Pearson's Digital-First Strategy Will Change How Students Get Textbooks; College Textbooks Fast Becoming Obsolete

Forbes ^ | Bill Rosenblatt

[SeekAndFind]

Pearson, the world's largest textbook publisher, announced that it is moving from a traditional to a "digital first" publishing model. This development upends several traditions that are more than a century old. It will bring about a digital transformation in textbook publishing that has been in the works for a long time and will fundamentally change the way college students get their educational materials.

The traditional model for publishing textbooks has been simple: An author, typically a full-time college professor, writes a textbook under contract with a publisher. The publisher puts out a print edition, gets course instructors to adopt it and sells it in college bookstores. If the textbook is popular, the professor will write an updated edition under a new contract every few years. A highly popular textbook will last through many editions; Paul Samuelson's Economics, for example, dates back to 1948 and is now in its 19th edition.

This model has serious limitations, which the digital age has thrown into sharp relief, making it increasingly untenable. First and foremost is the problem of used textbooks. Students generally don't need to hang on to their textbooks for more than a semester or two. It's perfectly legal to resell your textbooks and to buy used ones, so students do it all the time, and of course, publishers make nothing from resales. So a main reason that publishers push authors to write new editions of textbooks is to give course instructors reasons to adopt them; still, writing, producing, printing and distributing new textbook just because some small amount of material (or the formatting or cosmetics) has changed is quite inefficient.

Second, it's much easier nowadays for course instructors to find materials other than textbooks to assign to their students. Free web content, magazine articles, open educational resources and trade books

[EEGator]

I sold the liberal arts crap back.
I kept all of my Engineering and Math books.

[VanDeKoik]

Remove physical textbooks, fill space with bigger margins!

That first year of college back in the last century, I spent damn near 600 dollars on books.

I didn’t buy all the ones I was supposed to. Had no desire to go completely broke.

[GingisK]

Whew! Thanks for that. I was getting worried about you. ;-D

[IronJack]

Me too. Actually ended up with a calculus text that none of my classes ever used. I’m not sure where that came from.

[Buckeye McFrog]

So now you’ll be forced to pay $250 for a digital file with a license that will expire after the term and it will just go fffffffffttttt…...not even to be resold to the bookstore at 5 cents on the dollar.

[nicollo]

Online textbooks are nearly useless. As difficult as it is to teach students to use print textbooks, even when they use e- or online books, they learn next to nothing.

I’m an academic coach. Have watched this w/ 1000s of kids.

I even approached Pearson to put together a program to teach teachers to teach students how to use textbooks. Pearson does not care, as they sell textbooks whether kids use them or not, and digital is far more profitable.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: I even approached Pearson to put together a program to teach teachers to teach students how to use textbooks. Pearson does not care, as they sell textbooks whether kids use them or not, and digital is far more profitable.

I think Pearson is also into pedagogical materials. They recently acquired: SMART SPARROW , a company that develops ADAPTIVE LEARNING TECHNOLOGY.

They are developing educational methods using computers as interactive teaching devices, adapting educational material according to students' learning needs. The technology incorporates the interactivity previously only afforded by an actual human teacher, and integrates ideas from various fields, including computer science, education, and psychology.

May I ask your opinion of such technology? Will it work with current students? Can a teacher like you use this?

[Trailerpark Badass]

It’s still a scam. Do you think the digital editions of the books are any cheaper? They’re not.

[EEGator]

I’m only partially crazy, not AOC bat guano crazy. :)

[BobL]

I sure hope they weren’t planning on having those’textbooks’ used on Chinese made computers or computers made with Chinese components...not many to be had for a while.

[Svartalfiar]

They would change a few sentences here and there, then reorder the chapters to render older editions barely usable. Buy a new book, $150, but it used, $90, sell it back, $25.

Actually, the main thing they did to make old editions unusable was to completely redo all the check-on-learning / homework questions. It's easy enough to use a textbook with mixed-up chapters, but if the homework doesn't line up with the assignment, that's the difficult part.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: Do you think the digital editions of the books are any cheaper? They’re not.

OK, I am not writing this to be a devil’s advocate, but I simply want suggestions — if digital is not going to make textbooks any cheaper, what can we do to make these books ( the knowledge content ) CHEAPER? ( and please, no advocating of content piracy. LOL ).

[outofsalt]

"Remove physical textbooks, fill space with bigger margins!"

I recently attended a meeting at an east coast medical university. During some down time I decided to visit the, "book store". Nothing but hoodies and other assorted branded trinkets. In the few minutes I spent, I found nothing that would have aided learning.

[Svartalfiar]

Online textbooks are nearly useless. As difficult as it is to teach students to use print textbooks, even when they use e- or online books, they learn next to nothing.

I hate using digital textbooks, and am not really a fan of reading books online. You can't go back and reference certain stuff, you can;t flip through to find info you need, it's much harder to flip through to a certain page. The experience of using a physical textbook is much more conducive to learning than a computer screen. They're also much easier on the eyes, can be used anytime without annoying the wife in bed, are much more mobile, and so on. Hopefully most of the math, science, and civics courses keep using normal books instead of stupid online crap.

[Getready]

I was just about to post the same comment. Paper textbook allows you to associate info to a location in book. You can also scan at least 2 to 4 pages worth of “screen” pages. Very good if you are following a derivation of information. Put a marker in the index...much easier than pulling up new screen to look something else up. Best IMHO is a textbook with digital updates till new textbook....larger pages would give less expensive books with easy back and forth reading..

[HartleyMBaldwin]

And aside from all that, the students will ruin their computers with all that yellow highlighting marker on the screen.

[goldstategop]

Textbook PDFs are space hog users so I shrink them by converting them to DJVU.

You don’t even need to buy the print edition in a college bookstore anymore.

College textbooks are going digital for the same as encyclopedias. Its easier to keep content current online.

[ml/nj]

I only referred to them twice in the last 30 years. Big waste of time and space.

Gee. I was just thinking of finding my General Psych text to see what it might have to say about the LGBTQXYZZY crowd.

ML/NJ

[Maine Mariner]

In the late 1960’s Samuelson’s Economics sold more books than any other college textbook in any major.

[Maine Mariner]

That is why I always recommend my students do not buy the most recent edition of a textbook; I assign the edition published just before the newest.