Is the academic world embracing digital textbooks?

We hear a lot about the coming age of digital textbooks for the classroom. Teachers and professors will be able to curate content and make and grade assignments through the computer. Students will be able to read and learn with tablets and devices that are familiar to them having grown up in a digital age. It all sounds like it's an avalanche of better digital tech coming down from the mountain of knowledge.

But is it?

Digital textbook adoption

The truth is, according to Jeremy Greenfield at Digital Book World, that digital textbooks are still making little more than a footnote in the actual day to day academic lives of students.

"While publishers are increasingly creating and selling digital materials and students increasingly have the devices on which to consume that content, only 3% of students last semester used a digital textbook as their primary course material (for a specific course). That’s down from 4% for the fall semester."

Wait, so use of digital textbooks is low and going... down? Why?

"According to U.S. director of Bowker Market Research, Carl Kulo, who developed the research, price and benefit to the student are the main factors that influence students to try and use new and different course materials. 'Students aren’t resisting digital,” he said. “It’s extremely critical in their daily lives. But they are seeing more learning and monetary value in print textbooks.'"

Fascinating.

What now?

Kulo goes on to say that he thinks the shift will pick up steam over the next 2-5 years, and that it won't be driven as much by students or teachers/professors as it will by innovation and increasing publishing from the publishers themselves. Which raises an interesting question for me about the direction of publishing: Are publishers creating what the people buying their books want, or are they creating what is new and shiny in the world of publishing?

What do you think?

Image source: Ed Yourdon via flickr