INSI G H TS
DISTANCE LEARNING Yoav Yosef Yair
Print vs. Digital Books in Distance Education THIS IS MY FIRST COLUMN for ACM Inroads, so first allow me some words of introduction. My education is in atmospheric and space physics (Tel-Aviv University is my Alma Mater), and I lead active research in thunderstorms, lightning and electrical phenomena on Earth and other planets. In the early 2000s, I was the project manager for the first Israeli astronaut mission on the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia (2003), and have since participated in other space missions on satellites and the International Space Station. Since early in my academic career, I have had a strong interest in educational technology. So while doing things in physics, I worked part-time at the Center for Educational Technology in Tel-Aviv for more than a decade, initially as an instructional designer and later as content expert for projects in virtual reality, 3D-simulations and online encyclopedias and learning environments for the K-12 level. At the Open University of Israel, the largest public higher education institute in the country where I have worked since 1991, I headed the Center for Technology in Distance Education and was up until recently the Dean of Development and Learning Technologies. Although not a “native” of the present digital era, I believe that being an early-adopter of technologies ensured my “immigration” was easier even if not comfortable or complete. Still, as I watch my students with their latest tablet or smartphone in hand being distracted and multitasked, I can’t help but feel that being an older immigrant has its unique advan-
tages, because as Emerson wrote “The years teach much that days never know [3].” Universities that offer distance education have a proven success in reaching huge numbers of students. While the specific teaching model may vary by country, it is essentially rooted in shipping learning materials, most often printed books, to their remote students. Naturally, with the advent of digitization, “shipping” is not limited anymore to physical objects, but refers to any mode of distribution of learning materials such as CD/DVD, encrypted download sites, web-based FTP services, etc. At the Open University of Israel we distribute printed materials by mail and digital versions through the course website in parallel (in the future, the student will be able to choose which mode is preferable, and waive the other). Some distance teaching universities are publishers in their own right, producing and owning their textbooks, while others rely on titles from academic publishers. The questions I am most interested in currently follow in the wake of the digitization tsunami sweeping across the publishing world: first, how will digital transformations of textbooks reflect on the students in distance education, and, second, have digital textbooks and university-level e-books taken over the traditional printed book? Clearly, universities offering distance education face both a challenge and an opportunity. On the one hand, converting from print textbooks to e-formats may save millions in printing, shipping and handling
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costs—no inventory or warehouse to store are needed; lighter packages in the mail, so less expensive. On the other hand, there are matters of copyright, ownership and usage that need to be contracted—for example, is the e-book a perpetual property of the student? Or is it just on a prolonged e-loan? For distance universities that are not publishers, the question of e-books is even more urgent, since the temptation of lower pricing models may be used by administration to force the abandonment of print books altogether. As many of us realize, while the new editions of canonical introductory-level textbooks may offer only small updates and changes compared to previous ones that we have been using for several years, adopting the latest version in a university course incurs huge costs for students. This fact alone makes projects like Rice University’s OpenStax College [8] especially appealing—by offering peer-reviewed high quality books and supplementary materials, they enable professors to use the offered free digital content as a platform for teaching, thus saving their students a lot of money (without compromising on academic level). The books are hosted on Rice’s Connexions OCW infrastructure [2], thus making the obvious move from open on-line learning materials to complete courses. FlatWorld Knowledge [5], a US company that offers more than a hundred titles in all major disciplines, initiated a similar model; it boasts a user list of more than 2500 higher education institutions. Their model enables faculty to adopt an e-text book and tailor it to their specific curriculum, while contributing lecture notes, exercises and learning objects of their own. No doubt that these models threaten traditional publishers, and indeed Pearson offers its customers Equella [4]—a digital repository of supplementary digital materials hosted in the Cloud, giving added value to those that adopt their course books. However, while this battle rages on, an altogether different aspect may play a crucial role in shaping the future of universitylevel textbooks for distance learners. I am talking about the very nature of reading and learning from digital textbooks. Already, fears of changes in reading styles and in the level of comprehension are voiced.
INSI G HTS
Books like Nick Carr’s “The Shallows” claim that we (and our students) nowadays read digital texts quickly and superficially, and thus retain only a fraction of what we used to when reading from print. Research on reading from digital texts [1,2] is giving clear evidence as to the effect of the medium on the quality of understanding and retention of the material, with obvious advantages for reading print. In addition, distractions abound and students can find it hard to concentrate on reading text when other applications (email, social network tools) are active on their device. A recent survey in the US showed that 80% of university students preferred buying the printed book, and not using the e-book [9]. Moreover, as we can suspect, most professors still adhere to the old good-and-tested print format. So, is the digital revolution slowing down when it comes to distance education? Caution is clearly a good thing, especially when it comes to education. But the advantages of digital texts over print are obvious: portability, searchability, ease of retrieval and use, rich sharing options, interconnectivity, updatedness. Academic journals have long migrated to the digital space. University libraries, once the hub of furtive searches in old, dusty volumes stacked on enormously packed shelves (a sentimental memory of the times when we were students) are now offering digital loan services and the number of physical visits by students (and faculty) gradually and persistently diminish. Updating a digital version of a textbook and relating it to contemporary events and new research is also an asset. As MOOCs are continuously evolving, I suspect that they will need to rely on reputable, well-established textbooks, and only digital ones can be easily integrated into the MOOC model. The need for an answer to the question of which format of e-book would best fit the evolving MOOC models is becoming urgent, especially in light of the huge attrition rates in such courses (>90%) that may be partly attributed to this deficiency (see, for example, [7]). In my mind, a good textbook in any course functions as a lighthouse whose guiding beacon helps the students navigate through the unknown sea ahead of them (forgive my tendency for poetic metaphors…); this would be especially so for MOOCs where the video lectures alone may
not be sufficient to support the varied learning styles of their students. One solution may be for MOOCs to offer e-books derived from existing titles, with print-on-demand options for those students who wish to hold an “old fashioned” book. Alternatively, tailor-made digital study guides can be developed by the course-team, with the videos embedded inside the text and learning instructions. The next phase of MOOCs will likely incorporate e-books, thus converging on the traditional distance-education model. Will books be with us in the future? I am certain that they will, in many exciting and versatile formats. And really, it should not matter much if it is paper or screen, as long as they are erudite, interesting and worthy of the effort we invest in reading and learning from them. This is a transition period we live in and clearly, the existing models in publishing and authoring are being revised. On the horizon are innovative, hybrid models for using books in distance education that incorporate the advantages of digital formats into printed books and vice-versa. This will enable our students to enjoy the wisdom stored in their pages in any way they choose. Ir References [1] Ackerman, R. and Lauterman, Z. “Taking reading comprehension exams on screen or on paper? A metacognitive analysis of learning texts under time pressure.”Computers in human behavior, 28, 5 (2012): 1816-1828. [2] Connexions. http://cnx.org/. Accessed 2013 November 5. [3] Emerson, R. W., 1844: Essays: Second series. [4] Equella. http://www.equella.com/. Accessed 2013 November 5. [5] Flat World Knowledge. http://catalog.flatworldknowledge. com/. Accessed 2013 November 5. [6] Mangen et al., “Reading linear texts on paper versus computer screen:Effects on reading comprehension.”Int.Jour. Edu. Res., 58 (2013): 61-68. [7] MOOCs’ attrition rates. Kolowich, S. Chronicle of Higher Education, April 2th, 2013. http://chronicle.com/blogs/ wiredcampus/coursera-takes-a-nuanced-view-of-moocdropout-rates/43341. Accessed 2014 January 6. [8] OpenStax College. http://openstaxcollege.org/. Accessed 2013 November 6. [9] Printed Book Selection. http://www.digitalbookworld. com/2013/students-professors-still-not-yet-ready-fordigital-textbooks/?et_mid=622880&rid=188486276. Accessed 2014 January 6. Yoav Yosef Yair Life and Natural Sciences The Open University of Israel 1 University Road Ra’anana, 43107, Israel.
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DOI: 10.1145/2568195.2568204 Copyright held by author.
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