As a fresh college student, I've noticed myself that almost everyone, except for me, owns a Nexus, iPhone, iPad, or some type of smartphone with internet access and e-reader capability.  But it seems that colleges themselves are now steadily, but noticeably making the transfer onto to tablets and smartphones.  There's a lot of good that surely will come out of this new change; for one thing, students don't have to carry around armfuls of heavy textbooks with them across miles of hallway, and it's easy to search through the material and sync up with the instructor's exams and material.  Of course, there has been some doubts about whether or not this might actually hurt the accessibility to the actual text if schools are not careful about the services they choose.  Either way, schools around the globe have high hopes about making the switch to a digital learning method, and we could start to see major shift within the next few months.

"The educational e-book market has grown fiercer in the last few years, raising the question of where the end game will leave educational institutions in their attempts to reduce student churn, increase productivity and radically reduce costs.

As the battling e-textbook giants try to cut exclusive deals and limit competitors' supplies of e-content, educators from the kindergarten to university level are wondering if their choices of learning material will be choked as a result.

That concern is not unfounded considering that e-books are likely to outright replace paper textbooks in the next 36 months, according to Brian Kibby, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education.

Within the next 12- 8 months, entire departments at universities will have replaced paper textbooks completely, Kibby predicted, noting that the trend is already under way. If titans in the e-textbook market limit access to e-content as a means to harm their competition, a learning institution can find itself short of the course material it needs by virtue of choosing the "wrong" device or service."

Source: Tech News World

Newer

Older