A Course in Liquid Textbooks: Professor Interview

In September, UBC’s Amanda Goldrick-Jones introduced Liquid Textbooks to COMM486, via OUP Canada. With the course now well underway, we thought this a good time to ask Amanda about her experiences to date.

(Note – COMM486 is divided into 23 sections, taught by seven instructors. Symtext created 23 versions of the COMM486 Liquid Textbook, one for each section. This is intended to allow the unique culture and context of each section to emerge through student and instructor generated content.)

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Symtext: Hi Amanda. Could you tell us a bit about what you do, COMM486, and the circumstances leading to your decision to consider a digital content solution?

Amanda Goldrick-Jones: COMM 486W is a new multi-section business writing course, now mandatory for 3rd year students in UBC’s Sauder School of Business.  The course services about 650 – 700 students each year.  I serve as course developer (researching, creating, and updating both wholly online and classroom-based content), coordinator/ administrator, and as instructor, teaching two sections each term.  For a writing course in which we discuss and write about current business issues, it’s essential to have easily updatable readings.  I wanted to use an electronic reading package, and that was when I first heard about the liquid textbook option.

S: It’s early in the course yet but how would you describe the reaction to Liquid Textbooks? Read the rest of this entry »

Earlier this year, Symtext and Oxford University Press Canada entered into an agreement in which Symtext’s technology is utilized to deliver OUP Canada content as Liquid Textbooks, where these are specified by educators. We launched Liquid Textbooks this Fall, so now seems like a good time to ask OUP Canada’s President, David Stover, about his views on the impact of change and innovation in publishing, and his insights into managing these forces.

Symtext: What sort of shift in the market toward demand for digital content are you seeing? Is this shift changing (increasing, decreasing) and can you comment on the pace of the change?

David Stover: There’s definitely a shift and it’s definitely gaining momentum. That’s not to say that I expect to see the printed book disappear next week or next year or even next decade. If anything, the availability of digital options seems to be increasing the total size of the market, because there are some kinds of content (or some audiences for content) where digital opens up possibilities that simply didn’t exist in print. Read the rest of this entry »

Kathleen Schreurs, a recent MI grad from the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, jumped straight into the startup fray at Symtext.  As Content and Project Manager, her portfolio includes digital asset management, project management, training, and now, blogging.

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I have always been a student; since kindergarten ’student’ has been part of my identity and I have been happy to have it so. In June, I graduated. This is the first September in my memory that I have not returned to classes. I admit that it feels slightly odd, like I am constantly forgetting to do something.  Despite that slight nagging feeling, I am excited to be out of school and putting my knowledge to use but I still see everything from a student’s point of view. I just can’t get the ’student view’ out of my head yet. Happily, this identity lag allows me to bring the students’ perspective to topics surrounding e-textbooks. Read the rest of this entry »

Nice to see some big thinkers making the point that user generated content represents real value, though more so because it creates context for increasingly commodity-like content.

In the course of predicting Apple’s next big move, Umair Haque, on the Harvard Business blog, writes that: Read the rest of this entry »

Marginalia is the general term for notes, scribbles, and comments made by readers in the margins of a book. Marginalia has both an extraordinary power and a history of being taboo. How many of us have been chastised by a parent, teacher, or librarian for writing in books? Such reprimands lead us to assume that marginalia is a form of vandalism. Perhaps it is the most constant vandalism our literary world has seen, as those of us with the inclination to write in the margins join the ranks of some very prolific writers. Read the rest of this entry »

To say that the last couple of months at Symtext has been busy is a monumental understatement.  And the past few weeks have been crazy, with enough work coming in over the bow that a normal company might founder in the face of it.  But, I’m happy to say, we’re not a normal company.  Believing from the start that we were on to something, we have simply refused to let up, spurred on by ever increasing levels of validating data.  Recent positive market feedback is nothing if not empowering — supplying us the energy to persist — and now suddenly we’re in calmer waters, analyzing a set of rather successful performance data. Read the rest of this entry »

Symtext Liquid Textbooks are live and in use.

A highly dedicated, highly talented group of people — putting in literally years of dirt-under-the-nails hard work, sacrifice and steely-eyed persistence — have produced something wonderful.  And we couldn’t be more proud.

Liquid Textbooks defy pithy explanation but try this on for size: they let educators build the ideal course. Using just the content they need, from multiple sources, professors craft a living curriculum that reflects their unique style and pedagogy.  Once published, Liquid Textbooks become a platform for interaction and engagement, within which teachers and students explore and learn.  Think about blending the dynamism and immediacy of web 2.0 publishing with premier higher education content. Consider ‘pouring’ content into courses as events and student progress warrants it. Read the rest of this entry »

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Notwithstanding the fact that professors financing $20 million dollar homes from textbook royalties must be vanishingly rare, Seth Godin makes a series of great points about textbooks which culminate in a simple conclusion: change is coming.

Seth states that textbooks are expensive and impractical, to which few would disagree. But let me add that the expectation that generic textbook content can be transmitted from author to student (via publisher and professor) — in an increasingly interactive and participatory world — is simply setting oneself up for trouble. From prof to student, increasingly the demand is for uniqueness, specificity and engagement. I suspect that professors who author textbooks would agree with this statement, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Arnold Schwarzenegger takes the whole time traveling business seriously. As the Terminator, Arnie transported from the future to the current day to deal with pesky humans. As the Governor, he’s taken a page from the future — digital educational content — and appears intent on making it a current day reality by dealing with an expensive and dated medium: paper.

From The Guardian Read the rest of this entry »