Symtext, makers of “liquid textbooks,” launches with more than thirty publisher-partners, in a number of (Canadian only?) universities:
Liquid Textbooks defy pithy explanation but try this on for size: they let educators build the ideal course. Using just the content they need, from multiple sources, professors craft a living curriculum that reflects their unique style and pedagogy. Once published, Liquid Textbooks become a platform for interaction and engagement, within which teachers and students explore and learn. Think about blending the dynamism and immediacy of web 2.0 publishing with premier higher education content. Consider ‘pouring’ content into courses as events and student progress warrants it.
Also think about the implications of recombining publishers’ materials with each individual professor’s perspective and each student’s participation. You get high utility in the classroom (both physical and virtual.) And you get uniqueness. High utility and uniqueness creates value. Value for professors, value for students, value for publishers. It’s the basis for a new deal in learning materials among these three groups, and a deal that improves for each group the more they participate.
It’s also the basis for Symtext’s current mission: to unify the interests of professors, students and publishers. Coming at a point in time when students worry about price and format, professors continue their quest for best fit content, and content producers wrestle with finding The Answer to profound industry change, this mission is both well timed and well received. Now, and over the next few weeks, Liquid Textbooks will be introduced to a small sea of students at universities across Canada, supplied by over thirty different publishers. The courses themselves are diverse, including subjects like business writing, art, entrepreneurship, marketing, psychology, criminology, strategy, computing… it’s a long list. The content itself is amazingly diverse: cases, textbook chapters, videos, images, news articles, book chapters, studies, professor annotations and, equally as important, student contributions… [more...]
