Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/62913
graduate subjects. And in January, BizEd reported on the University of New Hampshire's Whittemore School of Business' pilot program that evaluated the effective- ness of using only a digital textbook in its Introduction to Business course. Some universities have tried to break away from the traditional textbook model in the past—and failed, due to a lack of feasible alternatives. But some profes- sors are finding that the online materials now available allow them to teach entire courses without textbooks, with no negative consequences to student learning. In some cases, digital materials may be even better than traditional texts because of their variety and timeliness, says Temple's Keith Quesenberry. Quesenberry, an advertising professor, received one of the school's $1,000 grants for his course "Morality, Law, and Advertising." He used the grant to gather court case briefs, journal articles, and codes and ethi- cal standards published by bodies such as the Federal Trade Commission. "It seemed like students were more engaged and less burdened, getting to and completing assignments earlier," Quesenberry says. "The textbook was this thing they hated. This removed a barrier for them." Other schools are joining forces to convince publishers to offer volume discounts for e-textbooks. Cornell Uni- versity, the University of California at Berkeley, the Uni- versity of Minnesota, the University of Virginia, and the University of Wisconsin are working together to negotiate bulk purchasing agreements of e-textbooks with publish- ers. The effort was led by Internet2, a networking consor- tium for the higher education community that supports development of Internet technologies and applications. In response, McGraw-Hill and software company Courseload is offering an eText Pilot Trial Pack to stu- dents for free at those five universities for the spring 2012 semester. The pack includes e-textbooks and the Course- load reader and annotation platform. Students can also opt to pay $28 to print an e-textbook on demand. This pilot is based on Indiana University's eText model, which also seeks to make digital textbooks available to a greater number of students at reduced cost. (See "IU Strikes E-Book Agreements" on page 58 of BizEd's January/February issue.) In February, IU announced that Harvard Business Publishing had agreed to create eTexts for students on IU's campuses. "Efficient markets have informed buyers and sellers, TOOLS OF THE TRADE Professors: Customize Your Textbooks! XanEdu Publishing Inc., a platform for creating custom course packs, and Flat World Knowledge, a publisher of open college textbooks, have partnered to streamline the process and reduce the cost of creating customized text- book alternatives. The companies are integrating Flat World's Make It Your Own (MIYO) customization platform with Xan- Edu's Folio-X e-learning platform for third-party content. This move allows educators to pair selections from Flat World's textbook catalog with any other third party con- tent, such as journal and newspaper articles, multimedia content, and personal lecture notes. XanEdu will provide copyright clearance services for third party materials. The two companies plan to offer more online integration services to the education market by this summer. Both also sponsor the Grow Custom initiative from the National Asso- ciation of College Stores. The initiative promotes custom publishing in higher education. For information and to request an estimate for materi- als, visit www2.xanedu.com/low-cost. Information about Grow Custom can be found at www.nacsmediasolutions. com/Home/GrowCustomGrowGreenInitiative.aspx. and this multi-university pilot is a big leap forward for institutions to better understand how they can shape the market during the transition to digital," says Brad Wheeler, vice president for information technology and chief information officer at Indiana University. As initiatives such as those mentioned above are expanded, they just might be catalysts for growth in the market for low-cost or free digital textbooks. And as far as the educators who've created their own digital alternatives are concerned, these efforts have the poten- tial to replace textbooks altogether. Information about OpenStax can be found at www.openstaxcollege.org. To read about the Inter- net2 and eText initiatives, visit www.internet2.edu and etexts.iu.edu. BizEd May/June 2012 73