Skills: noneConcepts: evolution of media, experiments with modular teaching material, student-developed teaching material, peer tutoring and very large classes, textbook business opportunity

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Requiem for the textbook

Where does this topic fit?

• Internet concepts– Applications– Technology– Implications

• Internet skills– Application development– Content creation– User skills

The Assassination of the Duke de Guise (1908) Who’s afraid of Virginia Wolff? (1966)

Early movies

Ed Sullivan Show, 1964 Sid Caesar's Your Show of Shows, 1953

Early television

Gutenberg Bible, 1455

Aldus Manutius,over 50 years later

Repurposed textbooks

Repurposed courses

Faculty and institutional inertia

Unstructured modules

A modular course (with a unique business model)

Student generated material

Peer teaching and collaboration

Massive online courses

Many types of teaching material

Textbook prices vs. consumer prices

VC investment in education technology

Going out of business?

Summary

Self-study questions

1. Find a Merlot module that is relevant to a course you are currently taking. Write a brief description of the module and state whether it would be helpful to you? If so, show it to your professor.

2. Find a Kahn Academy module that is relevant to a course you are taking or took in the past. Write a brief description of the module and state whether it would be helpful to you? If so, show it to the professor.

3. Would you be willing to pay $49 for a lifetime subscription to a regularly updated textbook for any course you have taken? Which one?

4. List the advantages and disadvantages of Nature’s electronic text compared to a traditional biology textbook.

5. List the advantages and disadvantages of Nature’s electronic text compared to an electronic version of a traditional biology textbook.

6. What will be the implications for individuals, universities and society if it turns out that online courses with 100,000 students are effective?

Resources• Review of Nature’s modular biology text: http://

cis471.blogspot.com/2011/11/post-gutenberg-e-text-for-biology-101.html• Merlot: http://www.merlot.org• Connexions: http://cnx.org/• OpenStax: http://openstaxcollege.org/• Interview of Rice University professor Richard Baraniuk: http://

spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/at-work/education/open-source-comes-to-textbooks• The Kahn Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/• Sal Khan on preparing a lesson: http://bigthink.com/ideas/38596• Techburst videos: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA9F9FCE212B121CF• Techburst home: http://c21u.gatech.edu/techburst• Drake University students collaborate on software reviews:

http://drakejournalism.com/socialclass/2012/02/09/20-twitter-tools-reviewed/• A modular digital literacy course: http://

cis275topics.blogspot.com/2011/04/modular-it-literacy-course-for-internet.html• Digital literacy – evolution, curriculum and a modular e-text: http://

som.csudh.edu/fac/lpress/presenatations/modularbiotext.pptx• The legacy of Aldus Manutius and his press: http://net.lib.byu.edu/aldine/• Stanford and other massive online classes: http://cis471.blogspot.com/search/label/mooc• Udacity: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2012/01/23/udacity-and-the-future-of-online-universities/• MIT plans: http://tech.mit.edu/V131/N60/mitx.html• Review and assessment of the first Stanford classes:

http://newsletter.alt.ac.uk/2011/11/what-can-we-learn-from-stanford-university%E2%80%99s-free-online-computer-science-courses/

• The periodic table of videos:• https://plus.google.com/114528586908817727732/posts/bk99RpvDyv5• Lynda.com: lynda.com• Vi Hart: http://vihart.com/• Xkcd: http://xkcd.com/• Maku Naru: http://sci-ence.org/• Jeff Jarvis: Gutenberg the Geek:

http://www.amazon.com/Gutenberg-Geek-Kindle-Single-ebook/dp/B007EI62I0