Comments on How I Think About E-Books

• Missing something
• Posted by Kieran Mathieson on January 20, 2011 at 7:15am EST
• You're missing something important here, at least when it comes to textbooks. The debate has mainly focused on the cost of the same content on paper vs. pixels. But an ebook could be so much more.
  
  Say a book moves to a Web site. You could exercises embedded in in the content, and students could enter their solutions into the book itself. They could ask for feedback from their instructor. Student and instructor could discuss the solution, on the same page as the content the exercise is about. Formative feedback at work.
  
  There could be a forum thread with the exercise, where students talk with each other about it. Again, all right on the textbook page. The "book" (more than just a book now) could automatically collect a student's exercises into a portfolio. The student could share the best of his/her work with friends, parents, employers, ... Instructors could tag the best solutions as exemplars.
  
  The book could show instructors how students are progressing. It could flag the students who are falling behind in exercise completion. Instructors could check in with those students, to see if they need extra help.
  
  Students could also see this data. They could compare themselves with others. Taking a lesson from computer games, students could be awarded badges for completing, say, 80% of the exercises in chapter 7. Some students find this motivating.
  
  Students could type their own notes directly onto a page. They could share notes with each other. The instructor could make notes, and share them. When a student looks at a page, s/he sees all of the notes about that page, from all the sources the student has selected. The notes update automatically, as the notes' creators change them.
  
  Books could be updated automatically. For example, a political science textbook could have links to relevant news stories. The links would reflect world events current at the time the student is reading the text. A statistics text could have links to current data sets, e.g., from the most recent census. As new data sets became available, they could be included in the text.
  
  Books can include tools, as well. For example, a book could have textual analysis tools, built right in. Tools that help students visualize statistical data. Simulation tools, where students can, for example, change predator reproduction rates in an ecological simulation.
  
  What about cost? Traditional publishers might have trouble creating such active ebooks at a reasonable price, given their cost structure. But two or three faculty, with the right tools and some tech help, could create a book like this. No management overhead, no corporate offices to pay for, no sales staff, no printing and distribution. Even if the faculty set a low price on the book, like $20 per student, they could earn enough to make their effort worthwhile, with a small number of adoptions.
  
  Learning science research shows that learning goes up with:
  
  * Formative feedback, where the feedback is not a grade, but a conversation about what is right and wrong with a solution.
  
  * Peer discussion and peer teaching.
  
  * Modeling, where students see the good work their peers have done.
  
  * Metacognition, e.g., notes about why a topic is difficult, advice from other students on how to stay motivated, how to organize a study group on the topic, etc.
  
  * Lots of other stuff.
  
  A book written around these principles would embed good learning practices in a course automatically, without the instructor having to become a learning science expert.
  
  The bottom line? Students would learn more, at a lower price. Maybe students would start learning something at college. :-) At least, it would help answer current criticisms.
  
  I've written a book that does much of the above. Of the things I haven't done, I don't see any that are fundamentally difficult. The biggest challenge is the tools. I've written the formative feedback, portfolio, and other software myself, as extensions to Drupal, a popular content management system. I'm a geek, and happen to have these skills.
  
  However, there's no reason the extra software couldn't be packaged as Drupal modules, for normal (nongeek) faculty to use.
  
  Let's not just move paper content to pixels. We can do so much more.
  
  Kieran
  kieran@coredogs.com

• inevitability
• Posted by poliprof on January 20, 2011 at 9:45am EST
• Just a quick thought about ebooks in general. If you doubt that they're coming and will, at some point, be widely used, just take the "airport test." Look around at those waiting for planes at any large airport and note how many more people are using Kindles, Nooks, etc., than was the case, say, a year ago. The number using such books is still rather small, but it is the growth that is noticeable. They're simply too convenient, especially (though not exclusively) for travelers, and carry (as the essay notes) a significant price advantage at the moment. And once one uses an e-reader for a trip (perhaps receiving one as a gift), they're often hooked. My wife is no cutting edge technology geek, but I got her a Nook for Christmas (I use a Kindle) and now she can't put it down. Sometimes to my dismay...

• complementarity and costs
• Posted by Barbara on January 20, 2011 at 9:45am EST
• That's it: I'm heading to the courthouse to change my first name to Marvelous. Call me Marv for short. (On second thought... well, it's still better than a nickname I'd get if I were to change my name to Stupendous Barbara Fister.)
  
  I agree entirely about the complementary nature of e- and p-books. I love the fact that after I've read a book, I can quickly index the page on which a passage can be found using Amazon's Search Inside. It' terrific when teaching contemporary fiction, too, because students can easily find a quote that they only vaguely remember. Oh yeah, that was in chapter five. And given printed books are created with digital files these days, why not both?
  
  I'm glad you brought up the cost issue. Printing and distro is a small part, but the real shift in terms of cost would be that a digital licensed text world eliminates affordances that work for readers such as a used book market, the ability to pass along a book you've finished, and everything we get from first sale rights. Publishers could sell more books if nobody had the option of buying a used copy, but I've never seen an actual economic model with numbers that examines that scenario.
  
  Kieren's model appeals to me and I'll bet to Joshua, too - but there we're leaving the idea of "book" behind, and doing what Joshua does daily, which is use technology for learning. In the small number of courses I teach, I don't use textbooks (and have that luxury, not being in the position of having to lay down a foundation of content to be built on) but put them all online with a CC license because maybe someone can get something useful out of it.
  
  Funny how the e-books that have taken off like crazy are those that are texts that induce readers to forget they are holding a block of paper or a device; to do that, you have to avoid distraction and the involvement of the reader has nothing to do with technology.
  
  
  
  
  

• Prefer pixels to paper
• Posted by Michael Stiffler , Electronic Resources Coordinator at Harrison College (Proprietary) on January 20, 2011 at 10:15am EST
• As some of us age our eyes just don't work as well as they did and the pixel is so much easier to manipulate and oh that wonderful backlight. Also I have the habit of reading 2 or 3 titles at once and by using the Kindle Reader on the iPhone I can have the titles with me always and can delve into them anywhere, anytime. And as an occassional reference librarian I like to have as many of my trusted sources instantly available via the iPhone as I can.
  
  I experimented with circulating e-readers about 11 years ago and discovered that the features I need now to read comfortably allowed for those with attention issues to focus more readily on reading.
  
  At the proprietary college where I serve as electronic resources coordinator we have 13 small campuses, each with its own small library and librarian but with limited print book shelving space. We have a core title list to provide print books in each of the programs we offer. Our emerging e-book collection is a cost-effecive way to provide multiple copies of the core books, which are needed for our online division anyway and as a means of providing a large collection of non-core but relevant titles accessible by all 13 campuses and the online division.
  
  
  

• Choices and reason
• Posted by wmfxir , Dir Instructional Technology & Media Services at NJIT on January 20, 2011 at 10:45am EST
• I did not bother with any e-Books until I got an iPad. The main attraction of reading books on an iPad is the ability to bring a number of books along in much less space when I travel. With the rumors of Apple refusing to work on devices exposed to cigarette/cigar smoke I have purchased paper copies (used $4.00)of books I have on my iPad to read while I smoke an occasional cigar.
  I also really like the ability to search and book mark e-books.
  
  I will continue to buy both paper and electrons.

• Read (Harvard Professor) Clayton Christensen' "Disrupting Class"
• Posted by Eric Gates , Sr. Sales Consultant at ALEKS Corporation on January 20, 2011 at 10:45am EST
• You can read his book on paper, or on a Kindle, it doesn't really matter.
  
  Dr. Christensen is widely recognized as a leading thinker on the question of sustaining vs. disruptive technologies.
  
  Sustaining technologies take what we already do and make it better.
  
  Disruptive technologies take what we do and blow it to smithereens, completely transforming the landscape.
  
  When we talk about books, e or otherwise, we should not exclude the notion that new technologies don't just enable the sustaining innovation of e-books, but also the complete disruption of the very way people learn and think.
  
  If Dr. Christensen is right (and I believe he is) this debate will rapidly shift away from print vs. pixels to something much larger, with print vs. pixels making up a small (but vital) aspect of the discussion.

• Under 30
• Posted by LovesToRead on January 20, 2011 at 11:30am EST
• I am part of the under "30" crowd and I am an avid reader. I travel a lot for work, and I often read more than one book at a time. Yet, I refuse to buy any sort of device that allows me to read e-books. With so much techonology everywhere I look, I crave the ability to pick up a book that I can turn pages in, and use a real bookmark to save my place. The only other format I use is audible books--and only when I am driving or traveling. If we start eliminating physical books, what is left? I know that I won't become an e-book user any time soon, if ever.