Stephen Downes

As Cable Green reports, "a new sales model known as 'Inclusive Access' has taken off. Also known as automatic textbook billing, this model adds the cost of digital course content into students’ tuition and fees." We've covered this model prviously. [Direct Link]

There's a little bit of a tempest in the world of OER over how much students actually pay for course materials (and how much they cost, which isn't the same thing) in the U.S. It revolves around a widely cited figure of $1200 per year attributed to the College Board; here's an example from EdSource. Critics have argued that this cost is an over-estimate, and in this article Phil Hill points to a recently revised estimate from the College Board pegging it at $410. The most ... [Direct Link]

The best bit of this article is a 'spoiler alert' at the very bottom: "In future e-Literate posts, we will examine how many crucial practices of colleges and universities that consider themselves to be 'student-centered' are, in fact, faculty-centered." Meanwhile, this column looks at how publishers didn't design their offering for market fit, and how their clients - university professors - would have misled them even were they trying to do so. It's a good ... [Direct Link]

This lawsuit probably doesn't have much of a chance, but it does reflect the sad state of affairs that exists when students, under the blatently mis-named 'inclusive access' program, must go to extreme lengths in order to not buy a text from a major publisher. "The ‘opt-out’ process, when there is one at all, is opaque, confusing and difficult if not impossible to execute,” said the plaintiffs in the most recent lawsuit. They add that some students who have ... [Direct Link]

What's brilliant about "inclusive access" is that it makes universities and their professors willing accomplices in publishers' campaigns to gouge students for textbook content that should be free or nearly free. This article plugging inclusive access (which is actually the opposite, exclusive access comes in the wake of a one-day 30 percent drop in Pearson share prices due to declining sales. So they're really pushing this alternative model where the cost of expensive ... [Direct Link]

the use of digital textbooks in academia has faced two related problems: first, the textbooks are still more expensive that other options, such as buying and reselling physical textbooks, and second, students are in increasing numbers simply not buying the required texts. While Ryan Petersen and Jared Pearlman suggest that this may herald a new model for textbook publishing, it's not clear the solution they describe will be greeted with open arms. The model, called "Inclusive Access" ... [Direct Link]