The Future Of Digital Textbooks > TOC 2010

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Paul Biba / February 23 2010 / 12:58 pm

Flatworld: open access textbooks but still able to generate sustainable revenue

CK12: doing same thing but completely in K to 12 market. Providing online services and developed online reader

CourseSmart: Many textbooks now available in digital format. 10,000 etextbook titles on their site.

Agile Mind: now can marry instructional concepts and multimedia.

How do digital textbooks solve problem of educating student; online books give more access and lowers price point. Hard for teacher/student to get “real time” knowledge of what’s relevant to student and real world. Hopefully etextbooks will be able to do this. Marriage of content, pedagogy and curriculum. Digital course materials enable delivery of content to every student. Education system broken and etextbooks allow customized content .... [snip].

What are successful business models and what didn’t work: Two models student choice models and faculty choice models and to be successful must focus on one. In student choice model go for low common denominator such as browser based. Don’t need a print option. Need consistency between digital and paper model. [snip].

In the K-12 area students don’t need assessment like in higher ed. State adoption is necessary and this is a mess. [snip].

Students, themselves, want learning that is more efficient, more portable and more affordable. Don’t make it “engaging” make it “efficient” because students have limited time. Flatword found that it is profitable to offer free content and offer paid content around it. [snip]

Devices: will be consumed on all types of devices with consistent fragmentation and no one device will be ubiquitous, which makes it harder for publishers. [snip]

Source

[http://www.teleread.com/paul-biba/toc-report-the-future-of-digital-textbooks/]

Related

Abstracts

[http://www.toccon.com/toc2010/public/schedule/detail/10958]

Presentation PPTs

[http://assets.en.oreilly.com/1/event/33/The%20Future%20of%20Digital%20Textbooks%20Presentation.ppt]

Library Journal

[http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6720422.html]