To address the opportunities presented by the next generation textbook, IMS GLC has formed a Project Group Under Formation Special Interest Group (PUFSIG) on Dynamic Instructional Content Exchange (DICE). The initial purpose of the DICE PUFSIG will be to develop use cases and end-user requirements for a dynamic, digital substitute for the traditional student textbook. This effort will require defining current models for digital content distribution across the higher education environment to ensure the resultant DICE specification has the broadest application for higher education and digital content providers.
The initiative, leveraging the IMS Common Cartridge technical specification, will provide the development and distribution framework for DICE and enable enhanced student learning, increased access to learning resources, and cost reductions to students and content providers. From the use cases, the PUFSIG will oversee the development of prototypes and pilots applying the existing IMS Common Cartridge specification to create the DICE end product. Membership of the group will be kept to a manageable size, and participants will be expected to contribute to the exercises and discussions.
Background: A wide range of stakeholders will benefit from the creation of a DICE environment, especially when it is created in a Common Cartridge-compliant framework. A DICE environment will improve access to resources for teaching and learning, including the ability to better segment resources with a sharper focus on specific pedagogical needs. Common Cartridge provides a single, open-standards target for integrating available and future products, thereby reducing the costs and duplication resulting from content reformatting for a variety of proprietary formats. The DICE initiative will also explore new approaches to content transactions, distribution, and aggregation that empower existing and new channels for providing content for teaching and learning. The content under consideration includes not only digital textbooks and supplementary material, but also e-reserve readings, resources from an institutional repository, learning objects, and perhaps even tools for collaboration and analysis.
The DICE initiative is especially timely, given the broad discontent textbooks and their pricing have generated. For the vast majority of courses in higher education, textbooks and their supplementary materials constitute the primary content for teaching and learning and their costs have risen at a rate of 6% per year over the past two decades, constituting a financial burden for most students. Used books appear to offer discounts, but to compensate for this revenue shortfall, publishers must raise the price of new editions because 70% of revenue generated over the life of a text will be based on the first year’s sales. Meanwhile, textbooks are monolithic, designed to appeal to a broad range of subject matter interests, but faculty typically assign less than 80% of a textbook’s content, and students resent paying for material they don’t use. Supplementary materials can increase student learning, but they pose similar budget problems, and because they reside on publishers’ Web sites or on CDs supplied with the textbooks, the difference in format and means of access can constitute a barrier to student use. Can digital textbooks contribute to a solution to this multi-faceted problem?
Digitized versions of textbooks are now widely available from publishers, but these e-textbooks are not widely promoted by faculty or widely adopted by students despite the reduced initial cost. Part of the reason for slow adoptions may be that a digitized textbook consisting merely of page images has more perceived disadvantages than advantages. The next generation of “e-textbooks,” judiciously designed, may promote more interactivity than the printed page as well as provide integration with learning tools for simulation, collaboration and assessment – thus enhancing the learning experience while potentially reducing student costs for learning materials.
Please join us:
Participants in the DICE PUFSIG currently include:
- Ohio State University and OhioLink
- University of North Carolina-Wilmington
- California State University
- North Carolina State University
- Georgetown University
- Ryerson University
- Pearson Education
- Korea Education and Research Information Service (KERIS)
- National Association of College Stores (NACS)
- Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) representatives from the University of Virginia and Pennsylvania State University
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