Do Your Students Really Need that $200 Ebook?

Predatory Publishers and Ethical Questions

Tamara Powell

Department of English, Kennesaw State University, 440 Bartow Avenue, Kennesaw, Georgia, U.S.A.

Keywords: Academic Freedom, Open Educational Resources, Educational Costs, Publisher Packs, Web 2.0.

Abstract: Textbook costs have risen 1041% since 1977 (Popken, 2015). The internet allows educators to create and

disseminate educational resources and to share the wealth and the creations using special licenses. The

research is now in, and open educational resources, or OERs, have been shown to have just as good as, and

sometimes better, learning outcomes than standard publisher materials. To keep profits flowing, publishers

have designed impressive software packages marketed as superior to standard textbooks. For a hefty price

tag, students are promised superior, adaptive, and even miraculous learning experiences while the instructor

languishes in the background. This paper asks the question, what are we selling students, and what are we

losing for ourselves as teachers in this educational material jungle.

1 INTRODUCTION

Back in 1998, twenty years ago, students began

asking me, “Do we need the book?” and “Do I have

to have the book?” By 2000, students were giving me

a lot of attitude about requiring a textbook. I was

teaching technical communication. And I was starting

to receive a strong message from students along the

lines of “How dare you make me buy a

TEXTBOOK?” I remember venting to a colleague,

saying, “It’s not like I INVENTED the idea of having

a textbook in a class! What is the problem with these

students?”

I didn’t realize two key things. First, in 1988 when

I was an English major, my most expensive textbooks

cost about $50. And that was rare. Usually, the novels

my professors assigned were more like $1-$10.

English majors didn’t generally have high textbook

costs compared to other majors. Secondly, textbook

prices skyrocketed between 1988 and 1998. In fact,

“According to NBC's review of Bureau of Labor

Statistics (BLS) data, textbook prices have risen over

three times the rate of inflation from January 1977 to

June 2015, a 1,041 percent increase” (Popken, 2015).

2 THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE

A lot has changed since 1997, when I first sat down

at my new position at a state institution and was given

a very old computer to work with. A few years later,

all the faculty were invited to technology workshops,

and I found I really liked it. We were presented with

free tools like wysiwig html editors and easy little

learning activity softwares. Even dowdy old

PowerPoint had cool things you could do with it to

liven up study guides. At the end of the last century,

if your students had digital supplements for their

courses, it was because their professor was tech savvy

and liked to play with this cool new thing called Web

2.0 tools. In other words, we built our own

PowerPoints, learning exercises, games, study

guides, or what we would now call, course packs.

2.1 Web 2.0

For a while at the end of the last century and moving

into the new one, every educational conference had a

few panels devoted to Web 2.0 guides. Think your

students didn’t get enough practice on that

vocabulary? Try Hot Potatoes! Want some grammar

drills? Try GrammarBytes! Do you have some

workable html skills and want your students to play

with a very 80s looking “Choose Your Own

Adventure” scenario? Try Quandary! All of these

were free tools. Instructors were creating amazing

activities for their students at a time when such work

was not recognized by tenure and promotion

guidelines or even faculty evaluations. And to be

honest, I would share with my colleagues that I

created practice activities for my students for things

we learned in class using these free, cool softwares,

Powell, T.

Do Your Students Really Need that 200Ebook?PredatoryPublishersandEthicalQuestions.

DOI : 10.5220/0007586201910195

InProceedings of the 11th International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2019), pages191−195

ISBN : 978−989 −758−367 −4

 2019bySCITEPRESS˘ScienceandTechnologyPublications,Lda.Allrightsreserved

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and you wouldn’t be surprised to hear that sometimes

my colleagues responded with, “Why would you use

time doing that when you could, just, not do it?” And

there was no research to validate that these things

made any difference at all. At that time, too,

coursepacks for various LMSes were just being

offered by major publishers for the more widely used

textbooks. Instead of the discs of PowerPoints or

booklets of overhead transparencies we used to get,

we could download quizzes and PowerPoints right

into our LMS. As far as I know, those came with no

additional fees for the students.

2.2 The Publishers Strike Back

At the very start of the century, when the publishers

came by my office and said, “Hey, we have a whole

host of interactive, cool activities for your

composition class. They are all online. All in your

learning management system. And when your

students do them, the grades go right in the

gradebook! All you have to do is use our book for

your composition class,” I was excited. I made two

assumptions. First, I assumed that the cost would be

comparable to what I paid when I was in college. And

second, that what they created was of course much

better than what I was creating. I was wrong on both

counts. It was 2001. The software did not integrate

into Blackboard. The students were paying a lot of

money, I found out later, for a product that didn’t

work. This was the first time I had dealt with

individual access codes that came with a textbook

purchase. Sadly, the product made Blackboard

unusable in any way. I had to take it out. There was

no refund policy. It added no value to the course. And

I realized that my idea of course supplements was

much more sophisticated than the major publishers at

the time. I developed a bit of attitude. I felt that these

publishers did not know what they were doing. They

had wasted my time and the students’ money. And

from now on, it was just the textbook and my

supplements, and no fancy access codes for the

students.

I felt good about that. But I had no idea what was

going on in the world of textbook publishing.

I had attended a small, private, liberal arts school

for my undergraduate education. My tuition was

covered by scholarships, and my parents paid for my

books which weren’t that expensive because, as I

noted before, I was an English major. But not every

student is so fortunate. According to a 2012 survey

from Florida Virtual Campus, “A survey of 22, 129

post-secondary students in Florida found that 64% of

students reported having not purchased a required

textbook because of its high cost” (Hilton, 2016). As

stated in the beginning, textbook costs are rising fast.

Why? It seems there are several reasons. One is the

lockdown publishers had on education: “Tim Peyton,

vice president of strategic partnerships at Pearson,

said it was no secret that publishers like Pearson had

made textbooks too expensive and had seen sales

drop as a result” (McKenzie, 2017 “Inclusive”).

Greed proved to be the publishers’ undoing, as the

internet and then the Open Educational Resources

(OER) movement pushed out the bloated pricing.

2.2.1 Open Educational Resources

Open Educational Resources, or OERs, is a term that

was first heard at UNESCO’s 2002 Forum on Open

Courseware. The definition is below.

Open Educational Resources (OERs) are any

type of educational materials that are in the

public domain or introduced with an open

license. The nature of these open materials

means that anyone can legally and freely copy,

use, adapt and re-share them. OERs range from

textbooks to curricula, syllabi, lecture notes,

assignments, tests, projects, audio, video and

animation. (UNESCO, 2016).

OERs are not just freely available, but also freely

available to adapt and share by anyone.

When I was first asked to join the Affordable

Learning Georgia group as the Kennesaw State

University Campus Champion for Open Educational

Resources, I attended a conference where the lone

publisher representative berated us for a solid hour for

choosing inferior products for our students. “You

know what you get with free, right? You get what you

PAY FOR!” he taunted. His presentation was packed

in between speakers from OpenStax and Lumen, the

big name OER groups “You’ll wake up! You’ll

realize that you have to pay to get quality!” He was

quite obnoxious as he ranted at a group who had

assembled solely for the purpose of learning more

about Open Educational Resources, or OERs.

2.2.2 Libraries, Television, the Internet

In one way, it’s the same old story. Libraries,

television, and now the internet have all been hailed

as a revolution in education. People will be able to

learn anything, anywhere! For FREE! Or, well, free

after the purchase of the television or the computer

and internet access. And now, we are finally to a point

where there are enough resources on the internet that

we can use them instead of costly textbooks. In fact,

OpenStax and other publishers have free textbooks

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for students. But what we have learned with libraries,

and television, and now the internet is that providing

the resources isn’t enough. Especially today, the

population most in need of educational resources also

needs support in using them. The success rate in

MOOCs is abysmal, and the students who most need

degrees also need the student support elements that

are absent in most MOOCs. Along with access to free

resources, students also need teachers who can curate

those resources and support the effective use of them.

2.2.3 Course Materials in the United States

In the United States, students often wait to buy their

textbooks until after their student loans come in, and

that means they may spend the first two weeks of

class without the course materials they need to make

a strong start. Once they are behind, it is hard for them

to catch up. Or, students may choose not to purchase

the course materials at all. In a recent study by

VitalSource, which is an e-textbook provider, 85% of

students surveyed in the US and Canada “had delayed

or avoided altogether purchasing textbooks for their

courses” (McKenzie, 2017 “Study”). And the

research on OERs clearly shows that students receive

higher grades when OERs are used in a course

(Colvard, Watson, and Park 2018). They are more

likely to complete their courses. And the students who

benefited the most were “Pell eligible students,

underserved populations, and part-time students”

(Colvard, Watson, and Park 2018). It’s no magic

bullet, of course. Students perform better because

they are able to have the course materials starting

right away in the course and throughout.

In the years following that first conference on

OERs, I had publishers visit me in my office using a

variety of tactics to sell their wares. Some seemed

genuinely eager to negotiate and get the prices down

on textbooks. They had created looseleaf versions

that were quite a bit cheaper than the traditional

bound copies. They were willing to unbundle their

products—or bundle them—to pass along savings.

And then there were the publishers who were angry,

talking down to me and telling me that only publisher

materials could deliver superior learning experiences.

That the price was worth it. That I had to work with

them and assign their products in my classes because

I was the OER champion (not sure what the logic was

on that argument).

At one point, a frustrated publisher yelled at me,

“You can’t give your students what I can!” I

responded, “I can give them all that, and more. You

see, I am an expert in this field and I doubt you or

your instructional designer have a PhD in African

American women’s literature. And I can create all the

learning objects you are touting. In fact, I already

have created a great deal of them, specific to my class

and course goals.” His face was red. “Well,” he

sneered, “do you think you are going to go into the

21st century with your paper textbook and your

homemade course materials? And do you think other

faculty will follow your lead?” Again, students do

say they want the extra support that online resources

give them. In fact, 88% surveyed “felt they could earn

better grades using interactive digital course materials

that have features such as end-of-[chapter] quizzes

and online notetaking compared to traditional print

materials” (McKenzie, 2017 “Study”). But again, that

doesn’t mean we have to charge students through the

nose for such resources.

And I guess the pushy publisher representative

didn’t read the sign on the door that explained that I

was the director of my college’s Office of Distance

Education. And I guess he didn’t understand what a

technical communicator actually did, which in this

case, was teach the faculty how to create their own

course supplements. “This is Kennesaw State

University,” I responded. “And I don’t think you

know our faculty.” As he stormed out, I contacted our

Affordable Learning Georgia office to let them know

about this guy.

But while publisher representatives didn’t get

much headway with me, they got a lot of traction with

less savvy faculty who saw the products and didn’t

realize there are several parts to this “solution” they

were purchasing with their students’ money.

2.2.4 Working Hard to Stay Profitable

For example, a lot of the major publishers create

“course packs” that include quizzes and PowerPoints

and other learning objects that in the past faculty

would create ourselves. In the past, these packs were

free to download into the learning management

system. But now, students purchase a “bundle” that

includes some online resources along with the

textbook, or even better the etext because it is not

available for resale. Publisher reps will show faculty

cool videos and interactive learning activities along

with data analytics to make the sale—and maybe

throw in some gift cards or a laptop for the faculty

member as an incentive to adopt the textbook and

software. But when the class actually gets taught,

faculty who teach online might just stick the

PowerPoints and quizzes in and call it an online

course. Faculty teaching face to face might use the

PowerPoints, or change nothing about the course at

all. Students are paying a large amount for a

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“bundled” and “technologically enhanced” textbook

with all kinds of snazzy features, and yet the faculty

are not making it worth their money. It is at this point

that we have to ask ourselves, as faculty, are we

giving away our freedom to teach and create course

content because we ourselves are “buying” this

package that only the publisher can create high

quality course materials? Are we pushing high prices

onto our students at the expense of our own academic

freedom to choose the content and the way it is

taught? At the same time that we are selling our

students these high priced teaching tools, are we

selling ourselves short and letting our expertise

languish? As my colleague David Johnson asks, “If

hyperlinks, e-texts, and Google searches have

replaced deep reading guided and assisted by an

instructor, then how long will it be before YouTube,

PowerPoint, and publishers replace professors in their

university teaching role?” (Johnson, 2019).

In another example, faculty members see the

publisher demonstrate the cool features of the

courseware without asking “Is this compatible with

my LMS? Will this feature integrate into the

gradebook of our LMS? Has your company worked

with this particular LMS before? Do your customers

find this tool hard to learn to use?” And the faculty

member pushes the cost onto the students only to

realize that he or she doesn’t have time to learn how

to use this snazzy new tool. The very thing that was

supposed to teach better and save time gets pushed to

the side due to research obligations or just life, and

students have paid an extra $200 for a service or

product that the professor doesn’t use.

When direct selling to the faculty member didn’t

work as well as publishers had hoped, there was a

different strategy called “inclusive access.” Jumping

on the research findings that students don’t perform

well in courses when they don’t have the assigned

textbooks—and that students likely do not have the

assigned textbooks because they can’t afford them—

well-known publishers such as Pearson, Cengage,

and McGraw-Hill Education are part of what is called

“Inclusive Access.” It sounds good—help students

perform better by helping them to start classes with

their textbooks. But what is not stated in the

beginning of the pitch is that

institutions are signing up whole classes to

students to automatically receive digital course

materials at a discounted rate, rather than

purchasing individually. The ‘inclusive’ aspect

of the model means that every student has the

same materials on the first day of class, with the

charge included as part of their tuition.

(McKenzie, 2017 “Inclusive”)

What’s shocking about this program is that this

process happens with no input or consent from the

student. In fact, the student would have to learn about

it before classes started and “opt out” in order to avoid

the charges. While yes, students often do get the very

best prices on the course materials through this

system, publishers are winning at the expense of

student consent. And if publisher materials are not

accessible to a particular student with, for example, a

sensory disability, the student is stuck with the bill for

materials he or she cannot use.

“Inclusive Access” uses the research from the

OER movement to support major publishers’ for-

profit plan. But it is not the only publisher-driven

strategy to make money off open educational

resources. Intellus Learning (owned by Macmillan)

and Knewton (previously backed by Pearson) are

products designed to identify open educational

resources to add to courses. Universities and libraries

are the potential customers. “There are lots of free

resources!” the pitch begins. “But how can you find

them? Subscribe to our tool to get access to all the

free materials on the internet!” I was in test groups for

both these tools. Knewton had a limited amount of

disciplines it served, and even then, it wasn’t able to

find the open source materials I often used. Intellus

had such a complicated platform that it tried to force

customers to use (apparently trying also to push

customers into Pearson’s learning management

system), that it was unwieldy.

It definitely seems fishy to save students money

by paying big name publishers to find open

educational resources for our faculty to use. And why

should one do that when a resource like OASIS:

Openly Available Sources Integrated Search

(https://oasis.geneseo.edu/) exists for free. And it

works so much better than the ones that come with a

price tag! We don’t really need to spend money to

search for free resources. To be honest, we are

educated people with access to Google, so paying

extra for something that is already available to us, and

that no one can vet better than we can, doesn’t sound

very smart.

2.2.5 There’s Another Side to the Story

But OERs are not the panacea that I may have painted

them to be. At the end of the day, a qualified teacher

has to find them and shape them into a valuable

component in a class. And that work requires time

and expertise. In Hawaii, “a bill that would have

forced faculty members in the University of Hawaii

system to use open educational resources”

(McKenzie, 2018 “Hawaii”) was pulled back because

it did not take into account the realities of OER: 1)

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The materials don’t exist for every course, 2) It often

takes time for faculty to move to OERs or shape

existing OERs into appropriate course materials.

There are other limitations, as well. While many

complain that the OERs are not as high in quality as

publisher materials, research shows that both OERs

and publisher materials can be found that are high

quality or in need of editing, depending on the source.

And that brings up another issue. Stories abound

of institutions forcing faculty to write or curate or

otherwise create course materials and make them

freely available as a condition of employment. Such

stories may be apocryphal, but they raise another

issue. If faculty are forced to create OERs, will they

be motivated to create high quality OERs, or just

throw something at the students to fulfil the mandate?

One can see a dark side to OERs might exist, whereby

faculty are pushed to create or curate less than optimal

resources in the name of keeping prices down at all

costs.

2.2.6 In Conclusion

Back to the TV or internet—as the miracle of the

library showed, students who need free resources also

need a guide or teacher. Publishers are pushing hard

to take on that role—for a price that our students have

to pay in addition to tuition. Are we willing to give

that power away to a publisher who does not have our

expertise? Or shall we ponder Larry Hanley’s

injunction that “For edupunks, the commercialized

CMS imprisons teachers within an iron cage of

source software and a d.i.y. (‘do it yourself’) ethic

empower teachers to hack together projects,

platforms, networks driven by learning rather than

profit” (Hanley 12). Edupunks are defined by Jim

Groom as teachers who use technology themselves to

“challenge the ‘cold and all-consuming role that

capital plays in the shaping of technology as a means

of control’” (Hanley 2011). Let us retain our power

and our pride in our expertise as teachers and be very

aware of the true price of what publishers are asking

us to sell our students.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Affordable Learning Georgia for the

resources provided.

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