During HigherEd Tech at the Computer Electronics Show in January 2011, a panel entitled “From Dewey to Digital” included several leaders in the eTextbook community. In April 2010, the prior year, Apple had shipped the first iPad and there was much discussion at the conference about the impact tablets would have broadly and on education. One of many topics discussed was why digital textbook acceptance did not mirror the market success of digital books generally. Publishers Weekly, reporting on the conference, stated that Walter Mossberg, WSJ Tech Reporter at the time and later founder of <re/code>, declared in an afternoon session “if digital books aren’t going to be cheaper, then we’re all wasting our time. It has got to be cheaper to move bits around than atoms.” Well, here we are, nearly five years later in 2015 and eTextbooks, though less expensive than traditional textbooks, have not emerged as the obvious replacement for print textbooks. Instead, price pressure from free Open Educational Resources (OER) and the introduction of an array of learning tools, experiences and digital content encroach as better learning companions.
Although market penetration of eTextbooks has increased since 2011, their share as an overall portion of the multi-billion dollar textbook market remains under 10%. There are many reasons for the inertia including the fact the college textbook selections are not centralized but assigned by individual faculty, the college bookstore textbook supply chain is fragmented and inefficient, and students have less expensive rental and used options for hard copy textbooks from digital marketplaces such as Amazon and Chegg. In addition, students aren’t required to have and are not provided a book by their institutions and so often share or choose not to purchase a book in order to save money. Finally, assigning interactive learning tools such as is also a substitute for textbooks popular with educators.
When learning content becomes digital, the promise is far greater than “words on a page on an eReader”. Learning content is often more engaging and effective as an interactive, personalized experience using media tools such as interactive quizzes and exercises, video, multimedia examples, simulations, social interaction and virtual reality. Once the textbook became digital, it provided the benefit of reducing costs of production, distribution and prices, which is good for student affordability and access to education. However, the construct of a book becomes less relevant in the face of more engaging software. Finally, when instructors assign interactive learning software, it is typically required for class, forcing each student to purchase it due to the value of the grading components and analytics. The option of opting-out of the assigned class materials evaporates, which is better for learning.
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At the close of the 2015 higher education conference season including EDUCAUSE, OLC and WCET, one wonders if the eTextbook is obsolete before its time. Traditional textbook publishers have changed their company names to emphasize “learning.” They deemphasize book sales in favor of their learning software such as LearnSmart from McGraw Hill or MindTap from Cengage. In fact, some now charge for the interactive software and include a copy of the eTextbook, a reversal from the recent past when the book was paid and the interactive software was a free ancillary. In the Campus Computing Survey released at EDUCAUSE in Indianapolis in October 2015, the summary stated that over 400 Higher Education CIO’s surveyed in the report have “great faith ” in the instructional possibilities for digital technology and that OER will create an impact in the next five years. At the WCET conference for online learning in November in Denver, many sessions referred to the use of Open Education Resources, virtual reality, interactivity, and adaptive learning content as elemental online learning tools. Adaptive Learning solutions such as Smart Sparrow, zyBooks, Soft Chalk and Lumen Learning were new participants in the conference.
eTextbooks offer economic and pedagogical value to students and institutions, particularly when schools include the eTextbooks in the cost of tuition to all students on the first day of class. eTextbooks also provide the value of allowing faculty, under the rubric of academic freedom, to continue working with material in the print books they previously adopted. For these reasons, the market presence of eTextbooks will continue to expand and function in a long term transitional role. In the long run, however, we are bypassing the eTextbook revolution for learning software, which will, like the tablet, online education and the smartphone, materialize as a positive technological force on US education, student success and US global competitiveness.
