What is a Digital Textbook in 2015?

Textbook publishers have tended to groan when confronted with the need to "go digital". They shouldn't. It is an opportunity to create more powerful learning and teaching tools while moving products to a new level.

This post is written with primary and secondary level textbooks "on the mind" but may have some application for tertiary textbooks. While the ideas presented are valid for any textbook publisher, it is focused on the requirements and strategies for digital education content in developing countries.

What is a textbook?

Everyone pretty well understands that textbooks are a specialist book genre using content that supports learning concepts and skill building as defined in a curriculum. This is usually (and preferably) delivered by a teacher to students in a process called education. The knowledge and skills learnt are then (possibly) assessed with various sorts of tests or examinations.

Here is an infographic of a textbook broken into its internal and supporting components and the associated long-tail components.

There are of course other options, the component names change by publisher, region and language, and may or may not be included in any particular textbook for a particular subject. It illustrates how substantially different textbook publishing is from other publishing genres. It also illustrates a number of production opportunities for unique digital content strategies.

Starting from print

Current digital textbooks tend to be a simulacrum of a print book with some additional interactive tools "thrown in". Is this "good-enough"? If you are using the right production tools such as IGP:Digital Publisher it is at least a good starting point.

Use the print book structure and content, throw in some interactive components, make an ePub3 and "Pow" we are done. All that is left is to pat ourselves on the back for a job well done. This is usually Step 1 for many textbooks publishers; and often the last step unfortunately.

In reality few print simulacrum digital textbooks translate into an effective digital textbooks on multiple platforms and reading systems.

Blended learning is a reality for the foreseeable future so pagebreak tagging in the digital textbook adds considerable value, as do carefully planned navigation structures. However the challenges of blended learning are more than the teacher saying "turn to page 47".

It is important to remember that paper textbooks have failed a very large percentage of the world's population. Print has a basic set of limitations defined by the physicality of the medium, which boils down to the costs of production, print and distribution.

Common K12 digital textbook production challenges

1. The Language or languages

Textbook production is straight-forward in countries that have the luxury of a single language. For most countries one-language textbooks is not a fact or an option. Most governments handling multi-language education understand that mother tongue (L1 in UNESCO terms) education is essential and learning languages L2 and L3 can be built from that foundation. 

Because the only cost associated with digital textbooks (from the publisher's perspective) is translation, linguistic minorities can be realistically addressed in digital textbooks. In many parts of the world linguistic minorities are communities with millions of humans (Post Multi-language Interactive Textbooks). (For more information: Doc File Download from the U.N. OHCHR- Multilingual Education among Minority Language Communities Pamela MacKenzie, Ad Dip; MA; Phd)

The reading systems

Most publishers will want to work with ePub3 as it is standardized and can theoretically be widely used. Unfortunately for interactive education ePub3 reading systems do not provide consistent ePub3 feature implementation.

There is little in the ePub3 specification that is even remotely targeted at K12 education and real multi-lingual interactive strategies for K12 text books. This reflects in the majority of ePub3 reading systems available which are nearly all oriented towards standard paginated trade-book reading.

In developing markets in particular, but in any BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) education context a publisher will not know what device, platform, screen size or aspect ratio the end user will be using.

Publishers need to be aware of this specific challenge when converting textbooks to digital books. This is why it is best to commit production to a system like IGP:Digital Publisher so books can be updated and created in a number of editions, even for different reading systems if required.

If you are featuring up your content for better teaching and learning experiences your delivery reading system MUST support reflowable and fixed layout mixed, SVG, MathML, font-embedding and SCROLLING.

If generic reading systems (ePub3) are being targeted there is little that can be done with advanced feature digital textbooks. A textbook can be little more than the text and images replicated print book, there will be trade-book like page flipping, bookmarks and possibly some notes and that is about it. But remember if some of your target markets have never had the privelege of flipping through print books before, there is no requirement to make digital textbooks act like print books.

They may or may not support various presentation options such as rich media, SMIL, interactive Javascript and spine-level page flow control. Fallbacks for these are therefore essential and expensive.

The delivery methods

This article is not about how the computers, tablets, phablets and other devices get into the schools and to the students. That is already happening around the world faster than digital textbook production and delivery.

Getting digital textbooks to the end user devices in developing countries can be difficult. Delivery options need to include Internet delivery, local wireless delivery, workstation side-loading and USB loading or transfers to name just a few of the approaches AZARDI:Content Fulfilment addresses.

Most education content is going to be delivered on a wide range of tablets and phablets, especially in the developing world. Transitional deployment means there will also be a large number of workstations and in remote areas shared classroom monitors.

Digital content differences

There are many things that can be done to enhance and improve the value of textbooks when delivered digitally. Just some of those are:

• Include teaching tools for teachers, and even a teachers edition.
• Build in formative assessment strategies.
• Additional supporting exercises and activities for various learning concepts (remembering language and locale must be addressed).
• Consider the inclusion of audio if the target users are in a low-literacy region to empower oral learning strategies.
• Provide digital interactive activities to allow engagement with concepts and skills.
• Include group exercises and activities that promote peer to peer communication and activity.
• Digital textbook need to acknowledge that paper exists and that many skills require learners to make marks on paper, slates or whiteboards. Don't try and be digitally pure. 5 
• Don't be limited by print textbook thinking. You can enhance the core learning narrative with learning tools without affecting the print/digital blend. 
• For some markets external resources can be used online or for downloaded and printed. However it is important to remember: 1) Internet bandwidth is limited and expensive (in a relative sense), 2) there are not a lot of photocopiers in rural villages, and 3) there is limited/no budget to print exercises for all students.
• Where the bandwidth is available integrated tests that can be submitted to a teacher for evaluation and review without the weight of an LMS.

And in summary

Around the world the digital textbook move is underway. Being part of a number of multi-language developing country textbook initiatives presents new learning and implementation opportunities.

Well created digital content that is more than a print book content reloaded, empowers the education challenges of the most remote communities in the world, as well as addressing the new digital generation everywhere.

We have a series of textbook production strategy tutorials under preparation for publishers using IGP:Digital Publisher and AZARDI:Content Fulfilment. They may also be useful for other production and delivery systems as well. These will be announced shortly.

The AZARDI Learning Library (ALL) is a collection of hundreds (soon to be thousands) of curriculum concept and skill aligned interactive resources starting from basic numbers and letters through to 10th year science and maths and it is free to use with IGP:Digital Publisher. It makes creating digital books with powerful digital resources cost-effective, fast and straight-forward. By design it empowers textbook publishers to customize language, locale objects and apply their own house designs through the power of standards driven HTML and CSS.

Posted by: Richard Pipe

 

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Multi-language Interactive Text Books

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ALL-IN - The AZARDI Learning Library