Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students

A year ago, electronic textbook publishers turned down David Johnston’s big idea: the first interactive marine science textbook.

Johnston, who runs a marine biology lab at Duke University, wanted the digital tome to show undergraduate students what his scientific field has to offer. But e-book publishers said the subject matter was too niche and the requested features too expensive to make financial sense.

“When we approached them, they essentially told us we were too small,” Johnston said. Frustrated by the experience, Johnston set out to create open source software to publish the book himself.

“We are not going after the biology 101 iPad textbook. We are not trying to build the digital textbook for chemistry,” Johnston said. “We’ve created a simple tool for specialized subjects where there isn’t a textbook, and knowledge advances quickly. Being an open source effort gives academics the flexibility they need.”

The first interactive marine science textbook for the iPad is called Cachalot (French for “sperm whale”). It’s a free, app-based book that covers the latest science of marine megafauna like whales, dolphins and seals with expert-contributed text, images and open-access studies. Through a digital publication system called FLOW, the book also offers students note-taking tools, Twitter integration, Wolfram|Alpha search and even National Geographic “critter cam” videos.

FLOW isn’t the first or most feature-rich publication tool, nor is Cachalot the slickest interactive textbook on the market (a market in which Apple just announced its interest). But Johnston’s title is an easy-to-update, “good-enough” product that didn’t require millions of dollars and years of effort to create and manage. A cadre of Duke computer science graduates, in fact, built the platform in one semester on a $5,000 budget.

Johnston and his collaborators hope to get FLOW serving interactive textbooks like Cachalot to Android tablets by fall. “Our real hope in the next few years is to make this a truly cross-platform tool,” Johnston said. “Theoretically, you could access your science textbook and notes from any device. Even your web browser.”

Printed textbooks first landed in American student laps during the late 1700s. Since then they’ve become ubiquitous. It was only last year, however, that digital-only textbooks began showing up for sale.

Scientific data on digital and printed textbooks’ comparative impacts on learning is lacking, but the digital revolution is well underway. Apple’s iPads, Amazon’s Kindles and Google Android-powered devices continue to flood the market and drive down tablet computer prices.

“Kids are now growing up with these things,” Johnston said. “There’s no turning back.”

Apple’s Jan. 19 iBook announcement brought all-digital interactive textbooks like E.O. Wilson’s Life on Earth into the public spotlight. The move was more of a strategy to open up and own a tricky marketplace, however, than to create its products. The grunt work of developing software and digital textbooks was left to other companies.

“Digital publishing is orders of magnitude more complicated than print publishing. It’s really freakin’ hard to build this kind of content well,” said Matt MacInnis, founder and CEO of digital publishing startup Inkling.

Developing interactive features, dynamic text, and smooth displays of high-quality photography, video and audio all adds up, he said, to “an incredible fixed cost on the order of millions of dollars.” Making textbooks on Inkling doesn’t necessarily cost clients that much — rates vary according to the customer’s size — but it’s still a fairly intensive undertaking.

The Cachalot app, powered by FLOW, allows students to take notes, highlight text, tweet at content experts and perform Wolfram|Alpha searches without leaving the screen. (David Johnston/Cachalot)

Duke University’s open-source effort represents a departure from Inkling and other commercial ventures. It sacrifices a wide offering of interactive features, monolithic downloads and wow-factor in exchange for simplicity, speed and flexibility. As new scientific knowledge enters a field, a leading academic could make a quick edit in FLOW to instantly and seamlessly update a student’s textbook.

As important as high-quality content is, Johnston sees the software’s open-source aspect as a crucial component of its future.

“You need only look at the power and success of WordPress to understand how far open-source can take you,” said Tom McMurray, president and CEO of Marine Ventures Foundation, a conservation organization that plans to support FLOW’s continued development.

Johnston and McMurray hope to succeed where free, collaborative “Wikibooks” textbook efforts have floundered. Those invited the public at large to contribute; Johnston and McMurray seek expert contributions, and the final text is rigorously edited and peer-reviewed. The process not only provides students with the most current knowledge on a topic, but gives contributors incentive in the form of items on their academic resume.

“Scientists are often measured by their publications, and few systems allow for citable book chapters,” Johnston said. “Cachalot and future books will be peer-reviewed, so this becomes legitimate component of a [curriculum vitae].”

McMurray and Johnston plan to develop FLOW into a commercial business that offers help to universities, government agencies and NGOs looking to develop textbooks and instructional materials. But both acknowledged the difficulty of competing in a tough market, as did Inkling’s MacInnis.

“These guys are building an incredible proof of concept, something that serves us all in the pursuit of digital publishing by showing people what’s possible,” said MacInnis. “But academic projects tend not to make great business projects. It remains to be seen what happens here.”

Image: Screen capture from Cachalot, an interactive digital textbook powered by a student-created system called FLOW. (David Johnston/Cachalot)

Digital Textbooks Go Straight From Scientists to Students

(Via Wired Science.)