I got a Kindle Fire for Christmas. So did one of my oldest friends, who slogged through many years in the American education system with me. We both love our new Kindles, but for very different reasons. I love that I can either read a book, watch a movie, or do both while soaking in a hot bubble bath, while she loves the portability that allows her to read different books to her daughter no matter where they are. We agree on one major benefit: It would have been an amazing tool to have when we were in college. One of the first things she said to me about the Kindle was, “I wish I had this in college. I wouldn’t have had to carry all those books around!”
Her sentiment was echoed by one of my own students when I ran into him on campus last week. His enthusiasm was boundless and he said, “I’m getting all my textbooks on the Fire! It makes it so much easier to have them with me all the time.” This is especially important to this student, because he uses a wheelchair. Every day he struggles to get around school while carrying all the things he needs, and his chair is often loaded down with bulky backpacks, making it difficult to maneuver. The advent of e-Textbooks and e-Readers means that his burden is considerably lightened.
The convenience and portability of e-Textbooks, whether on laptops, tablets, or e-Readers, appeals to college students no matter what college they attend, including online colleges. This is especially true when one small, portable device with internet capability gives online students access to their online course Learning Management Systems (LMS) as well as their textbooks, allowing them to move between their assigned readings and online work. Also, as the technology continues to develop, e-texts will gain more interactive elements that can make it possible for students to click from a textbook page to video footage, 3-D modeling, quizzes, and other tools for learning.
Not all textbooks are available in those formats yet—but that’s changing rapidly. This week, Reuters reported that the number of Americans with e-Readers and iPads doubled over the holiday season, rising to 29% of those surveyed by the Pew Research Center. Last week, Apple’s new e-textbook platform was the big news for e-Readers, and all the hype created a sales avalanche. According to the most recent figures, Apple sold more than 350,000 iBooks textbooks the first three days they were on the market. These aren’t just college textbooks, either, as Apple sold a substantial number of high school e-textbooks. Clearly, the popularity of e-textbooks is spilling over into all levels of education.
In fact, e-Textbooks have become such an important trend that five universities across the country have joined together to test the practicality of bulk purchasing. Cornell University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the universities of Minnesota, Virginia, and Wisconsin entered into a joint contract with McGraw-Hill to purchase e-Textbooks in large numbers directly from the publisher. The bulk purchase lowers the cost, and then the universities will make them available for a flat technology fee to their students. At an individual program at Indiana University, student textbook costs decreased on average by $25.00 per book. If a student has to buy 5 books a term, that shaves $125 off their overall textbook costs. And with the high cost of college these days, every little bit helps.
There are critics of the new e-textbooks, though. E-Textbooks are different from open texts, which are available on the internet for free, such as those on the Flatworld free online textbook site. Many textbook publishers are offering digital versions of their titles, but students must purchase or rent them. And because the creation of digital versions is still in its infancy, some people argue that the quality does not justify the cost. For example, Economics professor and writer for Bloomberg News Bryon Brown argues that most students are still opting for used paper textbooks or textbook rental instead of online versions because “current e-texts are also a markedly inferior product. They are static PDF knockoffs of vertically oriented print pages. That means they don’t display well on most computer screens, and they resist printing an easy-to-read copy by inexplicably downsizing the fonts for home printing.”
But the potential benefits of e-Textbooks, and the fact that they are still in development, means that students who have not already embraced them will probably at some point have to work with them. An added attraction is the fact that they may be the more environmentally sustainable option, as the need to reprint updated new editions of textbooks every few years will only be a matter of formatting and programming changes that can be downloaded. It seems likely that in just a few years, there will digital versions of all textbooks, allowing students to really study anywhere.
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