Pass the SoLT

This news of the latest evolution in the ebook market comes from a colleague. It appears the first colour E-Ink device is now available and in use in Russia. The JetBook Color EDU.12 has been in development since earlier this year and will be made available shortly in the United States. The interesting aspect of this development is that the device is specifically targeting the educational etextbook market along with being a dedicated teacher's console with lesson plans, storage for student grades, pre-set exams, etc. Further information is available from the Jetbook website. Here is a link to a brief video clip but most readers will have to rely on the images as the narrative is in Russian...

http://youtu.be/D4pgDoGLiIg

Two quick items on the theme of ebooks and digitalization. The first is a review essay published in First Monday that examines literature from a variety of disciplines on the technological, social, behavioural, and neuroscientific impacts that the Internet is having on the practice of reading. A particular focus is given to the reading behaviour of emerging university students and their preferences for print and digital texts. Cull (2011) writes:

"While university students operate in a world immersed in digital text, they have not simultaneously abandoned print. It is not true, as Steve Jobs stated and as Nicholas Carr implied, that they like the iPad because they don’t read. In fact, for their university studies, students prefer to read on paper, although they also want the convenience of online digital text."

This conclusion is similar to the results of a Massey University survey conducted in 2010 which explored students' study practices and preferences for printed and digital learning resources. We found students wanted digital learning resources and expected them to become normal practice in the future but by and large they also wanted to retain at least some printed study materials.

The second item is a short video which presents a vision of how the concept of the book is likely to evolve in the future. It shows how the book will become more personalized to meet the needs of an increasing connected reader. The vision is based around three concepts--Nelson, Copeland and Alice--and the first has particular significance for the design and type of engagement with study materials in higher education. The idea of co-development and non-linear narrative in Alice is also an example of how digital books have the potential to redefine the nature of the reading experience.

This article entitled The All E-Book Diet talks more about the concept of the rental etextbook. It argues that colleges and universities have a role to play in driving down the cost of study materials by going all digital.

It seems hardly a day goes by without hearing something about the growth of ebooks and ebook readers in higher education. Importantly, these developments are not same despite often being confused in the popular literature. In the latest issue of Inside Higher Ed the question is asked whether this is finally the year of ebooks. The article reports that CourseSmart, the e-textbook consortium comprising five major publishers, claims to have sold four times more e-textbooks in 2009-10 than it did the previous year. The article goes on to say that:

"It has been a truism for years that e-books are massing at the gates. For the most part, officials are no longer arguing if the college library will transform from a warehouse of bound volumes to a nexus for accessing various digital resources, but when."

However, a more skeptical view is also reported as the expected boom of ebooks has been stalled for many years. According to market research, e-books accounted for only 2 percent of textbook sales last year. That said, the arrival of the iPad is seen as a potential game breaker. Also potential textbook rental services provide a new business model which may substantially reduce of cost of electronic textbooks to students.

Although the ebook landscape remains fluid, the above developments underscore the importance of current pilot initiatives underway at Massey University. My previous weekend was spent refining the student survey for Phase 2 of our digital learning resources initiative and I hope to report some of the findings in the next few months.

A recent blog post by Professor Tony Bates, "In defence of the book and other thoughts on the digitalization of knowledge", helps to balance Negroponte's recent prediction that we are witnessing the end of the book as we know it. Bates shares his personal struggle with the future role of the book in learning and knowledge transfer and ask:

What would be lost if books were entirely replaced by new media? What would be gained?

Over the weekend Nicholas Negroponte, co-founder of the MIT Media Lab, made the claim at the Techonomy Conference that 'the physical book is dead'. Although he accepts many people will find it hard to accept this prediction, he reminds us to think about the film and music industries. In the 1980s, for example, music storage and replaying was all physical and now everything has changed. By dead Negroponte means that digital books are going to replace physical books as the dominant form'. He cites the sales of ebooks through Amazon and claims:

“It’s happening. It not happening in 10 years. It’s happening in 5 years”.

This prediction makes the following video clip from a few years ago even more relevant and timely...