Students:

• Roughly half of those surveyed hold full- or part-time jobs;
• 30 percent of students have significant external responsibilities, such as paying for school, paying off other debts, raising families, etc.;
• 71 percent of students who are employed full-time and 77 percent of students who are employed part-time prefer more technology-based tools in the classroom;
• 86 percent of students say that, in the last year, their average level of engagement has increased with their increased use of digital tools, and 67 percent prefer courses that integrate technology;
• The use of technology has not had a noticeable effect on external distractions most frequently cited, such as employment, personal issues, or course-related distractions such as opinions about irrelevance of material; and
• Use of digital resources in and out of class has helped students improve in such areas as being prepared for class and general aversion to technology.

I increasingly fear that the open educational resources movement is being used as a way of perpetuating inequalities in education while purporting to be democratic. Some components of OERs also smack of hypocrisy, elitism and cultural imperialism (the bad), as well as failure to apply best practices in teaching and learning (the ugly). Despite my support for the idea of sharing in education (the good), these concerns have been gnawing away at me for some time, so after 42 years of working in open learning, I feel it’s time to provide a critique of the open educational resources ‘movement’.

This is prompted by several recent developments, such as the following publications and events:

Walsh, T. (2011) Unlocking the Gates: How and Why Leading Universities Are Opening Up Access to Their Courses Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press

For a brief review of this book and interview with the author, see: Kolowich, S. (2011) Online courseware’s existential moment Inside Higher Education, February 3 (thanks to Clayton Wright for directing me to this).

For an interview with the author, see: Unlocking the gates: interview with the author, Taylor Gates, in Higher Education Management Group blog

EDUCAUSE (2010) Open Educause Review, Vol. 45, No. 4 (special edition of open educational resources).

Openness as a value

No, I’m not going to attack motherhood. I agree 100% with David Wiley when he says in his editorial in Educause Review:

‘those educators who share the most thoroughly of themselves with the greatest proportion of their students are the ones we deem successful…..Education is sharing. Education is about being open.’

However, this is a definition of ‘open learning’, and I will argue that ‘open learning’ is much broader and actually different from ‘open content’ or ‘open resources.’

For me, in an ideal world, education would be open to all, and would be free for everyone. However, we don’t expect teachers or university lecturers to work for nothing, so we immediately have a tension between the ideal and the reality of public education. There are costs in the system, and they have to paid for, one way or another.

Furthermore, even if we accept the somewhat questionable notion that content is or will be free in a digital world, I will argue that open content on its own will not do much for open learning, because education is more than about delivering content, and it is in the ‘more’ where the real costs lie.

Lastly, the word ‘hypocrisy’ keeps coming to mind when I hear wealthy institutions pounding their chests for ‘giving away’ content that either the public through taxes or students through fees have already paid for, while their fees are such that they exclude all but the rich from their own programs and the accreditation that open content does not provide.

If you want to hear the justification for these arguments, I’m afraid you are going to have to read a long blog post (but at least its open).

What do we mean by ‘content’?

We need to be clear about what we mean by content.

Content has many meanings. In digital terms we often describe content by its format: text, audio, video, or blogs, podcasts and YouTube. However, in educational terms, content is about facts, principles, ideas, beliefs, arguments, and descriptions or manifestations of processes, feelings and emotions. Academic content is often considered to be of a second order, one or more levels above direct experience: generalization, abstractions, rules and principles.

The public seems to swing wildly between believing that content is king and that content is now obsolete.  The ‘content is king’ school argues for set curricula, prioritizing content into what is important and what is not important, standardized testing of recall or reproduction of content. The ‘content is obsolete’ school argues that it’s all about competencies, skills, and doing. In fact we need both content, and the development of competencies and skills, which usually means applying content (as defined educationally above) to the real world, putting it into context and evaluating its appropriateness within a given context.

So we do need content in education. However, content is not static, nor a commodity like coal. Modern research into learning shows that content is best learned within context (situated learning), when the learner is active, and that above all, when the learner can actively construct knowledge by developing meaning and ‘layered’ understanding. In other words, content is not effectively learned if it is thought of as shovelling coal into a truck. Learning is a dynamic process that requires questioning, adjustment of prior learning to incorporate new ideas, testing of understanding, and feedback. These ‘transactional’ processes require a combination of personal reflection, feedback from an expert (i.e. the teacher or instructor) and even more importantly, feedback from and interaction with friends, family and fellow learners. The weakness with open content is that by its nature, at its purest it is stripped of these developmental, contextual and ‘environmental’ components that are essential for effective learning. In other words, it is just like coal, sitting there waiting to be loaded.

Now don’t misunderstand me. Coal is a very valuable product. But it has to be mined, stored, shipped and processed. We are not paying enough attention in the discourse around open content to these contextual elements that turn it from a raw material into a useful output.

The good

Surprisingly, I’m having most difficulty with this part of the discussion. Is it good to share content? Yes, of course, but don’t confuse it with learning.  Open content is nothing more than a glorified digital public library, without the fines for being overdue. A library does not a degree make.

Ah, but what about getting access to the best and most up-to-date thinking on a subject, such as through MIT’s OpenCourseware project? Well, at best it does no harm, but see below my criticisms under both the ‘Bad’ and the ‘Ugly’ headlines. Yes, I can certainly see the value if I was an instructor contemplating a new course or program, but I would be surprised if I would need to go to OpenCourseware to determine the curriculum. This will be influenced by a very wide range of factors, such as more recent research in publications, attendance at professional conferences, and my own research and that of close colleagues. The danger is that I would just import the material without fully understanding why it was originally chosen, what its limitations are, and then I would be in difficulties fielding questions from students. However, as a resource for helping me define what I want to teach, yes, open content is definitely helpful.

However, for me, the two main reasons for using open content are as follows

• by students, in a learner-centered teaching approach that focuses on students accessing content on the Internet (and in real life) as part of developing knowledge, skills and competencies defined by the instructor, or (for advanced learners) in conjunction with learners themselves. However, this would not be restricted to officially approved open educational resources, but to everything on the Internet, because one of the core skills I would want to teach is how to assess and evaluate different sources of information.
• by a consortium of instructors or institutions creating common learning materials within a broader program context, that can be shared both within and outside the consortium. However, not only would the content be available, but also the underlying instructional principles, learning outcomes, learner assessment strategies, what learner support is needed, learner activities, and program evaluation techniques, so that other instructors or learners can adapt to their own context. This approach is being taken by
  • the Carnegie Mellon Open Learning Initiative
  • to some extent by the UK Open University’s OpenLearn project
  • the Virtual University of Small States of the Commonwealth
  • OER Africa

OER from University of Cape Town in OER Africa repository

Note however the more context that is supplied, the more restricted is the number of possible applications of the content outside the original group that created it. BCCampus requires institutions who use BCCampus course development funding to make that material available for use by any institution within the province, through its SOL•R repository, but it is at best only partly open source, as the government retains copyright of the material (although in practice, it is quite easy to access outside the province as well.)

There are probably other contexts where open content can be both useful and effective, but these need to be defined, tested and evaluated.

A major argument of course for open content is that this will be of enormous help in developing countries who lack qualified instructors. For my response to this, see ‘The bad’ below.

The bad

It’s easiest here to start with actual examples.

Health Sciences Online and GlobalUni. Health Sciences Online (HSO) is a non-profit online health information resource that launched in December 2008. The website aims to provide quality educational resources to health care providers in training and practice, especially in developing countries, thus bridging the digital divide (the global imbalance in access to information technology). The four pillars of HSO are being comprehensive, authoritative, ad-free and free. The next step for HSO is to become an online health sciences learning centre, providing credentials and distance education degrees to help satisfy the great need for more and better-prepared health care professionals worldwide.

It plans to do this through the GlobalUni. GlobalUni claims (like the University of the People) to be the world’s first free university. Founding collaborators and funders include the U.S. CDC, NATO’s Science for Peace initiative, World Bank, WHO, and the World Medical Association. The full health sciences launch in 2011 will include the world’s first free master’s degrees, multiple medical residency training programs and 30 other medicine, public health, nursing, pharmacy, and dentistry courses.

All this sounds fine, until you look closer. The materials available to date are terrible, mainly Powerpoint slides, lecture notes, and pdf files. No principles of distance learning design have been applied. Student assessment is a joke, relying mainly on peer assessment and multiple choice, self-assessed questions. Unless the whole thing is radically changed, the result will be appallingly bad training for people in developing countries. It is this kind of initiative that gives not just open educational resources, but all online learning, such a bad name. It is bad, because it lacks all the essential components of a successful learning context, especially for learners in developing countries. They don’t deserve third rate teaching such as this.

Health Sciences Online materials

Similarly the claim that MIT’s OpenCourseware will radically change learning in Africa and other developing countries is another example of the arrogance of assuming you can just take content from one country and dump it into another, like giving away free coal. Content needs not only to be contextualized but also adapted for independent or distance learning. If MIT really wants to improve learning in Africa, it should redevelop the materials with African partners, build in learning activities, ensure that the learners have well trained instructors, locally or from MIT, to support the teaching, ensure a full learning context is provided, and work with African partners on the ground. It should then give those that graduate an MIT degree. Perhaps then I won’t get my regular e-mails from poor students in developing countries asking me how to get into MIT.

The ugly

What makes a lot of open content ugly is the lack of design or adaptation to make it suitable for independent or distance study or for third party use. It is as if 40 years of research on effective practice in distance learning has all been for nothing. The problem of course is cost: it takes time and money to do this. However, if instructors know from the start that whatever they are developing will be used as open content, and they work with an instructional designer to ensure it is suitable for secondary use, then the costs can be kept reasonably low. But this means developing a comprehensive strategy for open content that includes thinking of the contexts in which it would be used, and how to make it valuable within such contexts, which few institutions have done.

A lecture from MIT's OpenCourseware

Conclusions

The main barrier to education is not lack of cheap content but lack of access to programs leading to credentials, either because such programs are too expensive, or because there are not enough qualified teachers, or both. Making content free is not a waste of time (if it is properly designed for secondary use), but it is still a drop in the bucket. Initiatives such as Health Sciences Online suck up a lot of sponsor funding that could be better used by providing proper educational provision within a developing country. If MIT wants to put its material online to show off the academic quality of its instructors, and their great lecture style (cough, cough) then fine, but don’t pretend you’re saving the world.

Open educational resources do have an important role to play in online education, but they need to be properly designed, and developed within a broader learning context that includes the critical activities needed to support learning, such as opportunities for student-instructor and peer interaction, and within a culture of sharing, such as consortia of equal partners and other frameworks that provide a context that encourages and supports sharing. In other words, OERs need skill and hard work to make them useful, and selling them as a panacea for education does more harm than good.

See also:

New UNESCO chair in open educational resources

e-learning outlook for 2011

OERs for agriculture in Africa

Open content and the costs of online learning

EURODL call for articles: Fostering Creativity – The Use of Open Educational Resources

Innovative e-learning in the Vancouver area

Open educational resources in Chinese and English

UK Open University's OpenLearn

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Improving access to scholarly journals is not a typical student rallying cry, but a growing organization thinks it should be.

The Right to Research Coalition, which says it represents student groups comprising 5.5 million members in the United States and several other countries, unveiled a Web site and blog in October to educate and connect students about open-access publishing, and increase pressure on publishers and scholars to make their work freely available online.

Unlike rising textbook costs—a point of contention on college campuses—journal subscription costs often go unnoticed by students, say coalition leaders. They hope the Web site will show the impact that open-access publishing could have on students’ individual research and on scholarship around the globe, especially as cash-strapped academic libraries cut expensive journal subscriptions.

“The most important step is just to learn about these issues,” says Nick Shockey, the coalition’s director. “We really want to start reaching individual students.”

The Washington-based group—run via the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition—was founded in June 2009 after some student organizations drafted the Student Statement on the Right to Research. Though scholars and librarians have advocated for open-access publishing for a long time, Mr. Shockey says students have only recently added their voices to the discussion.

Support among student organizations has been growing. Since 2009, the coalition has attracted 28 member organizations, including the American Medical Student Association, the United States Student Association, and the National Association of Graduate-Professional Students. “We have a great opportunity to act on the national and state level,” Mr. Shockey says. “It’s really an area where students can have an impact.”

The coalition, which includes member groups from Canada, India, and Malta, is looking to expand its efforts overseas. Open-access publishing could be especially valuable to students in countries where subscription and shipment costs restrict access to new research. “With the Internet, the marginal cost to distribute this information is virtually zero now,” Mr. Shockey says. “Our goal is to disseminate this knowledge as widely as possible.”

Critics of open-access publishing argue that it eases the way for publishing—and giving credence to—lower-quality journals that do not meet traditional peer-review standards. .

On the other hand, Dan Cohen, director of the Center for History and New Media, at George Mason University, and a supporter of open-access publishing, says restricting online access to articles may limit scholarly engagement with published work. “The problem with gated access is that you can’t link to articles,” he says. “The Web rewards openness.”

Mr. Cohen, who delivered the closing speech at yesterday’s Coalition for Networked Information meeting in Arlington, Va., says that while the Web can be a useful distribution tool for electronic copies of print journals, he also sees it as a powerful platform for a new generation of scholarly collaboration: “Is it enough to throw the final product up there on the Web? What I’m interested in is the connective tissue. What I would like to see is something collaborative.”

No instructors, no credits, no charge.

Use these self-guiding materials and activities to learn at your own pace!
Find a course you are interested in and click on "Join Class". If you want to keep track of your progress, sign in or create a new account. Otherwise click on "Peek in".

“Surprisingly the audience was unable to articulate many. Where are the innovative pedagogical models with OER generating deeper learning?”

Although not a new pedagogical model, I co-authored a paper about using PBL with OER (http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/886/1633). That’s not to say I’m the first or last word on OER and pedagogy, but I thought I’d mention it.

I found this idea of looking at the negative space in OER interesting. However, I think some of the things you didn’t see at Open Ed 2010 reflected not necessarily an “absence” but a statement of assumptions. That’s why no one in proceedings directly addressed faculty concerns. The Open Ed community has always dealt with faculty concerns and will continue to do so. But for most attendees those concerns have been addressed and they moved on.

You can see this also with some of the grumbling in the OpenEd blogosphere about attention paid to sustainability. It seems that for some, they’ve already answered the question in their own minds, in their own unique way, and now they are moving on. For sustainability to be part of the conference theme only annoyed them, rather than enlighten.

Some of the absences are related to long-standing problems that no one wants to spear-head. Library staff (at least in Higher Ed) are busy arguing over Open Access and how clear their next paycheck amidst declining funding.

Lastly, although the OpenEd conference tries to be representative of the OpenEd community, there are obvious logistical constraints. I couldn’t work out a plane trip to Barcelona, and I doubt your average student could as well.

Comment by Seth December 4, 2010 @ 12:48 pm

aaReply

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December 23, 2009

Great List of Hashtags For Educators

I just read a post on Karlana's World regarding #hashtags for education - it's a great article and I encourage everyone to read it who is an active educator on twitter. You'll learn how to use #hashtags and how to monitor the most useful #hashtags for edcucation and learning.

Below you find a great collection of #hashtags for Education Resources from her post:

#education	#educators	#teachers
#educational	#edublog	#lrnchat
#web20	#writechat	#classrooms
#teacher-librarian	#english-teacher	#teach-me
#great_teaching	#social-media	#multi-media
#learning	#learn	#elearning
#edtech	#liveclass20	#tech
#librarian	#edu	#teachertuesday
#mashable	#opened	#followfriday
#writegoal	#writers	#readers
#parenting	#moodle	#linkedin
#edchat	#classroom_rules	#i-teach
#new-media	#edreform	#slideshare
#classroom20	#OLTips	#pln
#educhat	#classroom_displays	#i_can_teach_you
#curriculum	#NCLB	#ning
#readwriteweb	#secondlife	#litchat
#books	#kindergarten	#higered
#biology	#health	#science
#pde	#math	#educause

Hashtags for Educational Conferences and Groups:

#catwest	#edweek09	#telaed09
#eatit09	#steconf	#opened09
#ncsl	#ccstech	#scbwi09
#tedtalks	#METC_CSD	#DEN
#edrnd	#ecs09	#LearnCentral

Via Karlana's World Blog: The #Hashtag Phenom :: Education

Posted at 04:03 AM in Education, Hashtags, Learning Resources, Teaching Resources & Tools, Twitter | Permalink

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Comments

Incredible. So very useful.... do you have any #edu lists?

I'll be back in the Bay Area after New Years. It would be great to meet up if you'll be around. I think I may need an online school for a project...but only if it is super cool ;D

Posted by: James Levy | December 23, 2009 at 09:57 AM

Hey James! :) Would love to meet up with you...just ping me after New Years! Can't wait to hear about your project...I'm certain it qualifies as supercool ;)

Cheers!

Posted by: Steli Efti | December 23, 2009 at 05:03 PM

Would love to see the #TIES2009 or #TIES09 tags on here too. Nice list!

Posted by: Chad | January 04, 2010 at 04:06 PM

Recently added: #teachinghied Teaching in Higher Education and all that is related. I created this as teaching in higher ed differs in some ways from k-12, both in delivery and as a profession.

Posted by: Terry Eberhart (Digin4ed) | July 30, 2010 at 05:32 AM

Superb ! Your blog is incredible. I am delighted with it. Thanks for sharing with me about the topic great collection of #hashtags for Education Resources, Thanks.

Posted by: Agenzia hostess torino | August 10, 2010 at 09:57 AM

I am student I want become a teacher . When I see this article I think its really helpful for me, for regarding may carrier...
***Thanks for this***
Unfortunately Ed, too many master's in education do not amount much for the teachers who earn them.

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I agree with your idea.You look like very talented.It is very happy to meet you. Thank you!

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One of the recurring themes in discussions about learning and education is that our post-secondary institutions are always to varying degrees on the verge of decline or even death. “The American Liberal Arts College died today after a prolonged illness. It was 226 years old.” (Washington, D.C., 2 July 1862) Quoted in the Winter 1971 edition of the History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4 p. 339.

In 1862, colleges in the US shifted from a skills orientation to broader curricula more concerned with social, economic, artistic and cultural issues than traditional approaches to job-ready training. It is important to remember that in the 19^th century it was not necessary to go (as Richard Hofstadter has put it) “…to college to become a doctor, lawyer, or even a teacher, much less a successful politician or businessman….Higher education was far more a luxury, much less a utility, than it is today.” (History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 4 p. 340)

The key word in what Hofstadter says is “utility.” Today, in our rush to promote the utility of education, we have reduced learning to a series of “courses” defined in larger measure by a structure that privileges speed over gradualism. Intuitively, learners know that new knowledge cannot be ‘acquired’ through the simple consumption of information. Intuitively, teachers know that tending to the emotional intelligence and needs of their students is perhaps more important than promoting rote learning. Nevertheless, schools try to squeeze learning into narrow disciplinary boundaries. So much of the structure of schools works against change including the fact that hiring of new teachers is still defined by discipline.   

When economies go into crisis, policymakers look to schools to solve the immediate challenges of unemployment and thereby raise expectations that schools will simply ‘produce’ the workers needed to solve the economic challenges. This is also why the for-profit sector in education has become so large because they play into the fears learners have that they will not be employed without specific skills needed for specific jobs. Policymakers amplify this even further by linking funding for public institutions to labour market data that is often years behind the economy itself.

In a globalized environment, it is increasingly difficult to predict economic direction and to manage complexity. Schools should be the places where we encourage complex thinking and doing, creating and collaborating. Instead, we rush to both prove the value of education and its outcomes. In the process, we have created straightjackets that limit invention, innovation and crucially the human imagination from flourishing and thereby actually decrease the opportunities for change and impact.

Our educational institutions are not dying, although some will disappear. The rhetoric around their value has become embedded in the fabric of Western democracies. The challenge precisely is to understand how that value can be transformed to reflect and enhance the ability of learners to generate, shape and contribute to knowledge-based societies.

Part Three will examine some of the central characteristics of the knowledge society and whether schools are in fact the pivot for the new digital era.

 

 

By Jeffrey R. Young

For years, major textbook publishers have offered professors the option of customizing textbooks—cutting unneeded chapters or adding original material—but the vast majority have stuck with the official versions. As e-textbooks gain popularity, however, publishers are betting that the "build-a-book" option, as it is sometimes called, will take off.

Next week McGraw-Hill Higher Education plans to announce its revamped custom-publishing system, called Create, with an emphasis on electronic versions of mix-and-match books. Macmillan Publishers this year announced a similar custom-textbook platform, called DynamicBooks. And upstart Flat World Knowledge touts the customization features of its textbooks, which it gives away online, charging only for printed copies and study guides. Other publishers have long offered custom-textbook services in print as well, though they have always represented just a sliver of sales.

"The reality is by and large they don’t customize," said Ed Stanford, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education, in an interview. "We think the more all this becomes digital, the more people will want to customze, and we want to be able to do that." McGraw-Hill officials say custom textbooks are now the fastest-growing area of the industry.

The new Create system lets professors go to a Web site and select sections of 4,000 McGraw-Hill books, thousands of articles and case studies, or any document that the professors themselves upload. A price tag displays how much the resulting book will cost. Professors can then choose whether to make the book available to students as a printed book or an e-book. In a demonstration for The Chronicle this week, a book on health care cost about $6 as an e-book but jumped to $16.96 as printed book.

The system does not include material from other textbook publishers. That is typical of custom systems but makes it impossible for professors to blend a chapter from one publisher with a competitor's. When Macmillan announced its system, in February, it said it hoped that other publishers would join in its effort. But Mr. Stanford said McGraw-Hill had no intention of doing that, and he doesn't expect other publishers to want to join his company's project, either.

He said that as much as his company would love to become the iTunes store of e-textbooks, he didn't expect that to happen. "If any of us could be the distributor," he added, "we would."

Major publishers did team up to create an online e-textbook distribution service called Coursesmart, but it does not include custom-publishing features or some of the latest evaluation materials that publishers offer on their own advanced online platforms.

That means the textbook landscape is becoming more and more fragmented—and more confusing for professors, who may have to learn different interfaces for the different textbooks they use.

One reason publishers may like customization is that it makes selling used copies difficult for students, unless they sell to those taking the course from the same professor.

"In many, many ways, it's up for grabs," said Mr. Stanford of the future of textbook distribution. "It’s just not at all clear where this is going to end up."

By Jeffrey R. Young

You've heard it before: Digital technologies blew up the music industry's moneymaking model, and the textbook business is next.

For years observers have predicted a coming wave of e-textbooks. But so far it just hasn't happened. One explanation for the delay is that while music fans were eager to try a new, more portable form of entertainment, students tend to be more conservative when choosing required materials for their studies. For a real disruption in the textbook market, students may have to be forced to change.

That's exactly what some companies and college leaders are now proposing. They're saying that e-textbooks should be required reading and that colleges should be the ones charging for them. It is the best way to control skyrocketing costs and may actually save the textbook industry from digital piracy, they claim. Major players like the McGraw-Hill Companies, Pearson, and John Wiley & Sons are getting involved.

To understand what a radical shift that would be, think about the current textbook model. Every professor expects students to have ready access to required texts, but technically, purchasing them is optional. So over the years students have improvised a range of ways to dodge buying a new copy—picking up a used textbook, borrowing a copy from the library, sharing with a roommate, renting one, downloading an illegal version, or simply going without. Publishers collect a fee only when students buy new books, giving the companies a financial impetus to crank out updated editions whether the content needs refreshing or not.

Here's the new plan: Colleges require students to pay a course-materials fee, which would be used to buy e-books for all of them (whatever text the professor recommends, just as in the old model).

Why electronic copies? Well, they're far cheaper to produce than printed texts, making a bulk purchase more feasible. By ordering books by the hundreds or thousands, colleges can negotiate a much better rate than students were able to get on their own, even for used books. And publishers could eliminate the used-book market and reduce incentives for students to illegally download copies as well.

Of course those who wanted to read the textbook on paper could print out the electronic version or pay an additional fee to buy an old-fashioned copy—a book.

Some for-profit colleges, including the University of Phoenix, already do something like this, but the practice has been rare on traditional campuses.

An Indiana company called Courseload hopes to make the model more widespread, by serving as a broker for colleges willing to impose the requirement on students. And it is not alone. The upstart publisher Flat World Knowledge recently made a bulk deal with Virginia State University's business school, and last month the company hired a new salesperson devoted entirely to "institutional sales" of its e-textbooks. And Daytona State College, in Florida, is negotiating with publishers to test a similar arrangement.

The real champions of the change are the college officials signing the deals. They say they felt compelled to act after seeing students drop out because they could not afford textbooks, whose average prices rose 186 percent between 1986 and 2005, and continue to shoot up each year far faster than inflation.

"When students pay more for new textbooks than tuition in a year, then something's wrong," says Rand S. Spiwak, executive vice president at Daytona State, who is leading the experiment there. "Our game plan is to bring the cost of textbooks down by 75 to 80 percent."

Apple reset the sales model for music, with its iPod players and market-leading online store, and the company is likely to try to enter the e-textbook market as well. But watch out, publishers, the change agents for textbooks may just be traditional colleges.

Moving the Tollbooth

Courseload, the e-book broker, started in 2000, when a co-founder, Mickey Levitan, a former Apple employee inspired by the company's transformative role in the music industry, devised the idea and teamed up with a professor at Indiana University at Bloomington to try it. But the company failed to find enough takers, and it all but shut down after a brief run.

Then last year an official at Indiana, Bradley C. Wheeler, called Mr. Levitan and talked him into trying again.

Mr. Wheeler is part of an effort at the university to bring down textbook costs, and he remembered a conversation he had had with Mr. Levitan about the idea 10 years ago. Back then, Mr. Wheeler was just a professor of business, but now he is also vice president for information technology and able to help try the approach, which he calls "moving the tollbooth" for textbooks.

"Universities are going to have to engage in saying, This is how we want e-textbook models to evolve that are advantageous to our students and our interests," he told me this month.

For three semesters Indiana has tested Courseload's system, which brings in content from various publishers and allows annotation and other features. So far the company has persuaded McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and John Wiley to participate. During those first experiments, students were not charged, and the university and Courseload paid for the e-textbooks. But Mr. Wheeler said that in the spring the university would try at least one pilot where students would pay a mandatory fee for the e-textbooks, which he expected to be about $35 per course in most cases.

Company and university officials gingerly approached two key groups early on: students and state legislators. Mr. Wheeler said student-government officials he talked to were supportive. Mr. Levitan said that the legislators generally opposed new fees, but sympathized with the project's goal of reducing overall costs to students and said they would not oppose it.

Mr. Levitan said the company was running tests at a handful of colleges, though he declined to name them.

The Virginia Pilot

Mirta Martin, dean of Virginia State's business school, speaks passionately about her reasons for taking part in the experiment with Flat World, which makes e-textbooks standard in eight courses this fall.

"For our accounting books senior year, there's nothing under $250," she told me this summer. "What the students were saying is, We don't have the money to purchase these books."

Last year Ms. Martin became so frustrated over hearing stories about students who were performing poorly because they could not afford textbooks that she pledged that no needy student would go without a book. At first she asked community leaders and others to donate to a fund to pay for the books of students who sought financial help. Last year that project bought $4,000 worth of books for students.

But Ms. Martin felt that the philanthropic model was not sustainable, so she began reaching out to publishers to see if the institution could get some sort of bulk rate that would allow it to pay for textbooks for all students.

In its standard model, Flat World offers free access to its textbooks while students are online. If students want to download a copy to their own computers, they must pay $24.95 for a PDF (a print edition costs about $30). But the publisher offered the Virginia State business school a bulk rate of $20 per student per course, and it will allow students at the school to download not only the digital copies but also the study guide, an audio version, or an iPad edition (a bundle that would typically cost about $100).

Tricky issues remain, though. What if a professor wrote the textbook assigned for his or her class? Is it ethical to force students to buy it, even at a reduced rate? And what if students feel they are better off on their own, where they have the option of sharing or borrowing a book at no cost?

Proponents of the new model argue that in time policies can be developed and prices can be driven low enough to win widespread support.

If so, more changes are bound to follow. In music, the Internet reduced album sales as more people bought only the individual songs they wanted. For textbooks, that may mean letting students (or brokers at colleges) buy only the chapters they want. Or only supplementary materials like instructional videos and interactive homework problems, all delivered online.

And that really would be the end of the textbook as we know it.

College 2.0 covers how new technologies are changing colleges. Please send ideas to jeff.young@chronicle.com or @jryoung on Twitter.