RentScouter

This past Monday the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges announced the launch of the Open Course Library to help college students combat the rising cost of education by providing a new alternative for cheap textbooks. The state of Washington has put up $750,000 which was matched by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to make the library possible.  Open Course Library is hoping to provide cheap textbooks that will cost college students $30 or less.

The project has been broken into phases, with Monday’s launch of phase 1 featuring materials for 42 common courses including Introduction to Chemistry and Calculus I. Phase 2 will launch in the Spring of 2013 and will add another 39 courses to the library. A team of instructors, instructional designers and librarians developed and peer reviewed the current 42 available courses, using available open source materials to put together course materials that stay within the $30 limit.

The Student Public Interest Research Group (PIRGs) conducted an informal study which estimates that the Open Course Library could save students as much as $41.6 million on textbooks annually if adopted at all of Washington’s community and technical colleges. However, the 42 faculty course developers and their departments are estimated to save students $1.26 million by using these materials during the current school year, a full $80,000 more than the cost of creating the program. “These savings will not only help Washington’s students afford college, but clearly provide a tremendous return on the original investment,” said Nicole Allen, Textbook Advocate for the Student PIRGs.

This is one of several small steps being taken across the nation to make education more affordable for students with cheap textbooks and for such legislation to get funding in a time of staggering budget cuts is truly inspiring. Washington’s Open Course Library is leading a charge that I sincerely hope gains a lot more steam, and with the planned addition of 39 more courses in  2013, it seems the Library may continue to grow. The question now is whether or not this project can be repeated and gain state funding across other parts of the country.

Some common questions about the Open Course Library:

1. What is it? The Open Course Library is a collection of shareable course materials, including syllabi, course activities, readings, assessments.
2. Who is it created for? OCL materials are created for faculty to use in their instruction.
3. So what? Students in our colleges spend about 25% of their total education costs on textbooks (about $1200 per year for a full-time student). The Open Course Library eliminates expensive textbooks and presents faculty with high quality, adaptable course materials.
4. Is that all? Nope. There’s more. The Open Course Library may also increase completion rates by providing students with high quality, affordable educational materials. A study of student completion rates is in progress.
5. Is it designed to replace faculty or face-to-face instruction? The Open Course Library does not replace faculty or force them to teach online.
6. Who owns the courses? These course materials were created through an optional SBCTC grant, and the SBCTC Open Licensing Policy requires that all materials created through optional grants carry an open license. Unless otherwise noted, the Open Course Library materials are owned by SBCTC and freely shared to the world with a Creative Commons Attribution-only license (CC-BY).
7. How was it created? Faculty course designers were selected through a competitive bid process. They worked with instructional designers, librarians, and other support staff to create the courses. Before creating new content, faculty searched for exiting, high quality open educational resources, or OER. They then filled in the gaps with their own course materials.
8. How do faculty adopt a course? All curriculum developed for the Open Course Library is free, digital, and shareable. We invite faculty everywhere to explore, copy, customize, translate and adopt any and all course materials. We only ask that you give us credit somewhere in your course. Here’s an example: “[Portions of] or [This] course adapted from the Open Course Library of the Washington State Colleges. More information at http://opencourselibrary.org.” We also encourage you to use Creative Commons to openly license your course materials and share it with others.
9. Are there any costs? Some courses currently require the purchase of a low-cost textbook. If an OCL course requires the purchase of a textbook or other resource, the cost may not exceed $30 per student. All other materials are free and there is no cost to adopt the course.
10. How can I contribute to the Open Course Library? Adopt the materials, spread the word, and to share your own course materials online with a Creative Commons license.

Open Course Library is one of many alternatives for cheap textbooks for college students.

Amazon's Kindle Textbok Rental Store

Amazon is entering the textbook rental landscape by launching their Kindle Rental program today.  Amazon’s textbook buyback credit program is doing very well with their high prices, but they are very late to the online textbook rental market dominated by players like BookRenter and Chegg.  However, never discount Amazon which is willing to lose money on items or in a new market to gain market share.  They have been heavily marketing to college students with their Amazon Student Savings Program which offers free two day shipping on the millions of textbooks available at Amazon.  Amazon is claiming to save college students up to 80% if you rent textbooks on the Kindle.

Nothing new with how much renting textbooks online for college can save students – so does Amazon offer anything new versus the established online book rental companies or other electronic textbook companies like Kno?  The program apparently allows college students rent books from 30 to 360 days, which is nothing new, and that thousands of textbook titles are immediately available from top higher education publishers like Elsevier, Taylor&Francis, and John Wiley & Sons – again nothing new.  Amazon is allowing students to store highlighted content and book notes in the Amazon cloud, even after the textbook rental period has expired which is a new twist, but how useful?  Kindle textbooks are supposedly in a format that can be read on a variety of mobile platform via Amazon’s Kindle reading apps.

Well, let’s see Amazon:

1) College students can control their online book rental time period – nothing new

2) Textbook rentals can save students up to 80% versus new textbooks – nothing new

3) Electronic textbooks can be viewed and read on a variety of devices – nothing new

4) Offering thousands of books for rent online – nothing new

5) Students can save notes and highlighted content in the Amazon cloud – new, but useful?

The RentScouter team is not amazed by the Kindle Textbook Rental Program, but considering Amazon’s aggressive pricing tactics this could result in great textbook rental prices for college students.

How does Amazon’s textbook rental program compare to some of the others out there:

NOOKStudy – You get a free seven day trial period before you have to purchase or rent your school book for 180 days.  This is a more comprehensive offering versus Kindle Book rentals as it offers students a hub to digitize their schedule, store notes, homework, or class schedule information.  However, it isn’t currently available on mobile platforms.

Kno – Textbooks on the iPad, what else needs to be said?  Well, it is a good start, but we have reported that students still prefer printed textbooks almost 9 to 1.  However, as we covered Kno has some unique features in their quest for offering cheap textbooks online including social sharing – “WTF”.  Perhaps a great program, but no option for Window OS users at this time.

Inkling – The app is free and you can rent college books by chapter online instead of having to buy the entire textbook.  Great concept, but again limited to the iPad and their library has less than 1,000 book titles currently – we hope it grows.

Chegg’s eBooks – What does one of the leader’s in traditional college textbook rentals offer?  An online only service with a good selection of school book titles, but limited to PC users only.

Your best bet is probably still a textbook rental, but electronic texbook options are growing rapidly and offer promise in the coming years.

South Korea’s Education Ministry has announced it wants all school age level educational materials to be delivered in a digitized format by 2015.  It hopes that by 2014 all elementary level materials will be read on a variety of computers, smart phones, and tablets.  No specific equipment choices have been made, but the Ministry did announce it will spend up to 2.4 billion buying the necessary tablets, software, and digitizing the necessary school curriculum.

Some Korean schools already are using electronic textbooks via notebook computers and tablets.  However, it is very unlikely that the South Korean government would pick the Apple iPad as its tablet of choice.  It is much more likely to pick tablets manufactured by South Korean electronics manufacturing company, Samsung.  This could be a very nice windfall for Samsung and its Galaxy tablet or some variant.

Why would the Galaxy need modification?  The folks who brought us the Kno Tablet did lots of research on students that buy textbooks online or hope to rent textbooks online, whether digital or otherwise, instead of purchasing a printed textbook.

What a student needs, according to Kno’s research, is something that faithfully reproduces a full-size textbook, without compromise.  In contrast, the attempt to cram a textbook onto a smaller screen is a primary reason that previous trials with replacing textbooks with tablets and e-readers such as the Kindle DX have been abject failures.

This move will be watched by governments and manufacturers worldwide as everyone is wondering about the future of electronic textbooks.  It also awakens the argument about whether students learn better from printed or digital textbooks.  Another reason digital textbooks have not taken off in the United States is the cost when compared to buying a cheap used textbook online or renting college textbooks online.  The initial cost is still much higher, but currently their is no cash sell back value for electronic textbooks, nor can they be transferred.  Now that Kno has given up on hardware manufacture and is now focused on a software solution for cheap textbooks and trying the novel “Words to Friends” approach we detailed about a month ago.