Outsell Inc. :: Thinking Out Loud – Education » 2009

New York Times Knowledge Network — Newspapers Meet Distance Learning

By Lisa Abrams - Cambridge, MA - on August 26, 2009

In my home delivered NY Times this morning there was an extra supplement announcing the New York Times Knowledge Network Fall 2009 Course Catalog. This was new to me, although it may not be the first time the courses had been offered. What struck me was the combination of a traditional newspaper with distance learning courses offered by participating universities such as Stanford, Gotham Writers’ Workshop and CUNY (City University of New York) School of Professional studies.

At first I was naive enough to think the courses might be free of charge — silly I know, I plead lack of caffeine. But it really was hard to find out how much the classes cost. There is a wide array of topics: arts & film, business, education, law, journalism, law etc. There were also featured courses such as Education: Listen and Watch Carefully: The Effective Use of Social Media for Student Recruitment, and Writing: Feature Writing with the New York Times. And for those with less lofty topics of study there was a class on serial killers – but it focused on cardiovascular diseases and cancer.

Logging on to the registration site, I was able to dig down to the cost info: $125 per class – for the few I looked at. On one hand it was very annoying to have to click through five or six pages to get to the cost info. Still, on the other hand I have to applaud the new York Times for coming up with a new and different offering in an effort to stay current.

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California Lists State-Approved Digital Textbooks

By Lisa Abrams - Cambridge, MA - on August 21, 2009

On August 11, California educators released a list of state approved digital textbooks for high school math and science. eSchool News reported, “The “Free Digital Textbook Initiative Report,” facilitated by the California Learning Resource Network (CLRN), outlines how open high school math and science textbooks submitted under the first phase of the initiative measure up against the state’s academic standards. The state received 16 digital textbooks to review, with 10 meeting at least 90 percent of the standards and four fully meeting the standards. The reviewed resources are available for schools to use this fall.”

This is significant for several reasons. We have seen that as California goes (and Florida and Texas to some extent) so goes the rest of the US. California has found digital texts that meet their self confessed rigorous standards. Other states have opened their schools up for digital texts but having a state with as many districts as California to do is a big deal. Furthermore, while Pearson and McGraw and the other big content publishers offer digital texts, so do smaller companies. And some of those companies are able to customize a text which someday may be an option for a particular K12 math teacher. Having digital texts as a mainstay in K12 education opens up the market some to companies that have previously not been able to compete in the adoption process. We’ve seen textbook disruptors in post secondary; we may start seeing more of those in K12 as well.

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This years 6 million Chinese college graduates face a distressing job market

By Lisa Abrams - Cambridge, MA - on August 16, 2009

Echoing the Cultural Revolution rulings, the Chinese government is once again sending university graduates to the countryside. The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Services assert that this time it is different; encouraging moves to the hinterlands is due to unemployment in the cities. Students are considering types of jobs and locations that they never would have considered a few years ago. And competition for those jobs is fierce.

Much has been made of the vast Chinese education market and the thirst for education isn’t going to go away. But some students must pause when they weigh the sacrifices they and their family would make to send them to school versus the payoff upon graduation a few years later. Hopefully the global economy will recover to the extent that a college degree seems like a very good bet. In the meantime, Chinese students may choose either to put off their studies or to take targeted ELT courses or other courses they consider practical and more likely to be of employment benefit.

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More universities roll out digital text trials

By Lisa Abrams - Cambridge, MA - on August 16, 2009

Several universities have rolled out new programs volunteering students in some cases for their e-text experiment. Students are supplied the reader (Sony or Amazon Kindle), which gets one of the hurdles out of the way. Will cash-strapped students pay for another device that doesn’t do anything be let them read books that they can read on their laptop or perhaps even smart phone?

That said, students also griped about the cost of the e-book, which in several cases was not significantly lower than the hard copy. The thinking seemed to be that since the marginal cost of giving access to one more person is practically zero, why do these cost so much? Also there may be some residual effect from being able to get so much for free on the web that digital copies of books are seen as not worth as much as a book that you keep. It also doesn’t help that Amazon discounts consumer books for its Kindle so that titles that could be 24.99 in a store go for $9.99. So there is resistance to pricing.

There is also resistance to the fact that students can’t use the content any way they want to. They want to be able to print and share books and be able to sell them back after the course ends; most of these things are not permitted with an e-book.

Yet, for all the griping it is likely that digital texts are here to stay. What needs to be figured out are the pricing models, the content control issues and the technological media issues. Not insignificant. But it does appear that we are at the middle of the beginning of the trend toward digital books in the classroom.

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Northwest Missouri State and McGraw-Hill Education conduct e-text experiment

By Lisa Abrams - Cambridge, MA - on August 16, 2009

Campus Technology reported recently an e-textbook trial being conducted by Northwest Missouri State and McGraw-Hill Education. THe first phase ended in December 2008 and involved 4 classes and 200 students. The next phase involves 10 departments and 500 students. If all goes well, the university expects to replace printed materials with digital as early as Fall 2009.

Students use a software called VitalSource Bookshelf to read, highlight, share notes and study the content. Students whose classes are not part of the trial but who are using a McGraw printed text, can get the digital access code from the company to gain access to the digital form.

It’s admirable that a school with as many as 7000 students is pushing into the digital foray. Unanswered questions are the same as with any of these experiments.

What is the revenue model? What happens to McGraw Hill’s revenue stream? What is the cost to students?

Is there a secondhand market for textbooks?

Can the textbooks be read on a mobile device? If they can be read, are the other functions of the software available on a smaller format?

All of these experiments are encouraging since the end of the hard copy textbook is well within sight. Still without the convergence of digital, mobile and functionality important to students, the change will be stalled.

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More blog activity

By Harry Henry - Oceanside, California - on August 13, 2009

As we have increased our blogging activities, we decided to do a little shuffling–this post is to help you navigate the new neighborhood. We now have four blogs:

1. Thinking Out Loud: posts from Anthea Stratigos, Outsell’s CEO, about the information industry with an emphasis on marketing,
2. Agile Publishing: posts from Marc Strohlein, Outsell’s Chief Agility Officer, covering a variety of topics surrounding the use of agile approaches to information product creation,
3. Lex Disruptus: posts from David Curle, Outsell’s Director and Lead Analyst, about disruption in the legal information market,
4. And of course, this Education: posts from our analysts that cover the education market.

We hope you will enjoy any and all of these and that they help you “get inside our heads” as we ruminate about the trials and triumphs of the information industry.

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Cash for clunkers – wish there were an edu model

By Lisa Abrams - Cambridge, MA - on August 4, 2009

Lots of press has been given to the federal cash for clunkers program where people trade in their inefficient vehicles for newer, probably greener, models. And there has been a resultant uptick in Detroit’s car industry revenues.

It would be wonderful if there could be a similar program for Detroit’s public schools. Detroit’s Public School may become first in the nation to declare bankruptcy. Even with monumental cuts, the district started off the fiscal year in July with a $259 million deficit. Detroit’s public school’s emergency financial manager, Robert Bobb, is no stranger to financial budget disaster’s; he’s managed the turnaround of Washington, DC and Oakland, CA. He says that Detroit’s problems are “monumental but not insurmountable”. His forensic accountants have found fraud including paychecks going to ghost employees; an FBI probe led to charges of two employees who embezzled about $400,000 in four years.

Hoping for a fresh start following a bankruptcy is a sunny outlook and may turnaround the Detroit schools – and it is fair to say that it is easier to turn around a corporation than a public enterprise such as a school district. Still, it would be nice if there were some innovative thinking around how to boost the public schools that was in evidence in thinking about how to help the Detroit car makers.

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Who's thinking out loud?

Archive for August, 2009

New York Times Knowledge Network — Newspapers Meet Distance Learning

California Lists State-Approved Digital Textbooks

This years 6 million Chinese college graduates face a distressing job market

More universities roll out digital text trials

Northwest Missouri State and McGraw-Hill Education conduct e-text experiment

More blog activity

Cash for clunkers – wish there were an edu model

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