SchlagerBlog

As the dust has settled on Apple’s iBooks Author, it’s interesting to see the announcement’s impact. The model’s surprising lack of imagination was widely explored and in perfect pitch IMHO by Audrey Watters. We’re used to innovation from Apple, but its new offering, well … as I said to a reporter who asked for an opinion about its ability to shake up the textbook market, there are disruptions coming, but this isn’t one of them.

But though it may not accelerate the textbook market today, I think the Apple e-textbook announcement has had an impact by fueling the discussion of the archaic nature of the present textbook model and where our future lies. To that I say, well done.

Our disappointments in the textbook market form a well-worn trail, starting with ever-loftier prices foisted upon students and their parents. Over the past few decades the needs of professors and students alike have received little attention as publishers have tried to combat the used book market with shorter revision cycles and fought for market share through sheer volume of new entrants. It’s created an expensive machine to operate, and it’s being funded by students. Alas, those practices have brought about a backlash that is fueling the drive for a new model today.

I was just alerted to an ongoing study of student attitudes by the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) that says students are opting out of the purchase of current editions of textbooks – new or used – at an alarming rate. Only 59% now invest in the current edition. Read that last sentence this way: More than 40% of students don’t see value in their assigned text. What are they doing instead? They’re renting (but only 11%), buying old editions, or illegally downloading or photocopying. Or they’re doing their best to pass the course without getting any version of the assigned text whatsoever.

And they’re also complaining. Students are looking for value in return for these high prices, and they don’t complain to the bookstore, they complain to the person who assigned the book. A theme I hear frequently among faculty is that they’re searching for classroom materials – including textbooks – that will reduce friction between teacher and student.

That friction is about more than just high prices. While traditional textbooks serve an important purpose – providing a narrative framework that leads students through a course of study – some of what they do can be achieved more effectively through other means, including lectures, articles, and videos. In addition, elements such as assessment tools, study questions, and primary documents that often now find themselves bundled with textbooks can probably best be handled in a Web environment. This gets to the disassembling of the traditional textbook, an option mentioned by Audrey Watters in discussing another recent entrant into the field, Inkling Habitat, the e-book publishing platform from iPad publisher Inkling.

A pdf of a text – the current form of most so-called e-textbooks – is not the answer, especially when it costs virtually the same as the print edition. We need a monumental shift in the textbook model to address the needs of students and professors. For my part, I think that the Web offers the most powerful and flexible platform for future classroom materials, because it so can so easily connect students to a wealth of primary sources, analysis, and even real-time news, with pedagogical and workflow tools built in. All due respect to Apple, increasing learning outcomes does not require fancy software and 3D graphics (or $500 gadgets). All that’s required is to provide educators with better, more flexible materials and tools, ones that are affordable for students.

And by the way, these new models are out there. Inspired faculty are building them for themselves, and upstart publishers with no revenue legacy to protect are creating them for other faculty to adopt. I humbly offer our own Milestone Documents as one such example. One metric we pay special attention to among the classes that adopt our site is the percentage of enrolled students who sign up. It’s a lot higher than 59%. Our platform is still young, with many useful features still to come, but this tells me that we are on the right path, and that the students using the site are pleased with the value we are providing.

If our site is any indication, these new models are developing a loyal following. Nonetheless, change in the larger industry isn’t occurring fast enough for students. It’s time to abandon suspicion of change and listen to what students – and educators – are saying. It’s time to deliver real value.

Next week several of us will be off to Chicago for the American Historical Association annual meeting. This will be our second year exhibiting under the Milestone Documents banner, and this year we’ll be showing off a new booth design. We’re also giving away prizes and are sponsoring a reception on Friday evening, Jan. 6. Below is a brief run-down of our schedule at the meeting:

• Thursday, January 5: Exhibits open from 3:00 - 7:00 p.m. Milestone Documents is in Booth #216. We are giving away a free iPad during the meeting as well as free semester prizes and two-week evaluation trials of our site.
• Friday, January 6: Exhibits open from 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
• Friday, January 6: Two-year Faculty Reception, sponsored by Milestone Documents. 5:30 - 7:00 p.m. Missouri Room, Sheraton Chicago. Drawing for a free iPad.
• Saturday, January 7: Exhibits open from 9:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.
• Sunday, January 8: Exhibits open from 9:00 a.m. - noon.

If you’re attending the meeting, please stop by our booth to say hello and tour our site. We look forward to meeting you there!

We’ve just published an interesting case study about Jonathan Rees, who was one of the initial adopters of our Milestone Documents primary source reader. The article describes how Jonathan came to the decision to ditch his textbook and utilize Milestone Documents instead:

Inspired by his colleague, Rees simply eliminated the text from his class, opting to rely on his PowerPoint-based notes and a digital reader – Milestone Documents – with unique, comprehensive access to primary sources. Rees compares the move to the Sugar Act of 1764, when the British reduced the breadth of an unpopular but easily evaded tax on colonists. “I reduced the amount of reading but stepped up enforcement,” he says.

Indeed, now Rees and his students are in step with each other. He’s teaching what they’re reading. Further, students no longer have to pay up to $100 for a paper textbook. They pay less than $20 for complete, semester-long access to Milestone Documents. Rees feels there’s significantly less frustration among students.  ”No one asks me ‘why do I have to read this?’” he says.

With three textbook-free semesters under his belt, Rees says he’s a happier teacher. He likes the freedom to pick and choose the contents of each class and teaches directly on the screen – face to face with his students. The a-la-carte approach allows him to customize, moving the pace faster or slower… the level of discussion up or down, depending upon the students’ fluency in the material.

Jonathan’s story highlights many of the difficulties that professors and students are facing with the traditional textbook: high prices, inflexible models that limit how and what the professor covers in the classroom, and lack of student engagement. We’ve designed Milestone Documents so that it addresses these difficulties, at least in part. Some of our customers, like Jonathan, have gotten rid of their textbooks entirely and rely almost entirely on our site. Others, however, continue to use the same “textbook + reader” paradigm that Jonathan mentions in the case study; they merely substitute their traditional reader with our more powerful and flexible (and affordable) one.

As we head into the final weeks of 2011 and look ahead to 2012, here are three key textbook industry trends that I have my eye on:

1. It’s the price, stupid: As I mention in the case study, I think that high prices are at the root of so much of the disruption in the industry. Students and their parents are going to continue to seek out cheaper options, and as those options proliferate and improve, the disruption will accelerate.
2. Access, not ownership: The textbook industry is following in the footsteps of so many other media industries. With a few exceptions, not many students need or want to own their textbooks. More than anything, it’s the access model that is shaking up the industry. Milestone Documents is one such option, operating in a small niche in a few subject areas. But the bigger players – Chegg, Flat World Knowledge, CourseSmart – are shifting the playing field pretty dramatically.
3. Digital is following, not driving, the upheaval: Surveys of our student users have shown that some 70% of them prefer digital format over print. But I think that’s somewhat incidental. They care more about price than format. For ease of use, it’s hard to beat a printed book, and most students would happily flock to print forms if they were far cheaper than they are. From a publisher’s standpoint, however, the shift to digital is crucial, because it makes possible the lower-priced, more flexible models that students are gravitating toward.
4. Not Every Subject Needs a Textbook: Finally, as Jonathan’s experience shows, not every classroom is best served by a traditional textbook. History is certainly one subject that can be successfully taught without a textbook, but it’s far from the only one. With new, more flexible access models in place, instructors will find it ever easier to get rid of the textbook altogether.

My guess is that these same trends will still be the ones we’re talking about a year from now. In the meantime, if you’re attending the upcoming American Historical Association meeting in Chicago, please stop by our booth (216) to say hello, tour our site, discuss the state of the textbook industry, or just say hi.

“The thing is, it’s going to be a Microsoft vs. Google battle. Box isn’t even in the picture. We get squeezed as the two giants tangle. They can afford to subsidize storage to get users on their platform.”

The quote above is from a letter written by Aaron Levie, the CEO of Box.net, to one of his board members a few years ago. He included it in an article over at Fast Company’s site, in which he describes how his small startup has managed to navigate a jungle dominated by “giants” and not only survive but thrive. (As it happens, we are a Box.net customer, having moved all of our company files and documents to their site a few months ago.) Although we are not a technology company, we find ourselves dealing with many of the same issues that Aaron and Box.net encountered a few years ago (and no doubt are still facing). For example:

• We are trying to build and sustain a product in an industry dominated by powerful giants.
• We are continually grappling with the question of price, as industry forces continually drive down prices (often for good reason).
• While we can’t compete with the giants on resources, we can see opportunity as those giants worry about how to protect their legacy products and build new, grandly ambitious ones. In our case, we can focus entirely on meeting the needs of our customers and users without worrying about how to salvage our traditional printed textbooks–of which we have none.

Our good friend and advisor Jonathan Rees has fairly accurately described that old-guard business as the “textbook-industrial complex.” As he writes in a recent blog post, this complex consists of “an army of poorly paid writers who are popping out new editions of your textbook every year or two whether you actually need a new edition or not.” That situation is one of the chief reasons that we launched Milestone Documents, our online primary source reader. We feel strongly that the textbook paradigm is broken, and that professors and students alike deserve a better product at a cheaper price.

In fact, as Jonathan points out, many professors are ditching their textbooks for other reasons too–aside from being expensive, they are often also boring and dull. And at least in the field of history, the textbooks are designed around teaching the traditional “coverage” model, which requires that professors race through as many events and eras as possible, an approach that an increasing number of professors see as impossible. Why not get rid of that approach entirely, and focus on teaching students to think critically–and learn the craft of history–by examining a more manageable number of key themes and issues?

But back to the industry giants: As I mentioned, like the Googles and Microsofts of the world, they are battling for control of larger things than mere textbooks. Witness the latest salvo by Pearson, which is now attempting to grasp the one ring to rule them all, via it’s OpenClass LMS platform. This development has kicked off a lot of very interesting chatter in the blogosphere, from Michael Feldstein to Music for Deck Chairs.

Here’s the thing: The textbook-industrial complex, the (highly questionable) rush toward online learning, the LMS platform battles–it’s all connected. Higher education costs too much on every level, whether we’re talking tuition or LMS systems or textbooks. And, just as importantly, those expenses are not driving learning and understanding. That’s where companies like us come in: we can do one small part of the ecosystem better (at least we think we can). And I’m betting there are other companies that can and will tackle other aspects of the ecosystem too.

No, this concept is not imaginary: It’s the real-life description of an experimental online course being offered by a pair of Stanford University professors. The instructors are Sebastian Thrun and Peter Norvig, who decided to make their popular traditional course on artificial intelligence available in virtual form to all takers. The astonishing enrollment–despite the fact that the online students will receive no Stanford course credit–signals both the promise and threat that online courses offer to higher education institutions.

On the one hand, elite universities can now try their hand at the same thing: take your most popular courses and offer them online in a similar fashion. They could even charge a small fee–picture a $5 or $10 fee–and earn a serious windfall. On the other hand, what’s to stop the most popular professors from creating their own online courses outside the university system and keeping the proceeds for themselves, a la Pottermore? Also, if this incident heralds the beginning of a new era of online learning that offers something truly transformative, and not merely a survey class taught by an adjunct and put online just to save money, shouldn’t it send warning signals to the myriad colleges and universities that can’t offer anything as compelling as the new Stanford course? Much depends on how this trend develops, but as many people have pointed out, higher education is ripe for reinvention. If this new course is any indication, that reinvention has just entered a new gear.

Leaving aside the future of higher education, I’m interested in this new class for the issues it raises on two other fronts. First, since we publish primarily in the area of history, I wondered this: where is the online history course that could attract 58,000 students? Is there one? I should think that the right professor coupled with the right subject could indeed draw an enormous enrollment: picture the American Revolution taught by David McCullough, or the Lincoln Presidency taught by Doris Kearns Goodwin, or Western Civilization taught by Niall Ferguson. Each paired with the right institution (Ferguson already has the pairing ready-made with his affiliations at Harvard and Oxford), and with the right bells and whistles on the technology front to make for a compelling online experience. Heck, if such a course were freely or cheaply available to all comers, I might enroll myself! What history buff wouldn’t jump at this opportunity?

Second, though, how does this relate to the larger push being made in history departments to offer more online courses? It seems that many institutions are focusing such efforts on the lowest-level courses, like history survey classes. This, it seems to me, is not a winning proposition. It’s the opposite of the star-taught, high-interest seminar. Our Milestone Documents editorial board member Jonathan Rees has been discussing these issues over at his blog for the past month, and I think his skepticism is well-founded. See, for instance, this post: “The Functional Equivalent of Eating through a Tube.”

It will be fascinating to watch how higher education institutions proceed with online education in the next 3-5 years. Will we have more of the compelling Stanford AI scenario, or more of the “eating through a tube” variety?

Yesterday I picked up the April edition of the OAH Magazine of History and was pleased to find articles by no fewer than 3 Milestone Documents advisors. First up is Paul Finkelman, editor in chief of our Milestone Documents series of reference books and lead member of our newly formed Editorial Board for MilestoneDocuments.com. Paul is a legal scholar and an expert in the field of African American history, among others. His article in the latest Magazine is titled “Slavery, the Constitution, and the Origins of the Civil War.” Paul wrote a similar article for Milestone Documents in African American History, one that is available to our website subscribers and to classes that use our site as textbook replacement or supplement: “Slavery Clauses in the U.S. Constitution.”

Next up is Bruce A. Lesh, who served as consulting editor for Milestone Documents in American History. His article in the new issue of the Magazine is titled “Interpreting John Brown: Infusing Historical Thinking into the Classroom.” Anyone wanting more information about John Brown–and about the tumultuous period of the mid-to-late 1850s–will find extensive resources at our site, including an overview of Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, plus documents about John Brown and Harpers Ferry by Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, and Osborne Anderson.

Finally, I’d like to mention James A. Percoco, who was the consulting editor for Milestone Documents of American Leaders. His article in the latest Magazine is titled “Monumental History: Commemorating America’s Civil War Sesquicentennial.” As it happens, Jim has just been inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame in Emporia, Kansas. The induction ceremony will be held June 17. Congratulations, Jim!

Last week we had the privilege of exhibiting at the Organization of American Historians convention in Houston. It was our first time at OAH, and only our second time as an exhibitor (the first was at the American Historical Association convention in Boston in January). Once again, as in January, we found ourselves sticking out like a sore thumb: amidst a sea of booths filled with books, here we were with our cheerful (and cheeky) “Ditch the Textbook” banner and two computers set up to show off our Milestone Documents website to historians.

In any event, we met a lot of professors who liked the idea of teaching their history classes in a different way. Either they are fed up with their traditional textbooks, or else they want a digital solution that offers a new way to reach students and one that is more affordable as well. We fielded so many questions about our online history solution that it was obvious that these educators are ready and willing to break with the old textbook order and experiment with something new.

As it happens, we have just created a page of Frequently Asked Questions (and answers) that speaks to many of the queries we heard over and over again in Houston: How does your site work? What is the cost? Is it some sort of e-book? Does it work on the iPad? What makes your site different from any traditional document reader? How do your free trials work? If you’re a professor or history educator reading this post, I urge you to read our FAQ and consider how we can help you ditch your textbooks and document readers for a more flexible, powerful, convenient solution.

At the same time, if you are wondering what it would be like to teach without a textbook, see the informative series of posts by Jonathan Rees at Colorado State University–Pueblo. Jonathan is among the first wave of professors using our site in classroom trials this semester, and he has been blogging about his experience (episode 1, episode 2, episode 3). As you’ll see, he seems to like it very much.

As I blogged about previously, our relaunched MilestoneDocuments.com site is up and running, with subscription offerings for both students and educators. As it happens, we have a number of college professors who are using the site in free trials this semester with their history classes. The first such professor to sign up for a trial, Jonathan Rees at Colorado State University–Pueblo, is a longtime FOSG (Friend of Schlager Group). He is also, it turns out, blogging about his experience with the site. You can see his first posts here and here. As Jonathan points out, one of the things we can do with a subscription site that couldn’t be done with a printed textbook (or even an e-textbook in most instances) is tell him which students have signed up to use the site and which have not. In the future, we hope to take this a step further, so that he’ll know which students have read the required reading ahead of class.

Judging from the enthusiastic reaction we got from professors at the recent American Historical Association annual meeting, we’ve launched our service at a most interesting time. Professors everywhere are looking for alternatives to traditional textbooks, especially ones that are more affordable for their students (as our site is; also, witness Flat World Knowledge). A huge side benefit that we offer is that we can save history professors time and effort: having gotten used to spending gobs of time tracking down suitable primary source readings for their classes and disseminating them, they recognize immediately that our collection relieves them of this burden. It’s a win-win for the student and the professor.

One of the things that struck us during the AHA meeting, however, was how old-fashioned the convention floor felt. Everywhere, we were surrounded by exhibits filled with books. Wonderful books, no doubt, many of which I would pick up and read in a heartbeat. But books nonetheless. Meanwhile, at our small booth, there wasn’t a book in sight, only computer screens and buzz. Don’t get me wrong: we are not anti-book. We started as a book publisher, after all. However, I think that students are increasingly going to expect something different, not merely in terms of format but also in terms of pricing and service. Over at the very fine xplana blog, you can read daily about the revolution taking place in the higher education publishing space and the trends evident in student behavior and opinion. We feel fortunate to have a service that addresses many of the complaints that students and professors alike have had with traditional textbooks. Now, we simply have to get the word out and and execute, execute, execute.

Finally, I close with a follow-up to a post I wrote back in August about my nephew, a freshman at Harvard. It turns out that in his 4 classes last semester, he had to buy traditional printed textbooks for 3 of them at a total cost of nearly $500. His fourth class, a seminar, used no textbook or printed material. Meanwhile, he bought an iPad to use with note-taking in the classroom, among other things. I don’t yet know what his experience will be this semester or in subsequent ones, but I have to think that at some point his professors will start to make different choices about their chosen textbooks, and these choices will start to converge with the expectations and demands of students like my nephew. The question is, how quickly will this convergence happen? To quote another xplana blog post, I’m betting it happens faster than people suspect.

This week we are excited to announce the evolution of MilestoneDocuments.com into a full subscription service. Now, for an affordable monthly or annual fee, history students and teachers can get access to our entire collection of primary source documents and our award-winning, in-depth analysis. Here is a quick rundown of what a membership offers:

• 1,000-plus primary documents from U.S. and world history
• Special concentrations in African American history and world religions
• Award-winning analysis of the documents by our global network of nearly 300 scholars
• Hundreds of biographical profiles and coverage of historical events
• Thematic sections on key historical topics
• For history educators,  detailed lesson plans plus graphic organizers, quizzes, rubrics, classroom handouts, and more

In short, we think our site provides a truly valuable resource to help students and teachers of history, one that can move beyond the traditional textbook and serve as the foundation of any history classroom.

On that note, we are pleased to offer free semester trials to any professor who wants to use our site as an alternative to the traditional textbook. During the trial, the site will be free to the assigning professor as well as the entire class.

History education has been transformed by the Internet, and today that revolution is affecting traditional textbooks as well. We think our new site addresses both trends. Interested in testing out the site? Just e-mail us.

I’m pleased to announce the publication of our 5th Milestone Documents set: Milestone Documents of World Religions. This completes the first phase of our Milestone Documents database project, and we couldn’t be happier with the results. All of the titles have received glowing reviews from critics, and we’ve garnered several key awards for them (with another one to be announced next week). More importantly, we’ve seen that there is a genuine demand for our approach to history education materials: offering primary sources at the heart of the process and pairing those documents with in-depth analysis and commentary to help students make sense of them.

Milestone Documents of World Religions is somewhat different than the previous 4 installments in the series in that it straddles the line between the study of history and the study of religion. The 3-volume set covers nearly 100 critical documents and sacred texts from the world’s religions, both major and minor, from ancient times to the present day. As with the previous 4 sets, this new one can be ordered from our distributor, Salem Press. In addition, it is available in e-book form through all of the major library e-book vendors.

So what’s next for Milestone Documents? In 2011, our focus will be on our just re-launched subscription website, MilestoneDocuments.com (more about that next week), which incorporates material from our 5 sets as well as useful teaching tools. And we will embark on new reference sets for publication in 2012. More to come about that in the new year.

In the meantime, I’d like to wish all of our customers–whether librarians, teachers, professors, or students–a happy new year and a prosperous and fulfilling 2011.