Tech Joy

Throw out the books, Web 2.0 is the way to learn

I’ve wanted to comment on this article about textbook publishing since it appeared in the New York Times in September, but in retrospect, I’m glad that I waited until I had a semester of using our class wiki to comment. I’ve long noticed similarities between the textbook publishing and pharmaceutical industries—both have the enviable power to be able to influence peoples’ lives for the better, but both are susceptible to abusing their position in efforts to maximize profits. It’s true that textbooks expensive and publishers seem impervious to market forces to keep the prices down. However, what students and professors may not realize is that publishers are increasingly pressured to provide more robust ancillary materials that are expensive to produce. While these ancillaries can often make or break a professor’s decision to adopt a book, they are often not used once the semester begins. Sometimes the textbooks themselves offer little complementary value to the class.

While students, parents, administrators, and professors have complained about textbook prices, they continue to rise. However, it’s not just the prices that are the problem. In today’s technology-driven world, the printed textbook seems downright antiquated. College students today don’t remember a time when high-end, photorealistic graphics weren’t a possibility. Studies have shown that students today learn and process information differently than students did less than a generation ago. The learning materials, however, haven’t kept up.

We are all aware of what happened to the record industry when it refused to change its business model to adapt to new technology. I fear the publishing industry is susceptible to being taken down by a disruptive new technology. We’ve had the opportunity to interact with two interesting new directions in this class—the wiki and the online textbook produced by Flat World Knowledge. While these worked well for our graduate class purposes, I think these technologies could be extended to create something a lot more interactive and stimulating.

Imagine an online “textbook” that’s an amalgam of Web 2.0 tools—part blog, some wiki thrown in, a bit of YouTube, a smattering of Podcasts, and a dash of Facebook. Wouldn’t students be clamoring to log in and learn? As the economy goes south and more people invest in higher education, this may be one new web business opportunity worth funding. Anyone?