Textbooks

Next month 27 German textbook publishers will come together and present their new digital textbook platform.

The Didacta Education Trade Fair is being held in Hannover next month, and there’s going to be a number of apps, services, and new teaching gadgets on display. The Educational Media Association will also be releasing a preview of their new textbook platform.

Details are still thin on the ground, but the new platform is going to be vendor-neutral, and it is planned to run on all operating systems and devices. The scheduled launch date is set for some time this fall, around the beginning of 2012/2013 school year. There’s going to be both online and offline modes, and teachers and students will be able to purchase eBooks from different publishers and manage them on a shelf.

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image by James F Clay

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The digital textbook distributor Courseload is pleased to announce Wednesday that it has partnerships with 5 universities and is about to start new digital textbook pilot programs with the University of California, Berkeley; Cornell University; University of Minnesota; University of Virginia; and the University of Wisconsin. These 5 schools will help test Courseload’s platform using textbooks provided by McGraw-Hill.

The pilot programs, which are based on Indiana University’s successful eText model, offer universities the chance to lower the cost of digital course materials. Courseload assists the institutions in negotiating attractive volume price deals with publishers, znd everyone including students benefit from the program because it dramatically reduce costs while efficiently paying authors and publishers fairly for their digital work.

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Apple is expected to announce all sorts of interesting digital textbook news tomorrow, and it clearly has Apple’s competitor’s worried.

Chegg launched a digital textbook rental service back in August, and today they released an updated reading app. The app is written in HTML5, and it can be used in virtually any browser including the iPad.

The update adds a number of features, including crowd-sourced highlights, instant definitions, and access to Chegg’s Homework Help service. Simply highlight a bit of text and select “Ask A Question”. Chegg’s community of subject matter experts should be able to find an answer within 2 hours.

“At Chegg, we strive to make learning technology easier, more accessible and more productive for today’s college students,” said Dan Rosensweig, president and CEO of Chegg. “With Chegg’s all new cloud-based eTextbook Reader, we’re raising the bar on innovation and productivity for our network of students, creating a personal experience connecting them to the most important content and eLearning services they need to get better grades.”

Apple is expected to launch textbook making tools on Thursday, and it looks like Kno didn’t want to get swallowed up by the noise. This morning Kno released a few details on new features that they plan to add to their iPad textbook app.

Kno Flashcards are going to automatically convert key term from within textbooks into interactive flashcards. Kno plans to offer over 40 million flashcards based on the glossaries and indexes of more than 150 thousand digital textbooks in their eBookstore.

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A few days ago PaperC announced new plans to relaunch the site with a new design and a new service.

PaperC is a new German start-up with a novel payment plan. Rather than selling or renting complete textbooks, PaperC sells books by the chapter and even the page. It currently offers nearly over 14 thousand titles from 85 publishers.

In addition to its by-the-page system, PaperC is about to start testing a subscription service. Readers will be able to play a flat fee and use as many textbooks as they need. This new service is just beginning to be beta tested, but when it is released it’s expected to cost between 10 and 20 euros. That should put it well within the reach of the average student.

PaperC also plans to roll out improved Epub support, and it’s looking to make its content more usable on all Epub compatibility apps and devices.

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Earlier this year the Washington state legislature followed in the footsteps of California and other states. It set aside three quarters of a million dollars to create a new program which will reduce the amount that the state spends each year for college textbooks.

The first phase of that program launched today.The Open Course Library was created by the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, and it acts as a central repository for digital textbooks and course materials for the college classes with the highest enrollments. Right now only 42 classes are covered, and they’re grouped in the core requirements of math, sciences, and history.

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The digital textbook distributor Coursesmart announced today that it had expanded its supply of digital textbooks and course materials by signing a deal with 9 publishing partners: OUP (for both the US and Canadian markets), W.W. Norton, ATP, BarCharts, ASM Press, Paradigm Publishing, Vista Higher Learning, and University Readers.

“Our new publishing relationships will enable us to continue expanding our footprint and further solidify our position as the world’s largest provider of digital course materials. The additional titles and content to our higher education catalog will allow more students and faculty to enjoy the benefits of our digital course materials, including anytime, anywhere access, cost savings and efficiencies, device agnostic applications and other digital benefits inherent in our offerings,” said Sean Devine, chief executive officer at CourseSmart. “We will continue to engage with other higher education-focused publishing houses to ensure we meet the growing demand for eTextbooks and other digital course materials.”

These new deals will expand CourseSmart’s catalog  to over 20 thousand titles and more than 90% of the core college textbooks, and all of these textbooks can be read in most web browsers as well as in iOS and Android apps. It also brings the count of CourseSmart’s publishing partners to 31, including a few of the larger textbook publishers like Pearson, Wiley, Cengage Learning, and McGraw-Hill Education.

image by Earlham College

Indiana University announced this week that it has chosen a new digital textbook platform. As part of its eTexts initiative, it has signed a deal with Courseload, an Indianapolis based company, to support IU’s digital textbook initiatives.

The university has also signed deals with textbook publishers for volume purchases of digital textbooks. Students on all IU campuses will be able to order digital textbooks from Wiley, Norton, and Flat World Knowledge and then read those textbooks using Courseload.

“IU’s model ensures that students will benefit from the cost savings and educational possibilities of eTexts and other online materials as their preferences shift to a blend of digital and print,” IU Vice President for Information Technology and Kelley School of Business professor Brad Wheeler said, adding that this agreement gives IU faculty new options for lower-cost, high-quality course materials.

While this new program will save students money, there is also a catch. The eTexts model utilizes a mandatory fee to obtain its substantial price advantages. If a given class uses a textbook offered by one of the participating publishers, the university will compel the students to participate. Also, the students may not actually be getting a discount here (compared to used and rental textbook prices), but that is a matter for another post.

I’ve just come across a report from earlier this year on the California State University System and its efforts to launch a state wide digital textbook system. This was a year end report and it’s a little out of date now, but it doesn’t appear that anyone has covered it just yet.

2010 was marked by a vast number of eReader and digital textbook pilot programs, and California had one of the larger ones: the Digital Marketplace. This is a state wide program that California has been working towards for several years now. The key eveny in 2010 was a 5 campus, 3 thousand student pilot program that California planned to expand to include all state universities.

The primary goals of the DM are to move the CSUS towards digital content while reducing cost and waste and  making it easier to for students and professors to find content. It’s not clear from the report whether the pilot program achieved these goals, but then again this was a pilot.  One goal that the pilot did achieve was saving students money; the report mentions that by switching to subscription based content, students collectively save saved $330,000.

You can find the complete report here. It’s 8 pages long and well worth a read.

The Eminata Group announced Tuesday that it had inked a deal for Pearson Education to provide a complete iPad based digital textbook solution.

Beginninng this fall, students at 3 Eminata Group campuses, CDI College, Vancouver Career College and Reeves College, will be able to get all of their course content via Pearson’s iPad app.These 3 campuses will be expanding their current pilot programs to include all students. Over the next 3 years, all programs  at all of the 38 Eminata Group campuses will be converted to digital textbooks to meet the diverse needs of students inside and outside the classroom. Hundreds of Pearson textbooks will be available through the eText for iPad platform, Pearson’s premier electronic book technology.

“We are committed to increasing access to flexible, affordable learning opportunities with programs and services proven to improve student achievement and retention,” said Don Kilburn, CEO of Pearson Learning Solutions. “Our collaboration with the Eminata Group leverages the iPad’s ability to provide students with a more interactive learning experience, so they realize their full academic potential and move into rewarding, successful careers.”