Project Information Literacy Progress Report: "Lessons Learned"
December 1, 2009
Head and Eisenberg
Monday, February 22, 2010
What’s a Dynamic Book? A New Type of Customized Text Book From Macmillan
From The Chronicle of Higher Education by Jeffrey Young:
Macmillan Publishers plans to announce on Monday its entry in the battle: an unusual publishing platform for electronic textbooks that it hopes to lure other publishers to use as well (in exchange for a cut of their sales). And to entice faculty members to assign the books, the company will even pay some of them (if the professors enhance the volumes).
Professors who customize a textbook have a chance to make some extra money. For each customized copy that a student buys, the professor who contributed the material gets a dollar. That could add up if a professor’s retooled book becomes popular and is assigned by professors at other colleges.
The titles will underprice some competitors, and most of the 20 textbooks in the pilot version of DynamicBooks will be sold at less than half the price of the printed versions.
The effort joins a quickly growing list of souped-up textbook systems aimed at upending the traditional business model in the textbook industry. Last year, McGraw-Hill unveiled its own format for enhanced e-textbooks, called Connect. John Wiley & Sons recently started a similar line of books called WileyPlus.
Another feature, likely to frustrate some users, is that these platforms have their own interfaces and formats that the companies control. Advanced e-textbooks from one company are not compatible with other companies’ platforms, and each system has its own quirks and a learning curve for students and professors. [We think this could make for a lot of headaches for both students, faculty (including librarians), and staff.
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education
One thing that libraries and librarians should be thinking about NOW is how a lot of unique content coupled with non-compatible platforms going to be controlled? Will each version on a campus be be closely indexed for “what’s different,” cataloged, and then placed in OCLC? How often will changes be made? Will the cataloging be kept current? Daily? Weekly? OR, will only the original text be cataloged and forget about the rest? OR, will none of it be cataloged in a traditional sense and the full text (original and customized) be accessible via a full text search after the book is crawled? We think these and related ideas are worth thinking about now.
Peer 2 Peer University Launches 2nd Pilot, Teaching and Learning for Peers by Peers
From a Blog Post by Jane Park: http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/20732
“Some of the courses were offered in the first phase of the pilot which launched last September, but seven are brand new, including “Urban Disaster Risk Management,” “Mashing Up the Open Web,” and “Solve Anything! Building Ideas through Design.” P2PU is also excited to announce its first Portuguese language courses organized by Brasil’s Casa de Cultura Digital, one of which is an introduction to the thinking of Paulo Freire (educational theorist who is author of Pedagogy of the Oppressed). The P2PU community has grown and is excited to have these new courses and their organizers on board.”
If you want to learn more about the Peer 2 Peer University, see my past post on them. All P2PU produced content is licensed under CC BY-SA, which means you are free to share, distribute and derive for your own mirror initiative as long as you share alike. “P2PU is teaching and learning by peers for peers and it is run and governed by volunteers. It builds on educational content that is free from copyright restrictions or licensed under Creative Commons licenses.” The deadline to sign up for courses is February 28. Courses will run for at least six weeks starting March 12. Each course may require different information and prerequisites to apply.
Source: Creative Commons Blog
Textbooks That Professors Can Rewrite Digitally
By MOTOKO RICH Published: February 21, 2010
While many publishers have offered customized print textbooks for years — allowing instructors to reorder chapters or insert third-party content from other publications or their own writing — DynamicBooks gives instructors the power to alter individual sentences and paragraphs without consulting the original authors or publisher.
“Basically they will go online, log on to the authoring tool, have the content right there and make whatever changes they want,” said Brian Napack, president of Macmillan. “And we don’t even look at it.”
In August, Macmillan plans to start selling 100 titles through DynamicBooks, including “Chemical Principles: The Quest for Insight,” by Peter Atkins and Loretta Jones; “Discovering the Universe,” by Neil F. Comins and William J. Kaufmann; and “Psychology,” by Daniel L. Schacter, Daniel T. Gilbert and Daniel M. Wegner. Mr. Napack said Macmillan was considering talking to other publishers to invite them to sell their books through DynamicBooks.
Students will be able to buy the e-books at dynamicbooks.com, in college bookstores and through CourseSmart, a joint venture among five textbook publishers that sells electronic textbooks. The DynamicBooks editions — which can be reached online or downloaded — can be read on laptops and the iPhone from Apple. Clancy Marshall, general manager of DynamicBooks, said the company planned to negotiate agreements with Apple so the electronic books could be read on the iPad.
The modifiable e-book editions will be much cheaper than traditional print textbooks. “Psychology,” for example, which has a list price of $134.29 (available on Barnes & Noble’s Web site for $122.73), will sell for $48.76 in the DynamicBooks version. Macmillan is also offering print-on-demand versions of the customized books, which will be priced closer to traditional textbooks.
Fritz Foy, senior vice president for digital content at Macmillan, said the company expected e-book sales to replace the sales of used books. Part of the reason publishers charge high prices for traditional textbooks is that students usually resell them in the used market for several years before a new edition is released. DynamicBooks, Mr. Foy said, will be “semester and classroom specific,” and the lower price, he said, should attract students who might otherwise look for used or even pirated editions.
Instructors who have tested the DynamicBooks software say they like the idea of being able to fine-tune a textbook. “There’s almost always some piece here or some piece there that a faculty person would have rather done differently,” said Todd Ruskell, senior lecturer in physics at the Colorado School of Mines, who tested an electronic edition of “Physics for Scientists and Engineers” by Paul A. Tipler and Gene Mosca.
Frank Lyman, executive vice president of CourseSmart, said he expected that some professors would embrace the opportunity to customize e-books but that most would continue to rely on traditional textbooks.
“For many instructors, that’s very helpful to know it’s been through a process and represents a best practice in terms of a particular curriculum,” he said.
Even other publishers that allow instructors some level of customization hesitate about permitting changes at the sentence and paragraph level.
“There is a flow to books, and there’s voice to them,” said Don Kilburn, chief executive of Pearson Learning Solutions, which does allow instructors to change chapter orders and insert material from other sources. Mr. Kilburn said he had not been briefed on Macmillan’s plans.
Mr. Ruskell said he did not change much in the physics textbook he tested with DynamicBooks. “You don’t just want to say, ‘Oh, I don’t like this, I’m going to do this instead,’ ” he said. “You really want to think about it.”
Mr. Comins, an author of “Discovering the Universe,” a popular astronomy textbook, said the new e-book program was a way to speed up the process for incorporating suggestions that he often receives while revising new print editions. “I’ve learned as an author over the years that I am not perfect,” he said. “So if somebody in Iowa sees something in my book that they perceive is wrong, I am absolutely willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.”
On the other hand, if an instructor decided to rewrite paragraphs about the origins of the universe from a religious rather than an evolutionary perspective, he said, “I would absolutely, positively be livid.”
Ms. Clancy of Macmillan said the publisher reserved the right to “remove anything that is considered offensive or plagiarism,” and would rely on students, parents and other instructors to help monitor changes.
FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT, DR. MARVALENE HUGHES
LOCATION: STERN HALL AMPHITHEATER
TIME: 5:00PM
Message from the President:
Please remember to schedule Monday, February 22, 2010, at 5:00 p.m., in the Stern Hall Amphitheater, for an important meeting of the Senior Cabinet, Deans and Faculty. I need your assistance in reviewing some very important issues.
Marvalene Hughes, Ph.D., President Dillard University
http://www.dillard.edu/
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