Publisher Macmillan has recently announced the launch of a new kind of textbook, which, the New York Times reports, will give lecturers the ability to:
“reorganize or delete chapters; upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs; and perhaps most notably, rewrite or delete individual paragraphs, equations or illustrations.”
Textbooks are enormously expensive, creating a huge secondary market amongst cost-concious students. However, because they are updated and changed frequently, students are repeatedly forced to buy new.
Good for textbook publishers but bad for students and the environment.
Moreover, changes in technology are leading to more collaborative and open approaches to teaching – something your average printed textbook is not particularly well suited to.
Macmillan’s Dynamic Books are delivered online and allow both instructors and students to interact with the course materials – and each other.
“With DynamicBooks online textbooks, you can highlight facts, take notes, search for text, and have online conversations with classmates or instructors — all from within your nteractive dynamic textbook. Learning comes alive with content customized by your instructor, giving you everything you need to master material and succeed in class.”
Based on a simple subscription model, students pay for access to the online textbook for the duration of their course and can then either cancel their subscription when they’re done or buy access for a further two years.
The average price to the student should be in the region of $50 – around a third of the usual cost. Dynamic Books can even be accessed via an iPhone (and presumably through the iPad?).
So while they might not be a panacea (the small number of available titles being the first issue) projects like Dynamic Books certainly go a long way towards addressing some of the key problems.
What other kinds of printed content would this model suit?
Site: dynamicbooks.com
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