and yet I agree with his doppelganger here on chronicle.com. The “features that students want” are pretty clear: 1.) a printed book that’s as good as current textbooks 2.) for free. Period.
Well, I want a Mercedes-Benz CL550 Coupe (MSRP, $145K) for less than the price of a Chevrolet Aveo5 (MSRP, $10K). Does that make me sound principled and intelligent, or just completely clueless about economic realities?
— Obama supporter #10,358,965 Aug 27, 11:17 AM #
If you idiots really think my opponent John McCain is posting to this discussion, then you are just as dumb as a donkey. As Liberal leftist democrats we are better than this, are we not?
— B. Obama Aug 27, 11:38 AM #
It seems that the logical recommendation this group should be making, based on their report, would be for free, print versions of textbooks
— KM Aug 27, 01:25 PM #
“Uh-oh”, aka Poster 5, I am still laughing from your comment…thanks!
— ML Aug 27, 02:24 PM #
This story includes a misstatement about the cost of eTextbooks. Contrary to the report cited, eTextbooks cost up to 50 percent less than print versions.
More than 4,000 textbooks – including more than one third of the most popular college textbook titles – are now available in eTextbook versions from CourseSmart. Since August 2007, students at more than 1,000 colleges and universities have purchased eTextbooks from CourseSmart – and 80 percent say they will continue to purchase their assigned textbooks as CourseSmart eTextbooks.
This article also does a disservice to Chronicle readers by not sharing any information about the wide array of benefits eTextbook users enjoy. Students who have used eTextbooks value the guaranteed savings; the ability to access eTextbooks anytime and anyplace, though Internet-based and downloadable options; the ease of search and copy/paste functionality with the digital format; and the obvious environmental benefits offered by digital materials.
Information about CourseSmart is available at www.coursesmart.com.
Frank Lyman
Executive Vice President, CourseSmart
— Frank Lyman Aug 27, 03:38 PM #
Despite the bluster of CourseSmart, eTextbooks miss the mark in two important (and opposite) ways:
—Once you factor in the money that students receive when they sell their books back, the vaunted price break for eTexts mostly evaporates.
—And, conversely, students who want to keep their books permanently can’t do this with most eTexts. The expiration issue forced my area to abandon eTexts.
Sure, it’s fun to taunt students for wanting free things (how irresponsible), but if you talk to students, most want things to just be reasonable. They don’t want to purchase expensive textbooks for a class and then have the professor seldom use it. Or purchase two books when the books overlap significantly. Or purchase books when most of the information is freely available (already) online.
All of that seems reasonable to me.
— digital prof Aug 28, 01:01 PM #
Open textbooks can be converted to many formats. They can be converted to web pages for easy viewing online. Or they can be converted to PDF’s for printing. At print-on-demand services an 800 page book can be printed for about $20. One of the conclusions of this study is that books from CourseSmart lack many of these features due to the Digital Rights Restrictions, such as page limits on printing and expirations of the digital versions. The point of open textbooks is that students are free to use them in a manner that is most effective and economical for them individually.
Many faculty perform original research as part of their professional duties. Then they give away the copyright to a journal that will publish their results. Faculty could just as well write textbooks, if this activity were recognized by institutions as scholarship. With most open licenses, the author retains the copyright, but then grants users extra rights, such as unlimited printing, or conversion to new formats. See http://linear.ups.edu for an example.
— Rob Beezer Aug 28, 01:14 PM #