Chromicle of Higher Education / June 4 2009 / Technology
Northwest Missouri State University nearly became the first public university to deliver all of its textbooks electronically. Last year the institution's tech-happy president, Dean L. Hubbard, bought a Kindle, Amazon's e-book reading device, and liked it so much that he wanted to give every incoming student one. [snip]
Then the university ran a pilot study with the Sony Reader, a device much like the Kindle ... . University officials learned some sobering lessons about electronic books. Students who got the machines quickly asked for their printed books back because it was so awkward to navigate inside the e-books ... .
Mr. Hubbard still dreams of lighter bookbags and lower costs, but the university is now moving more slowly -- and running tests involving several different types of e-books. Publishers are clamoring to be part of the experiment.
"We've had all four of the major textbook publishers on campus, and all of them want to get on board because they sense that this is their General Motors moment," said Mr. Hubbard earlier this semester, when I sat down with him in his office. Like the auto giant, he said, publishers must adapt or head for bankruptcy.
[snip]
Based on my talks with professors, students, and administrators at Northwest Missouri, here are six lessons for any university considering assigning digital textbooks.
1. Judge e-books by their covers. No, not their jacket art, but the device and software used to display them. Those wrappings are key to satisfaction when it comes to electronic textbooks, since the choice of reading device determines whether students can highlight material or easily flip the pages ... . [snip]
The university started out last fall by handing out Sony's Reader devices loaded with textbooks published by McGraw-Hill to about 240 students. The project used the original model of the Sony Reader, which students found difficult to operate. "It was hard to even find where you were supposed to be in those things," said Thomas M. Spencer, an associate professor of history. Worse, the e-book wasn't numbered the same way as the printed edition, so it was hard for everyone to get on the same page.
So in the spring, the university switched to a format that can be read on a laptop or desktop PC, using software called VitalSource. Even so, a large number of the students longed for the good old printed book. [snip]
2. Learning curves ahead. Tania Brobst, a junior at the university, is proud of the note-taking techniques she's developed over the years. She crafts typed study guides for each of her courses, and she carefully highlights material in her printed textbooks. When she ended up in a marketing course this spring that required her to use a digital textbook, she had to adapt her strategies. [snip]
Northwest Missouri State University nearly became the first public university to deliver all of its textbooks electronically. Last year the institution's tech-happy president, Dean L. Hubbard, bought a Kindle, Amazon's e-book reading device, and liked it so much that he wanted to give every incoming student one. [snip]
Then the university ran a pilot study with the Sony Reader, a device much like the Kindle ... . University officials learned some sobering lessons about electronic books. Students who got the machines quickly asked for their printed books back because it was so awkward to navigate inside the e-books ... .
Mr. Hubbard still dreams of lighter bookbags and lower costs, but the university is now moving more slowly -- and running tests involving several different types of e-books. Publishers are clamoring to be part of the experiment.
"We've had all four of the major textbook publishers on campus, and all of them want to get on board because they sense that this is their General Motors moment," said Mr. Hubbard earlier this semester, when I sat down with him in his office. Like the auto giant, he said, publishers must adapt or head for bankruptcy.
[snip]
Based on my talks with professors, students, and administrators at Northwest Missouri, here are six lessons for any university considering assigning digital textbooks.
1. Judge e-books by their covers. No, not their jacket art, but the device and software used to display them. Those wrappings are key to satisfaction when it comes to electronic textbooks, since the choice of reading device determines whether students can highlight material or easily flip the pages ... . [snip]
The university started out last fall by handing out Sony's Reader devices loaded with textbooks published by McGraw-Hill to about 240 students. The project used the original model of the Sony Reader, which students found difficult to operate. "It was hard to even find where you were supposed to be in those things," said Thomas M. Spencer, an associate professor of history. Worse, the e-book wasn't numbered the same way as the printed edition, so it was hard for everyone to get on the same page.
So in the spring, the university switched to a format that can be read on a laptop or desktop PC, using software called VitalSource. Even so, a large number of the students longed for the good old printed book. [snip]
2. Learning curves ahead. Tania Brobst, a junior at the university, is proud of the note-taking techniques she's developed over the years. She crafts typed study guides for each of her courses, and she carefully highlights material in her printed textbooks. When she ended up in a marketing course this spring that required her to use a digital textbook, she had to adapt her strategies. [snip]
[snip]
3. Professors are eager students. Faculty members are known to be reluctant to change their teaching approaches. So the original goal was to rope five or six professors into volunteering for the spring experiment. But 54 professors said they wanted in. "Some of them were so passionate about it that they actually sent me petitions," said Mr. Hubbard, ... . [snip]
[snip]
4. Long live batteries. The technical difficulty that came up the most in my interviews with students was battery life. [snip]
5. Subjects are not equally e-friendly. Kevin Green, a junior, loved the e-book required in his business-marketing class this spring. "But if it was an accounting course," he said, "I would kind of want a printed textbook because it's got all the numbers" and equations that would be harder to manage electronically. [snip]
6. Environmental impact matters. Ms. Brobst said she would now choose e-books over printed ones, not because she thought they were better but because they save trees. [snip] A few comments in the university's surveys echoed that sentiment, and administrators said they were surprised at the degree to which such consciousness affected students's opinions.
Mr. Hubbard is convinced that in five years e-textbooks will become common on college campuses. And an ambitious e-textbook project at the university could turn out to be the capstone to Mr. Hubbard's legacy.
[snip]
