Migrating from Hardcopy Course Materials to Digitally-Delivered Course MaterialsHOW IT MIGHT PLAY OUT

Why a Migration Away from Hardcopy Materials Is Underway Both students and instructors believe (correctly!) that

hardcopy texts have simply become too expensive Bookstore prices for textbooks in business and economics have

risen steadily from the $20-$25 range in 1975 to the $220- $250 range in 2014

Why has this happened?

There are multiple reasons

Expectations about What a Textbook Should Look Like and Contain Have Changed Drastically

In the Old Days Simple cover design

All black and wide interiors

No photos

Simple graphics

Short chapter-end section containing discussion questions/problems

Today Snappy 4-color cover designs

Appealing 4-color interiors

Lots of color photos; multi-color graphics

Fancy chapter intros, complete with wise quotes and chapter learning objectives

Margin notes throughout chapters to indicate coverage of particular LOs

Margin notes highlighting concepts/principles/key points

Learning assurance exercises covering all Los

Elaborate online software for completing exercises/measuring learning (separately priced from textbook

Instructor-related Reasons Instructors expect (demand?) lots of supplements that facilitate their use

of the text A snappy set of PowerPoints

Detailed lecture notes for each chapter

Accompanying videos for each chapter that can be shown in class

Learning assurance exercises for each chapter that can be completed online and then automatically-graded and recorded

Automatically-graded and recorded chapter-end quizzes

Big test banks for creating multi-chapters exams (with both multiple-choice questions and essay/short-answer questions (with answers!!!) ; all questions must be tagged with course learning objectives, question difficulty, and other typologies

A full-blown Instructor’s Guide that includes advice on how to teach the course, recommended course learning objectives, sample daily course schedules (for terms of varying lengths -- weeks and number of class meetings)

Extensive teaching notes for cases

Videos to accompany a sizable number of cases

Publisher-Bookstore Reasons Rising publisher costs to produce/print/distribute textbooks have made

charging higher prices mandatory

Bookstores have increased their markups over publisher cost from a once-standard 25% to 30-40%---revenue-needy university administrators now view their on-campus bookstore as a major profit center

Bookstores are big into buying and reselling used textbooks—they make more profit from their used book business than from selling new texts Students have welcomed the opportunity to buy lower-priced used books

Most all students now sell their textbooks at the end of the term (in past decades ~33% of students kept their textbooks, especially in their major areas of study)

The shift to greater use of used texts has eroded sales of new textbooks, especially in the 2nd and 3rd year of each edition

Eroding sales per edition of each text have driven publishers to raise the prices of new textbooks even faster (to make up for the shrinking revenues per edition)

Publishers Are Trapped in a Death Spiral

Rising costs to produce, print, and distribute a hardcopy text, coupled with eroding unit sales per new edition of a textbook, have made publishers increasingly reliant on raising the prices of most all their textbooks and accompanying supplements ANNUALLY Even then, however, publisher profitability is mediocre at best—some

publishers are losing money, some are barely breaking even, a few are earning paltry profits

They are all addicted to charging higher prices to try to grow their bottom lines, but rising prices serve to further erode sales of new texts

We have reached a juncture where further increases in the prices of new texts are really beginning to cut into publishers’ sales of new texts and make matters worse rather than temporarily better

What’s Happening Today in the Marketplace for New Texts Many students have begun sharing the use of whatever textbook is required—

shared texts are increasingly likely to be used or rented In growing numbers, students are borrowing a text from a friend and using their own

printers or paying 5¢ or less per page to copy whatever portion of the text they feel they need to have

Renting texts has rapidly grown in popularity!!!! Takes market share away from used book business in bookstores

Growing numbers of instructors are telling the members of their class at the first class meeting that a text is recommended but not required/expected (which, of course, means students can safely forget about heading to the bookstore after class)

Instead of having class members learn from a text, instructors are posting on their course websites a copy of their lecture notes and/or the PowerPoints from their favorite text for students to use in gaining the knowledge that they will be tested on

Should this be worrisome? Will it “dumb-down” student understanding/command of the subject matter?

What’s Happening Today in the Marketplace for Course Materials Other than Texts The migration from hard copy to digital is virtually complete !!

Courseware for student use is made available only online (quizzes, problem sets, Learning Assurance exercises, etc. )

All Instructor Support materials are delivered to instructors digitally

Instructor Guides and case teaching notes

Test banks

PowerPoints

Videos

There’s been no significant resistance from students or instructors—it’s

accepted as the new way such things are being done

So Where Are Things Likely to Head from Here? How Do Publishers Break Out of the Death Spiral? Long-term the solution for publishers is to begin aggressively

marketing e-texts and incent instructors and students (via attractively lower prices) to use e-texts instead of hard copy texts E-texts are far cheaper to produce and to distribute

It’s quick and easy to create chapter pages for an e-text that look identical to those of a hardcopy text—shortens production process from 6 months to 2 months

Once PDF pages for e-text are ready, no printing costs

No inventory costs, no distribution/shipping costs for e-texts

No used texts to compete against

Hence digitally-delivered e-texts can be sold in greater quantities and at much lower prices—and with profit margins that enable decent profitability

What Are the Stumbling Blocks to Gaining Greater Market Acceptance of Digitally-Delivered Text Books?

Instructor resistance to adopting digitally-delivered e-books and promoting their use to students Using digitally delivered support materials (chapter-end

quizzes, problem sets, Learning Assurance Exercises, etc.) does not seem to be a problem

Student resistance (real and perceived) to using an e-Book (most surveys show they want/prefer a hard copy text) But there is no resistance to using all other types of

digital/online course materials (most all students either have laptops/tablets or ready-access to computer labs)

Do many students know there is a big price difference between hardcopy texts and e-texts?

So how are we going to complete the migration? What needs to happen?

YOUR THOUGHTS?

Q&A / DISCUSSION