Customized Digital Textbooks
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Daniel Flint, a professor of marketing at the University of Tennessee, created a 100 page book for his fall course through AcademicPub, a build-your-own textbook service.
Students had the option of downloading a digital edition for $14.95, a paperback for $27 or the hardcover for $45 -- greatly reducing their book budgets. Eighty percent ordered the printed version and the books were delivered directly to them.
AcademicPub has a library of two million pieces including Cambridge University Press as well as that of Princeton and MIT. Their customized textbooks are peer-reviewed.
The Gates Foundation has funded community college professors in the state of Washington to build an open course library featuring online material for the state's 81 highest enrolled courses with a price cap of $30.
The article in The Chronicle of Higher Education ends with the question of whether customization of textbooks will end the "one-size-fits-all model of textbook publishing."
Reported By Dr. Marciene Mattleman, KYW Newsradio
