SchlagerBlog

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?

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.

My nephew left today for his freshman year at Harvard. Leaving aside the pride (and the usual angst) that I feel as a family member, I am wondering what his experience will be with the various technological tools that have appeared in education circles. Will he use any online or electronic textbooks? Will any of his classes forgo textbooks altogether in favor of alternative options? What kind of classroom management system will his professors be using? Will he be asked to do, or will he choose to do, any work on his iPhone? Will he have a different experience with tech tools in his science and engineering classes versus his humanities classes? Although we don’t know the answers to any of these questions yet, we should start to know more within a couple of weeks, after he has chosen and begun his classes for the semester. I will chronicle the results on this blog as the year unfolds.

It’s an exciting time at the intersection of publishing and history education. On the publishing side, the change is coming fast and furious. Rarely a day goes by without some new announcement or reporting. Here are a few from the past month:

• Blackboard’s Bid to Galvanize E-Texts
• CourseSmart Partners with Select Higher Education Institutions to Provide Instant Access to eTextbooks
• iPad Goes Under the Gauntlet at Universities This Fall
• E-Education Inc. Seeks the Mainstream

Across the Twitterverse, on the blogs of publishing insiders, in press releases, talk of the upheaval in educational publishing is everywhere. The reasons are not a surprise to anyone: the arrival of sophisticated e-readers (not to mention mobile phones) capable of serving students;  the outdated–some would say “broken”–model of traditional textbook publishing, with companies constantly pushing out new editions to try to salvage profits in the face of the thriving used textbook market; the huge expense of that same market, and the push from state governments and students/parents alike to find more affordable options.

On the education side, these same forces are converging to produce a similar wave of change. Teachers are calling for paperless classrooms, integrating Web technologies into their classrooms in remarkable and exciting ways, and making plans to jettison their textbooks altogether. History educators have been at the forefront of these efforts, in part because the teaching of history lends itself well to an alternative model: instead of a textbook, educators can rely on primary sources and free Web resources, a scenario described nicely in this long post by Nate Kogan at his blog, “The History Channel This Is Not.”

All of this leaves me–the publisher of document-based learning tools for history students–to wonder: Is the revolution upon us? Is this really the end of the textbook as we know it? Will the traditional paper textbook disappear entirely, or will it find new life in electronic form over the coming years? Will the movement to ditch textbooks for various online alternatives become widespread or will it remain the province of an elite corps of tech-savvy educators?

My opinion is that the revolution is real, and that printed textbooks will indeed largely go away. However, I suspect that the “traditional” textbook will reappear in pretty much its current form, albeit electronically, because the dominant textbook publishers have such clout and such a strong legacy that they will be successful at convincing  school districts and university professors alike to switch to e-versions of the same textbooks they’ve been using all these years. I do think, however, that there will continue to be a subset of educators at both the high school and undergraduate levels who ditch their textbooks altogether and use alternative tools to teach history.

Now, what about Schlager Group? We obviously have a dog in this fight, and in fact this fall we will launch a new version of MilestoneDocuments.com, one that operates entirely on a subscription model for students and teachers. We think our new site can, in fact, be just the kind of alternative option that will appeal to those history educators who are most interested in leaving their textbooks behind, or at the very least augmenting them with a document-based learning approach that is built on Web 2.0 technologies. (If you are a teacher at the high school or college level and would like to sign up for a free trial once our site launches, e-mail me.)

Regardless of how successful our new site is, one thing I do know is that the pace of change wrought by all of this technology won’t slow down anytime soon. The hardware and software options will continue to evolve, students (and teachers) will become increasingly comfortable with using mobile devices, and budget pressures will continue to crack open the traditional textbook market. As a result, we see our new site as the next evolutionary step in our product line, but almost certainly not the last. Where will all of this lead us–publishers, educators, students, parents–in the next several years? I, for one, can’t wait to find out.

As we knew it would, the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) last week approved new standards for the state’s social studies curriculum. I am hardly alone in lamenting a blatantly ideological process designed to influence what Texas kids learn for the next decade. (Here’s another good post. Also see the #savehistory hashtag for recent tweets on this subject.) It’s obvious that the board members who voted for the changes sought to imprint their side of today’s conservative/liberal culture clashes on the next generation of kids. I am embarrassed and ashamed of our state, and I say that as the owner of the kind of 21st-century, information industry small business that Texas tries so hard to attract.

In my last post on this subject, I wrote that this battle over textbooks obscured some bigger problems in public education in the state. In a comment to the post, Ed Darrell, fairly enough,  took me to task for not taking a formal stand against the SBOE’s efforts. Few people have done more than Ed to fight the good fight against the SBOE’s politicization of Texas science and social science standards. Even though it’s obvious that no comment by me would have stopped the passage of these new standards, I take Ed’s criticism seriously. But the question now becomes: what now? How do those of us who disagree with the new standards–educators and publishers alike–respond in such a way to influence what and how our kids learn in this new environment?

One way, perhaps the chief one, is to follow a nascent trend that is already at work among influential educators around the country: deemphasize the textbook and move toward a document-based, inquiry-based system of learning. Let the kids examine primary sources of all sorts, construct their own questions about how to think about past events, and work toward their own conclusions. If the SBOE thinks that Joseph McCarthy has gotten a raw deal from historians (and cursed “liberal textbooks”), then let kids examine the documentary evidence themselves, from all sides. There are so many primary sources now available on the Web, and so many interesting sites and engaging tools, that this would be the right choice even if there were no political shackles being placed upon teachers and kids by an irresponsible SBOE. It’s simply a better and more effective way to teach and learn history.

So, as a publisher of history education materials, we are asking ourselves the obvious related question: How do we provide tools and materials to support this new form of history education? With MilestoneDocuments.com, we have only begun to answer the question. We’ve gathered, culled, curated, and analyzed a range of primary sources from US and world history (yes, including SBOE pet subjects from cultural conservatives), and our various teacher’s activities and study questions for students all emphasize a “compare/contrast” style of learning. Later this summer we’ll be rolling out new teaching tools for history educators at our site. But in general, we are thinking day and night about where we go from here, and we couldn’t be more excited about the opportunities and challenges in front of us.

Now, I know that it’s naive to think that the traditional top-down textbook/lecture environment is going to end anytime soon. Most public schools in Texas (and elsewhere) will continue to use this teaching style for the foreseeable future.  The damage done by the SBOE is real, and its impact on our kids will be felt. Nonetheless, we have to find ways to minimize this damage, and I am optimistic that the changes already happening in history education can do just that.

Are there other ways that you see to prevent partisan intrusion in educational standards, whether it’s from the right or the left? I’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.

It’s been a long time coming, but I’ve decided to formalize a trend that has begun to dominate my (all-too-frequent) blog posts. Rather than writing about reference industry news and issues, I have been increasingly focused on education and classroom items, especially as they relate to using technology in the classroom. As a result, the new subtitle for this blog: “History. Education. Technology.” won’t surprise any of you. You will also notice some new links in the blogroll.

This evolution mirrors what is happening in our company. While our foundation and core have been in reference publishing, we are increasingly devoting time and energy to educational publishing via our Milestone Documents website. How do we help history educators teach? How do we help students learn? What new tools can we provide to improve history education and to assist the community of passionate teachers and historians? These are the questions that are occupying more and more of our time at Schlager Group, so it’s only natural that they should find their way into my blog posts.

A key word here is “technology.” Just as educators at all levels are struggling to figure out how to integrate technology tools into the classroom to enrich and improve the learning experience, we at Schlager Group are working hard to figure out how to adopt and deploy many of these same technologies in order to serve history teachers and students. This is no easy task. Like so many publishing companies, ours was built on a love of content, and it has been staffed by humanities grads who are steeped in the finest editorial tradition. This has allowed us to turn out award-winning materials of which we are rightly proud. At the same time, however, we have lacked the technical chops to properly position ourselves for the publishing revolution that is in full swing all around us.

To solve this problem, we have sought the expertise of others who can lead us into the future. These include Vector Media Group,  which has built a wonderful new platform for MilestoneDocuments.com and is helping us to refine our vision for the site even now. They also include River Valley Technologies, which has a long tradition in the scholarly journal marketplace but is now branching out to assist us in myriad ways. The company is based in India, but its director, Kaveh Bazargan, is based in the U.K. (I have seen the image of the bald, jet-setting publishing executive, and it isn’t me.) Through associations like these, we are fine-tuning, redirecting, and even revolutionizing our vision for our future.

That’s not to say that we have turned our back on the reference universe or the libraries and librarians that we love so much. Far from it. Even now, we are just days away from the publication of our next multivolume reference set, Milestone Documents in African American History, and deep in the trenches of producing a new set for the fall, Milestone Documents of World Religions. Like so many publishing companies, we are finding that we must operate in many spheres, and on many platforms, at once.

I do hope to write more frequent (and more interesting) blog posts, although I’m sure many of you have read that same sentiment on more blogs than you can count. It shouldn’t be difficult, given how many interesting things are happening at the intersection of history, education, and technology.