Science can advance quickly, rendering existing textbooks obsolete. Now new digital textbooks are emerging intended to better engage students and keep them up-to-date on the latest research. These e-books will cost (and weigh) less than the average printed tome. In January, Apple announced its iBooks 2 textbook platform for the iPad, and publishers, including McGraw-Hill, Pearson, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, have signed on to create content for it. In February, Nature Publishing Group, of which Scientific American is a part, came out with Principles of Biology, an interactive, multimedia “book” intended for university-level introductory biology classes that is accessible online using tablet computers, laptops, desktops and smartphones. Principles of Biology integrates text with videos, simulations, interactive exercises, illustrations and tests and also includes classic and current papers from Nature and related journals. Future titles in the life and physical sciences are in the works.

Marine ecologist David Johnston of Duke University and his colleagues have taken a more Wikipedia-like approach. Their app, Cachalot, is available for free on the iPad and was created with the help of volunteers: marine scientists wrote it without charge from lecture notes, a computer science class designed it, and institutions, including the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, donated images and video. The project grew out of a class of Johnston’s that focuses on large marine animals such as dolphins, turtles, seals and giant tube worms. Although writers are not paid for their contributions, their work does get peer-reviewed and published, thus making it potentially valuable when it comes time for promotion or tenure, he says.

Sharon Lynch, a science education researcher at George Washington University, says e-books such as these may eventually become mainstream but adds that research needs to be done on whether or not they are actually better than traditional textbooks. One such study is already under way at Nature Publishing Group: on some California State University campuses, students began biology on old textbooks, whereas other classes came in with Principles of Biology, so the company is doing side-by-side comparisons of how well students learned biology and how their attitudes toward science might differ, says Vikram Savkar, publishing director of Nature Education.

This article was published in print as "Textbooks Come Alive."

13 Comments

1. 1. rsabbatini 09:09 AM 4/4/12

   Does this book really exist? I have enrolled myself at Nature Education months ago, with no answer so far. If you want info about when and where it will be published, you have to write to someone, an akward way to divulge an on-line book, to say the least!

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2. 2. JamesDavis in reply to rsabbatini 08:27 AM 4/12/12

   'rsabbatini', the book exists, but it is in its infant stage. Research at the Nature Publishing Group, should give them the information they need to tweak the ebook to become self-contained with regular updates as they become available, which will render the digital textbook far superior to the regular textbook. The e-book will update its self just like your computer programs does now. The e-book should make getting an excellent education far easier and cheaper than in the past. This is the future of education and it will be incredible.

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3. 3. DES_Toronto 09:13 AM 4/12/12

   E-readers have their uses, chiefly for their portability and updatability. But as textbooks they compare badly to printed books. Reading is harder on the eyes, you can't flip back and forth nearly so easily, bookmarks, highlighting, underlining, and making marginal notes--key features in student learning--are only approximated in digital formats, badly. Ebook are great supplements to printed books, but I think in time we will see that they are by no means replacements.

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4. 4. Sahararex 09:21 AM 4/12/12

   My nephews (private) school is about to integrate the iPad into the way the students are using online material and digital books. As long as it's not a distraction I think it's an excellent idea. I myself prefer a nice big textbook, in hand. But times are changing.

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5. 5. rsabbatini in reply to DES_Toronto 09:42 AM 4/12/12

   I don't agree. I am an old lovers of books. But since I bought an iPad 2 and started to download e-books, I have been so pleased with this format and its ease to use, that I have decided to buy and download all my books in the future in this format. Flipping pages, underlining, taking notes, all the functions you have with a conventional book are absurdly easy to do. In addition you have an integrated dictionary, links to the Internet that you can check out immediately, blowup of illustrations, videos and audios, graphical animations, quizzes and so many other resources that make the e-book format an immensely powerful learning device. There is n o future for printed books, they will be as anachronistical as the LP music record.

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6. 6. geojellyroll 12:21 PM 4/12/12

   It's a positive as long as the attempt is to 'engage' and not 'entertain'.
   
   Unfortunately many young people today have the attention span of an amoeba. I find in my own field that particular variables are often emphasized becaue good visuals are available rather than because they are the most important variables.

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7. 7. superdave 03:26 PM 4/12/12

   I am doubtful that the experiments will show that the e textbooks improved grades, but I will wait to see the results.

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8. 8. uconnron 03:36 PM 4/12/12

   I agree with rsabbatini. E-book readers have too many benefits over standard texts. I would add reduced costs, especially for college students. However, I would like to see content that may be downloaded on any e-reader. We need to avoid situations where a student must purchase a proprietary reader in order to have access to a reqiured e-textbook. Alternatively, e-book publishers should be required to have their libraries compatible with all e-readers.

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9. 9. rsabbatini 04:01 PM 4/12/12

   There are several non-proprietary e-book formats, but Apple is vying strongly not only for getting its powerful format accepted as de-facto standard (it even requires that you use a Mac machine to create the e-book), but also for dominating the e-bookseller market as well (onde produced with Apples's platform, the end product cannot be sold through other e-booksellers, such as Amazon, etc). What uconron says above is pure common sense, but the only power to demand e-book publishers to adhere to free and public standards is the government, when purchasing lots of didactic e-books.

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10. 10. ahpincis 05:31 PM 4/16/12

    We have better means of communication thanks to technology but it is questionable that the standard of scholarship is so much better across the board. Maybe hard work and study is a better answer than e-books or any amount of apps. How many students today can compare themselves with Cavendish? with Mendeleev?.... et al

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11. 11. dubina in reply to rsabbatini 07:47 PM 4/16/12

    @ rsabbatini re e-book formats,
    
    I agree.
    
    Someone in government should sort out any impediment(s). Private enterprise will have its payday, but this is too important to screw up with money.

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12. 12. Robotics101 09:59 PM 4/16/12

    It doesn't matter which format is used to present information, the way people learn will remain the same. The strategies they use may well be modified in the process of learning the content, but the extent to which they dramatically change the way people learn remains to to be seen. I doubt that learning as we understand it will be dramatically changed simply because of the way the information is presented. Whether presented via traditional or digital mode doesn't alter the fact that learning requires a set of strategies - technology doesn't learn on behalf of the learner, the learner still needs to do that part.

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13. 13. collettedesmaris 03:17 AM 5/10/12

    "Science can advance quickly, rendering existing textbooks obsolete."
    
    Is it really wise to allow this to happen? Has it occurred to anyone to ponder on how they're going to read; absent of the electricity that is necessary to re-charge their electronic devices? To render existing textbooks "obsolete", & throw them by the wayside is a very big mistake. I can see this initial rendering as being the gateway to the complete demise of real books.
    
    While I must agree that the technology that we have availed to us today is absolutely amazing, I maintain that caution should be taken in having the propensity to hastily render the kind of book that one holds in their hands,"obsolete." Certainly,integrating
    simulations & videos in the learning experience would be invaluable; providing they are accurate; and that sources for data are given.
    
    The article was not clear if the electronic devices would serve to eradicate the traditional books completely. Certainly during the transition & for some time afterward, the electronic method should be backed up by traditional text books to avoid massive loss of data; in the likely event that there will be an interruption in the electrical service at some time or another.
    
    What if they do stop printing books?
    What if they throw all the current printed books away because they claim they're no longer needed?
    What if the power grid gets zapped, and the electric company has to order a transformer to fix it - only the company that makes transformers can't make one, because they have no electricity with which to run the machines to make it?
    What if the company could make the transformer by hand,but it would take a year to make?
    What if the instructions to make the transformer could
    only be accessed in an electronic book machine that
    had powered down?
    What if all the people had allowed every aspect of their lives to become dependent on electronic machines that were powered by electricity - and powered down,
    without it?
    What if the instruction manual that showed the electric company how to install the transformer or troubleshoot the system was only available in an electronic device that wasn't kept charged up because, heck - they'll never need that.
    
    It is interesting and ironic to note that the classic novel entitled "Fahrenheit 451" by author Ray Bradbury, was released as an e-book in November of 2010. As reported by the BBC News on November 30th,
    2011: "Fahrenheit 451 becomes e-book despite author's feelings." .....
    BBC News, 30 November 2011.
    
    
    
    
    
    

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