Reducing the Clicks from User to Content

As the back-to-class season draws closer, a number of course materials systems are hooking up.

At its own BbWorld annual conference in New Orleans, Blackboard announced plans to develop one-click access to Ingram’s Vital Source e-textbook platform directly within the Blackboard Learn learning management system. The integration, intended for both computers and mobile devices, will allow faculty and students already logged into Learn to click into digital course content without messing around with software or additional logins. Vital Source has 80,000 titles.

Blackboard is also getting a little cozier with CourseSmart. Since last November, the two have been working with 20 campuses to pilot integration of CourseSmart’s Building Block digital catalog with Blackboard Learn. Like the Vital Source arrangement, the integration enables users to access the course materials with a single sign-on. The pilot was apparently successful as Blackboard will now make Building Block available at no charge to all schools using Learn 9.1.

For its part, CourseSmart has also been dancing with Desire2Learn. In an enhanced integration announced recently, CourseSmart’s 30,000-title e-textbook catalog will be available through Desire2Learn’s learning management system. Once again, students and instructors will be able to get there via just one click.

MHE Offering LearnSmart Directly to Students

McGraw-Hill Education announced plans to make its LearnSmart adaptive learning program available directly to students in time for fall 2012 classes. The plan, an effort to open new revenue streams for the company, is the first time MHE has marketed and sold technology directly to students.

“Making these study tools available directly to students—and their parents who want to help them succeed—signals a new era for our business as we work to ensure that more students are getting the most out of their college education,” Brian Kibby, president, McGraw-Hill Education, said in a press release.

Use of LearnSmart has grown to more than 40 introductory courses since it was introduced in 2007, with MHE reporting more than 800,000 students use it to answer questions each day. But many college store professionals view publishers bypassing them in favor of selling directly to students as a threat instead of just “good business” on the part of the publisher, according to Mark Nelson, chief information officer of NACS and vice president of NACS Media Solutions.

“On one level, it is a threat, but if stores were providing sufficient value to publishers, particularly on the digital side, the publishers would have no need to go around the stores,” he said. “Stores have good mechanisms when it comes to print, but their mechanisms for handling new business models and technologies are inadequate.”

Another issue is that MHE plans to continue to sell the product in campus stores as part of the McGraw-Hill Connect online course-management platform, which combines digital learning with class materials. But rather than a call to arms, Nelson sees the news as an opportunity for stores to work with publishers to define better solutions.

“Publishers themselves would be stronger working with us,” he said. “If stores want it to stop, then they must more effectively demonstrate value. Complaining or continuing to do things the way they have always done them or resisting change does not do a whole lot to get the publishers to alter their practices.”