Ecosystem

The Future of Course Materials and the Impact on Higher Education

The learning content ecosystem is changing dramatically and rapidly with implications for all. The National Association of College Stores (NACS) wanted to better understand those implications—now and moving forward—for all players and identify specific actions institutions can take to support the migration to more affordable and effective course materials.

We conducted a deep analysis of the current learning content ecosystem—capturing the views of faculty, academic administrators, campus IT, content creators and publishers, content distributors and sellers, libraries, and others—to understand the forces at play and how they might shape future scenarios.

Take a look at the summary of findings and conclusions below.

Summary

With the value and cost of a college degree increasingly in question, concern about the expense and effectiveness of course materials and accountability for student success is also intensifying. The traditional model of course content creation and distribution—faculty-authored and publisher-produced textbooks—once the preeminent form of learning content, is being challenged. It also is being disrupted by new digital players and learning content formats, such as courseware, open educational resources (OER), and adaptive (or personalized) learning that promise lower costs and better outcomes.


Faculty, who largely still prefer print textbooks, will face increasing accountability for the impact their course materials decisions have on students’ pocketbooks and overall success. This, combined with backlash from students over required course materials that aren’t used, and more widespread use of learning analytics, will further push institutions to more carefully consider how course materials are selected, distributed, used, and ultimately how they contribute to student outcomes.  


Several key factors emerging, driving change


While overlapping waves of digital innovation are the most influential and destabilizing variable affecting the ecosystem, other important forces are at work as well:


  • U.S. college and university enrollments overall are flat.
  • U.S. policymakers and educators are shifting their focus from funding and policies that make college accessible and affordable to those that address student success (e.g. graduation rates and workforce readiness).
  • Enrollment in fully online courses and programs is now commonplace, and online students source more of their learning content online and in digital form than do on-campus students.
  • Today’s students and faculty prefer print textbooks but students are willing to shift to digital when costs and circumstances are right.
  • While the prices of new textbooks continue to rise, student per capita spending on learning content is declining. Students rent new and used books; buy used, older, or foreign editions; use (legal and illegal) download sites; or borrow course materials. A few even forego purchasing course materials entirely.
  • Amazon has entered the college learning content ecosystem with its Amazon Campus program. Its scale, brand power, and technology leadership is a game changer.

NACS expects a growing shift towards digital in the next three to five years


Although NACS’ latest Student Watch™ survey from Spring 2015 shows that current students (and faculty) prefer print textbooks, potential cost savings and enhanced learning experiences are fueling interest in the transition to digital content—and ultimately adaptive learning courseware and platform-based products. Student Watch™ also showed that the use of digital course materials is slowly but steadily climbing in use, about three percent during the 2014-15 academic year.


  • Digital course content and learning products will continue to grow in the short term.
  • Institutions will begin exploring licensed courseware, that integrates classroom lectures and discussion with content.
  • There will be a greater emphasis on improving student outcomes through personalized learning.
  • Demands for affordability and improved outcomes will fuel the race to courseware and adaptive content.

Power is shifting from few to many  


There will continue to be a proliferation of content creators, producers, and distributors. In the distribution channel, conditions will favor retailing giants and smaller, “niche” players that can provide value-added, localized, in-person services. Large retailers have the ability and scale to negotiate favorable pricing. Smaller retailers can use customer, campus, and industry knowledge to better serve students and contribute to their success. Implementing a “concierge services” (online or in person) to guide students through the content options universe and match course materials options to their profiles/needs is one example of assistance smaller retailers can provide to students.



Never in its history has the learning content ecosystem experienced such widespread ambiguity and change—all elements of the learning content ecosystem are in flux. But one thing is certain: Every institution will need to consider a multidimensional and boundary-spanning learning content strategy if the transition to digital learning content and courseware is to proceed smoothly. Failure to do so likely will fragment the student experience as decisions to adopt learning content vary from course to course and as untested courseware and digital academic services are adopted and discarded. Unmanaged, the gap between courseware’s capabilities and the faculty's use of them will frustrate students and lead to substantial underutilization of the institution’s investments.


Getting the institution’s arms around learning content strategy needs to be both a team effort and a priority


  • Changes in learning content and services will intersect with academic policy, technology, student privacy, pedagogy, instructional costs, course materials accessibility, incentives, revenue management, and more.
  • Developing an effective policy and strategy needs to begin sooner rather than later and include all relevant campus stakeholders and service providers.

Institutions should carefully evaluate models for the delivery of course materials as well as formats


The institution’s objectives and the type of campus must be carefully weighed; what works at one campus won’t necessarily work for another. In deciding what’s best, administrators, campus store leaders, IT, libraries, and faculty should work together to come up with a recommendation.


There are many factors and tradeoffs to consider as the institution evaluates organizational cost, revenue, and value structures related to learning content on campus, such as:


  • The desired level of faculty and other campus stakeholder involvement in the creation of both custom and commercial learning content
  • Copyright, fair use, licensed use, and compliance in an increasingly “open” world
  • The  use of third-party solution providers and the related implications for control of offerings, pricing, revenues, and service levels compared to the economies of scale and potentially expanded options for students
  • Mobile usage: Students want to make course material purchases through their mobile phones or tablets, and be able to access their course materials via these devices as well
  • Students’ ability  to use financial aid to purchase their course materials

There will be an emerging student learning and success services market:


  • Campuses could create a one-stop physical and virtual environment that aligns providers of instruction and services—library, dean of students, academic advising and related student services, residential life, tutoring, career counseling, and placement.
  • As students have more learning options and become smarter consumers of education, this could be a differentiator for institutions in the future. Institutions (potentially with the campus store as an aggregator) that can offer the “smartest” and most effective student success support services will win hearts and minds.

As the course materials and retailing experts on campus, the professionals who manage the institution’s store should play a key role in making decisions about course materials and related services supporting student success in the future.


  • Campus store professionals have deep knowledge of course material formats and delivery.
  • They have years of experience managing and sourcing multiple content providers to support students, faculty, and the academic missions of their institutions.
  • This knowledge is a significant institutional asset that should be tapped by college administrators when exploring delivery models and options for sourcing and providing course materials.
  • The store is a logical organizer for campus discussions about learning content strategy; it is connected to all parties—students, faculty, content creators, and other campus service centers such as the library and IT.
  • The store can serve as a knowledgeable resource on the market, contracts, and other variables that will affect the economics and success of course materials sales and academic content licensing.
  • Campus stores are well-positioned to play a leading role in envisioning, sourcing, brokering, and delivering student learning content for their institutions, but they will need the support of the administration to make this happen.

T Y P E S   O F 

Ecosystems:

Universities

Creators

Manufacturers

Distributors

Retailers

Consumers

Learning Services

Actions to Consider

Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem

  • Purpose

    The intended outcomes of the "Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem" research project white paper are to:


    • Provide a high-level overview of the “learning content ecosystem.”
    • Describe the elements or “players” in this ecosystem.
    • Identify the dominant competitive forces that are influencing or shaping both the individual elements and the ecosystem as a whole.
    • Construct possible planning scenarios that might extend from an analysis of trends, forces, and players.
    • Identify actions for college stores and their host universities to consider as they adapt to changing conditions.
  • Sponsorship and Leadership of this Project

    “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” is a project of the National Association of College Stores (NACS)—which serves the multi-billion dollar collegiate retail industry. The project was generously funded by the NACS Foundation in the belief that the landscape of higher education course content creation, manufacture, distribution, aggregation, support, and consumption is undergoing profound change and that NACS members and higher education, in general, needed a well-researched and impartial description of the changes that are unfolding. It is our hope that the white paper and other deliverables, resources, and educational programming based on this project will support college store leaders and campus administrators to set priorities and make adaptive investments and changes with a higher degree of confidence.

  • Ecosystems

    Ecosystem is a useful term borrowed from environmental biology to describe a system, or a group of interconnected elements, formed by the interaction of a community of organisms with their environment. The term was implemented in the manufacturing context to describe the interplay between auto makers and the raw materials and parts suppliers that collectively comprise the auto industry. Today, the term is used on a regular basis to describe the complex and inter-connected networks that comprise any number of industries. Similarly, college stores are an element of the long-lived ecosystem that includes students, faculty members, publishers, distributors, academic librarians, and others. For our purposes, the learning content ecosystem includes college- and university-level:


    • Academic enterprises (colleges and universities) that currently unify the ecosystem
    • Content creators
    • Content manufacturers (publishers)
    • Content distributors (including academic libraries)
    • Content retailers (campus stores and others)
    • Content consumers (both faculty recommenders and student users)
    • Learning and success services
  • Student Success and the Learning Content Ecosystem

    If there are core forces that unify the educational landscape and ecosystem, surely they must include: (1) the decentralization and independence of U.S. higher education; and (2) the hegemony of the faculty in matters related to the content of instruction. Recently, disturbances in these forces have been felt. In particular, as the importance of intellectual capital has risen, so has the importance of postsecondary education. In the U.S. parents, policy makers, legislators, regulators, and trustees are responding to higher education’s rising costs and low rates of completion with demands for closer oversight, tighter controls, greater standardization, and explicit linkages between higher education outcomes and the competencies needed in the modern work force. Those leading the growing movement for student success correctly observe that student persistence, retention, and graduation depend on more than willing students, effective instructors, and sound course materials. Therefore, the project includes reference to the emerging student learning services market which—in ecological terms—is like the arrival of a species in our competitive mix. The emergence of this market may herald a fundamental change in the landscape of higher learning itself.

  • Disruption

    The transformation of a competitive landscape and its ecosystem is a rare event. Adaptive change is characterized by long periods of incremental change punctuated by infrequent mutations and transformations. In commerce, the invention of speech, writing, and the printing press shocked or disrupted the ecosystem. But it took hundreds of years for these shocks to be refined, assimilated, and diffused into widespread practice. These periodic shocks and their assimilation re-shape our landscape fundamentally. In the West, the introduction of writing reduced the influence of the Socratic dialog, but nurtured the library and created the conditions needed for establishing the first great universities. The printing press, reduced the need for and stature of scriptorium monks, while fostering literacy, and birthing the publishing and bookselling industries.


    Today, we live and work in another time of frame-breaking, disruptive change. And none is as potent as the digital revolution. Computers and networks—and their ecosystems—have made billions of people printers, typographers, distributors, collectors, and consumers of written content. Similarly, digital technologies and digital content are disrupting all industries and firms whose business model hinges on the control of some aspect of the flow of information content.


    In 2013, the number of digital books purchased surpassed the number of printed books for the first time. As of 2014, 87.5% of the U.S. population had Internet access (Internet World Stats). Of these, 166 million watched at least one video on a computer—most likely on YouTube and Netflix. In 2015, internet penetration globally will reach 50 out of every 100 people (Forrester). And the next great turn of the digital screw may be the most disruptive of all. The Internet of Things (IoT) promises to imbed intelligence and communications capabilities in everything. It is safe to imagine that in the near future, collegiate teaching and learning will take place everywhere. These drivers and resultant changes are already having massive impact on the learning content ecosystem.

  • Evolution, Transformation, and Extinction

    Technologies and innovations that spread information and capabilities widely often empower individuals while dis-empowering the institutions that pre-date them. At the heart of the college or university operating model is the belief that knowledge and know-how are scarce and must be aggregated, protected, and rationed. It is easy to understand why crowd sourcing, e-commerce hubs, social media, mobile payment systems, and other changes in technology and practice that empower the individual also challenge the institution and its college store. For example, what happens to retailers when student commerce hubs and mobile payment systems make it possible for every consumer to become a merchant? What happens when transfer of credits becomes the expected norm and comparable classes (at a lower price) are only a click away? These are only two scenarios to illustrate—in a world of digital learning content, massive open online courses (MOOCs), and third-party tutors and testers—how hard it has become for institutions and campus stores to plan for the future. From their inception, a key competitive advantage enjoyed by any college or university—and its college store—was geographic. Most served students in their immediate community, city, region, or state. In today’s world, “local” increasingly means on your desktop, in your backpack, or in your pocket. Digital technologies make it possible for educators or merchants on the network to trump the geographic advantage. Location is no longer a sustainable basis for competitive advantage.


    Technologies and innovations that spread information and capabilities widely often empower individuals while dis-empowering the institutions that pre-date them.


    Our ability to see the past dissolve when combined with our inability to put the future into sharp focus can lead to hyperbole and fear mongering. It is a uniquely tricky time to run an academic publishing house, a college store, a university Library, or a college. This paper does not presume to provide clear answers for these profoundly challenging questions. However, it does make the case for developing the capacity to:


    • amass and use data,
    • employ effective and sophisticated analysis, and
    • organize for data-driven decisions and fast action.

    History clearly favors the nimble. And students of evolutionary biology argue that sustainability depends in part on the ability of individual organisms to respond morphologically, physiologically, or behaviorally to changes in the environment. Higher education (and all of its component parts) must become more nimble, and determine and make the adjustments necessary to respond to the changes occurring in their environment, which includes the learning content ecosystem.

  • Methods and Analytical Frameworks

    This white paper is the first product of six months of research. Research consisted of:

    • Extensive review of the secondary literature related to the learning content ecosystem.
    • Development, deployment, and analysis of surveys of faculty, students, and college stores.
    • Conducting of interviews and analyzing qualitative interview data to extend, elaborate, and add color to findings drawn from surveys and the secondary literature.
    • Integration and synthesis of information from the literature review, surveys, and interviews.

    The underlying surveys employed were developed carefully and according to accepted academic practices. The statistics, too, were applied rigorously and tested for reliability and significance. The surveys, however, were deployed with the involvement of NACS volunteers representing NACS member stores. The resulting sampling therefore does not meet the highest tests of randomization or stratification. While we believe these results to be indicative and reliable, they do have limits.


    Our synthesis incorporates many analytical techniques, and draws heavily from the work of Professor Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School. Professor Porter’s Five Forces framework provides a coherent, comprehensive, and convenient way for business practitioners to understand the structure and competitive dynamics of their industry. Therefore, within our analysis of each element of the learning content ecosystem will be found an assessment of those forces:


    • Competitive rivalry within the industry
    • Potential of new entrants into industry
    • Power of suppliers
    • Power of customers
    • Threat of substitute products

    It is our hope that the project white paper and other resources will be of practical value to college store leaders and professionals and to all those who depend on the higher education learning content ecosystem. To assist in consuming and sharing this volume, each chapter addressing an element of the learning content ecosystem will: (1) begin with a brief summary and key points; (2) reiterate and summarize the Five Forces analysis for the element, and (3) conclude with Critical Questions to consider and Further Readings.


  • White Paper and Related Reports

    The “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” project included both primary and secondary research that has culminated in a definitive project report (or White Paper) and two companion reports that provide key findings from the NACS-sponsored surveys of leaders from its college store members and faculty from a selection of campuses.


    These three reports, the Executive Summary of the project White Paper, and a consolidated list of "Critical Questions" (the White Paper Appendix) are available here for your convenience. The project White Paper, Executive Summary, and consolidated list of "Critical Questions" are also available throughout this site along with subsections related to specific ecosystem components.

Download our White Paper and Related Reports

White Paper

Complete report of the “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem”
research project
Executive Summary

The must-read overview of the project report—including Actions to Consider
Critical Questions

Appendix to the project White Paper offering the complete list of questions college store professionals should ask/respond to for each component of the ecosystem
Faculty Perspectives Report

Key findings from the NACS-sponsored survey of faculty on issues related to the current and future learning content ecosystem; with summary implications to consider from the project leads
Store Perspectives Report

Key findings from the NACS-sponsored survey of NACS member college store leaders on issues related to the current and future learning content ecosystem; with summary implications to consider from the project leads
Viewpoints on Learning Content

Summary of themes from qualitative interviews of campus administrators regarding course materials issues and the challenges they face (including provosts, librarians, IT and academic technology, and auxiliary services). Includes a list of critical questions for campus store leaders to consider in determining store strategy.

COLLEGIUM

The Learning Content Hub—Colleges and Universities

Summary

The traditional U.S. colleges and universities are at the center of a higher education system that is being disrupted by consumer, funding, regulatory, and competitive business model forces. The distribution of power is shifting from incumbent players to different long-time stakeholders and new entrants. As a central and substantial element of the learning content ecosystem, colleges and universities and the changes they are undergoing must be understood and monitored.

Key Points

  1. Higher education institutions have occupied the central position in the learning content ecosystem for more than one thousand years.
  2. The physical form of the modern college and university has not changed tremendously since the 12th century.
  3. However, today’s landscape consists of a diverse mix of public, private, independent, religious-affiliated, andgrant, research-intensive, two-year, four-year, non-profit, for-profit, online, and on-ground institutions whose missions, structures, business models, and economics may all vary widely.
  4. Changing student preferences, growing budgetary and regulatory pressure on public universities, a softening of enrollments nationwide, rising concerns of rating agencies, destructive tuition discounting among many private non-profits, and a steady U.S. slide in world ranks in key measures of success like graduation rates, lead many to conclude that U.S. higher education is ripe for disruption and ultimate transformation.
  5. Characterizing all colleges and universities as “perpetuities”distracts from the pressing existential challenges many particular institutions may soon face. Astute college store leaders need to understand the financial health and sustainability of the institutions they support.
  6. A short list of potent trends that all campus leaders should be aware of includes:
  • Cost disease—the rising “sticker price” of a college or university education
  • Cost shifting—the shift of higher education cost burden from states to students
  • Slow enrollment growth—a mature teaching and learning business for which increasing participation rates is slow and difficult
  • Growing pressure to standardize and demonstrate results
  • Rapid adoption of online education
  • Venture philanthropies/private equity firms leading a “siege of academe”

Learn More

Quick Study

Summary, Key Points, Scorecard, and Critical Questions for this ecosystem segment


Deep Dive

The full chapter on this specific ecosystem segment


Critical Questions

Appendix to the project White Paper offering the complete list of questions college store professionals should ask/respond to for each component of the ecosystem


Executive Summary

White paper Executive Summary offers an overview of the entire project report—a must read!


White Paper

The full “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” report

SEMINATOR

Learning Content Creation

Summary

The faculty roles of content expert and learning content author, and the preeminence of the textbook as of the form and measure of learning content, are being disrupted by publishers and others moving into new roles and creating new learning content formats. Open Educational Resources (OERs) are also poised to take a share of the learning content market if they hit stride. Student choices and behaviors are, and will continue, shaping learning content. Student performance is the emerging driver that all content creators must successfully address.

Key Points

  1. For a century, faculty members’ work [as expert,] to vet research and to establish disciplinary norms has been an indispensable resource.
  2. Digital technology has diluted those roles and blurred the distinction between faculty’s local creation of content for their courses and the globally shared resources of commercial publication.
  3. The textbook’s value proposition of authority, accessibility, and affordability sustained the college textbook in the past century, and it remains the mainstay of high-enrollment introductory courses. But assorted forces are picking apart that kingpin status.
  4. The most significant response to the cost crisis has been the rise of the open educational resources (OER) movement—the basic proposition of which is to restore textbook affordability by socializing production costs and offering materials free or at radically reduced prices to end consumers.
  5. More sophisticated, “smart” digital materials have the potential to marginalize faculty content creators. Creating higher value-added adaptive learning content and gaining greater control over the education value chain are prominent among the publishing industry’s solutions to the erosion of the print textbook market.
  6. It seems likely that professorial expertise will play a less dominant role in formal learning content creation in coming years. From below, faculty authors will face competition from empowered amateurs and “edupreneurs” determined to democratize learning access or re-direct profits. From above, publishers will turn to platforms and products they control.
  7. Key Trends:  Price pushback, declining course materials sales, OER gathering funding and political support, digital educational content gains ground, zero-cost distribution channels, winner-takes-all economics, and proliferation of content creators

Learn More

Quick Study

Summary, Key Points, Scorecard, and Critical Questions for this ecosystem segment


Deep Dive

The full chapter on this specific ecosystem segment


Critical Questions

Appendix to the project White Paper offering the complete list of questions college store professionals should ask/respond to for each component of the ecosystem


Executive Summary

White paper Executive Summary offers an overview of the entire project report—a must read!


White Paper

The full “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” report

EDITUS

Learning Content Manufacturing—Publishing

Summary

Scholarly and academic content publishing has relied upon a close partnership between authors (often faculty) and “manufacturers” (typically publishers). Digital disruption, changes in teaching and learning, and the rise of new consumer expectations and product innovations are creating extreme pressure on the traditional model and leading to revolutionary changes within the incumbent publishing companies. New digital adaptive learning products and platforms could alter the face of learning content in substantial ways and for years to come.

Key Points

  1. The act of scholarly publishing was designed both to diffuse new knowledge and confer credit on its discoverer. It initially was controversial, unprofitable, and widely ridiculed.
  2. The transition to digital textbooks and other learning content is proceeding slowly—disrupting the publishing industry in key ways:
  • Pedagogy is evolving: The lectio mode is being supplemented or replaced.
  • The ante in academic publishing is rising.
  • Rich primary and secondary resources are within easy reach—often at no cost to users.
  • A stubborn OER movement is maturing and strives to “liberate” learning content manufacturing from the publishers.
  • Digital media stimulate changes in human behavior, patterns of consumption, and preferences.
  1. A key challenge for academia and its publishers is maintaining the integrity of the peer review process, while making the process faster and more transparent.
  2. The key trends in learning content manufacturing include:
  • Publishers making significant investments in digital capabilities to enable learning content to do more and go further digitally.
  • Rising rental of physical and digital textbooks and the emergence of online sourcing as standard store practice are both depressing sales of new textbooks.
  • The critical need to make learning content discoverable and useable internationally.
  • Publishers turning focus to courseware and monetizing content by incorporating licenses into the courseware they sell.
  1. As publishing and education become increasingly dependent on cost containment, service quality, globalization, demonstration of outcomes, and sophisticated technologies, they must increasingly look over their shoulders at giants like Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple.

Learn More

Quick Study

Summary, Key Points, Scorecard, and Critical Questions for this ecosystem segment


Deep Dive

The full chapter on this specific ecosystem segment


Critical Questions

Appendix to the project White Paper offering the complete list of questions college store professionals should ask/respond to for each component of the ecosystem


Executive Summary

White paper Executive Summary offers an overview of the entire project report—a must read!


White Paper

The full “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” report

AGGREGATIO PARTICIO

Academic Content Distribution, Wholesaling, and Aggregation

Summary

The role of the distributor is shifting, and new business models, products and their functionality, and decisions by institutions and students on how to achieve their respective teaching and learning goals will largely determine the new players and characteristics of learning content distribution. Publishers are pursuing paths that strengthen ties directly to student and institution. Traditional players are reinventing themselves, while both start-up and entering “giants” threaten to claim the role.

Key Points

  1. The role of the distributor is shifting from logistics management of physical objects to curation, identity and access management, privacy and security management, and marketing and outreach to students. The balancing act for the hybrid distributor is managing the longstanding commercial relationship with college stores and the emerging one with students.
  2. As students make increasing use of a rising number of distribution channels for learning content, the ability of the college store in negotiations with distributors is likely to grow weaker.
  3. Potential substitutes threaten the existing niches occupied by distributors:
  • Rise of the business-to-consumer (B2C) distribution model
  • Emergence of student portals—designed to support student learning needs such as coaching, advisement, test preparation, and tutoring
  • New academic content licensing models
  • Rise of massive-scale course aggregators—such as MOOC platform providers EdX and Coursera
  • A shift from buying and owning to subscribing and streaming
  1. Key players include very large publishers in this space, traditional distributors like Ingram, and an emerging class of digital content distributors. Those providers with tools that facilitate faculty adoption or student discovery and acquisition will likely win the day.
  2. Innovations and technologies that distributors need to track and experiment with include: subscription licensing and pricing; adaptive or personalized learning materials tied to publishers’ information systems; courseware with licenses that restrict sharing, lending, renting, and resale; and learning analytics that can help teachers and students but are tethered to the publishers.

Learn More

Quick Study

Summary, Key Points, Scorecard, and Critical Questions for this ecosystem segment


Deep Dive

The full chapter on this specific ecosystem segment


Critical Questions

Appendix to the project White Paper offering the complete list of questions college store professionals should ask/respond to for each component of the ecosystem


Executive Summary

White paper Executive Summary offers an overview of the entire project report—a must read!


White Paper

The full “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” report

MERCATURA

Learning Content Retailing

Summary

The long-standing mission of the college store to ensure availability of adopted course materials for purchase has evolved to include provision of other products and services that support and facilitate student learning and enhance the campus experience for all. Current and emerging trends in higher education, learning content, and retailing suggest another evolution is due for college stores that want to remain relevant to their campuses and the students they serve. Important choices must be made about products, services, strategic partners, and the role of the college store in the campus enterprise.

Key Points

  1. The missions of college stores have evolved and vary in their particulars with the institutions they serve. Certainly they serve as an indispensable resource to faculty and students in assuring adopted learning content is available. Additionally, they advise on media options, offer a range of acquisition alternatives, and accommodate students’ varying financial needs.
  2. Since the turn of the 20th century, at least four major disruptions have affected the retail selling of learning content: Bookstore chains, e-commerce and the online bookstore, e-books, and an evolving disruptor forming at the intersection of emerging e-market hubs, mobile payments, and the so-called sharing economy.
  3. In no other element of the ecosystem have the competitive dynamics been changed so profoundly due to digital disruption. Continued maturation of digital learning content, mobile commerce, and the emergence of digital learning services is likely to keep them in a heightened state of flux for the foreseeable future. Three key themes dominate the digital disruption:
  • empowerment of the consumer;
  • advantages that accrue to booksellers who can leverage both purchasing power and operational economies of scale; and
  • growing capacity of online booksellers to leverage customer data and new online services into customer experiences and relationships.
  1. Retail operators increasingly understand that they must configure their systems and operations to shift from being a transaction broker to a partner.
  2. Unless Amazon chooses to become a full-service contract brick-and-mortar retail operator, it will compete as it always has—on price and convenience. Independent college stores in the context of this escalating competitive rivalry are unlikely to be able to compete on price, but instead must continue to leverage their institutional connection.

Learn More

Quick Study

Summary, Key Points, Scorecard, and Critical Questions for this ecosystem segment


Deep Dive

The full chapter on this specific ecosystem segment


Critical Questions

Appendix to the project White Paper offering the complete list of questions college store professionals should ask/respond to for each component of the ecosystem


Executive Summary

White paper Executive Summary offers an overview of the entire project report—a must read!


White Paper

The full “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” report

CONSUMPTRIX

Learning Content Consumers—Faculty and Students

Summary

Consumption of course materials is a complicated mix of faculty control of content choice and student management of purchase, obtaining otherwise, or foregoing the content. Students (and faculty) still prefer print, but potential cost savings and a better learning experience can and is fueling the transition to digital content—especially adaptive learning courseware and platform-based products. OERs, low-cost and tradition-bucking entrants, and federal/state intervention are motivating an evolution of historic consumption and business models. The primary concern may be what happens to learning and academic success if more and more students choose not to obtain learning materials at all.

Key Points

  1. Advocates of instructor autonomy argue that it encourages intellectual diversity, leverages instructor expertise, places decisions with those best able to judge student needs, and reduces the risk of political intrusion on curricular decisions. Yet it limits the ability to achieve economies of scale (volume purchases) and discourages large-scale assessment of course material effectiveness. Some also suggest it lies at the heart of rising prices by separating textbook choice and payment.
  2. The risk of breaking the link between faculty learning content adoption and assignment and student study/reading behavior has far-reaching implications for the learning content ecosystem.
  3. Digital course materials that provide a better learning experience and a significant cost advantage could overcome today’s students’ apparent preference for print.
  4. Publishers have begun marketing and white labeling entire online courses.
  5. As affordability and success pressures build and new learning products and business models emerge, colleges and universities are likely to experiment with strategies that shift adoption away from autonomous faculty and toward academic leadership and high-volume sales.
  6. Students, for their part, have also enjoyed an expanding range of acquisition options. However, students increasingly are avoiding acquisition altogether.
  7. Select key trends include: Widespread reliance on adjunct/part-time faculty and the related centralizing of course materials decision making; growing resentment about the rising cost of textbooks; declining student time spent reading and low utilization of required learning content; rising availability and sophistication of digital content, including adaptive learning platforms; and growing student use of contemporary retail shopping techniques, use of free web sources, pirating of content, or avoiding acquisition altogether.

Learn More

Quick Study

Summary, Key Points, Scorecard, and Critical Questions for this ecosystem segment


Deep Dive

The full chapter on this specific ecosystem segment


Critical Questions

Appendix to the project White Paper offering the complete list of questions college store professionals should ask/respond to for each component of the ecosystem


Executive Summary

White paper Executive Summary offers an overview of the entire project report—a must read!


White Paper

The full “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” report

SERVITIUS

Learning and Success Services

Summary

Higher education faces the great challenge of re-balancing access and success with cost-effective solutions. This and related forces are creating an emerging student learning and success services market. While students may continue to self-source via online providers (new and old), institutions need scalable alternatives. The primary publishers and many start-up, technology-enabled providers are emerging as potential solutions for institutions to contract their way to a new future of student success and achievement. Institutions (potentially with the college store as an aggregator) or other providers that can offer the "smartest" and most effective services will win out—so long as students acknowledge the value and vote with their dollars and engagement.

Key Points

  1. Pressure to improve graduation rates at U.S. institutions is driving many to expand services that help students resolve academic difficulties or life and work issues that threaten their progress.
  2. Higher education’s underinvestment in academic support, frenzied private-sector experimentation, and digital destabilization have produced an emergent student learning services sector in which students are gaining more power to substitute options they prefer for officially sanctioned ones.
  3. The landscape that is emerging might be pictured as an archipelago of separate islands of varying sizes—influenced by improved understanding of the inter-play between cognitive and non-cognitive factors impacting student success.
  4. Higher education’s chief value proposition is that it alone can provide the educated workforce and citizenry needed to meet 21st-century challenges. So if a large proportion of those who want a degree fail to earn one, a basic promise is compromised. And it has become evident that access does not guarantee success.
  5. Evidence is mounting that “ancillary” services and co-curricular support offerings factor heavily into student persistence, course completion, retention, and eventual graduation. However, those services are expensive and difficult to scale as traditionally delivered.
  6. The new student learning services ecosystem is being shaped by four kinds of disruption:
  • the institutional challenge of adopting a culture of student success in an era of declining funding;
  • a digital solutions marketplace able to economically deliver student learning services;
  • the growing availability of do-it-yourself learning services; and
  • an alliance of leaders keen to persuade or coerce higher education into new practices.
  1. New entrants and partners will emerge that have the capacity to help institutions identify at-risk or unguided students for targeted attention, build better self-service resources, track advising case histories, and equip limited institutional staff with information to increase their effectiveness. The college store could play a role in sourcing, distributing, and brokering services contracted by the institution or sought by students themselves.

Learn More

Quick Study

Summary, Key Points, Scorecard, and Critical Questions for this ecosystem segment


Deep Dive

The full chapter on this specific ecosystem segment


Critical Questions

Appendix to the project White Paper offering the complete list of questions college store professionals should ask/respond to for each component of the ecosystem


Executive Summary

White paper Executive Summary offers an overview of the entire project report—a must read!


White Paper

The full “Mapping the Learning Content Ecosystem” report

CONCLUSIONS

  • Conclusions

    Never in its history has the learning content ecosystem experienced such widespread uncertainty and change. Campus store leaders need to make decisions every day, but must also think and act strategically. To support both in light of this project’s findings, the Conclusions section offers five sets of concepts and considerations to guide your thinking, strategy development, and next steps:

    • Seven areas that require monitoring
    • Seven vectors of change as the ecosystem continues to evolve
    • Five possible scenarios for the near future around which college stores should plan
    • Three general visions or philosophical approaches—one of which must ground store action plans
    • Nine specific actions for stores to consider as they develop tactics for their action plans
  • Areas to Monitor

    The authors’ analysis suggests seven areas college store professionals should monitor on an ongoing basis. An abridged version of those items appears below.


    • Higher education’s professoriate is now split between full-time salaried tenure track professors and part-time contract-based adjunct instructors. Understanding who makes adoption decisions and how adoption decisions are made are important priorities for college store leaders.
    • The shift to digital is likely to accelerate as we move from 2015 to 2020.
    • A variety of mounting pressures are likely to foster greater standardization in general education. This growing standardization will have an impact on the learning content ecosystem.
    • The publishers’ business model of creating new editions and offering digital supplements at ever-rising prices is running out of steam.
    • The ailing textbook model, a maturing OER movement, the wide availability of learning content on the web, and other factors are leading publishers to reconceive textbooks as courseware.
    • The successful migration to courseware will depend on institutional licensing of courseware; that is, replacing student-directed textbook spending with institutionally-mandated course material fees.
    • While the evidence is striking that per capita student spending on learning content is declining, the reasons for the decline are not cause for celebration. The hue and cry against rising new textbook prices is unlikely to diminish and the actions of college store operators in the next three to five years may define them as either part of the problem or part of the solution.
  • Vectors of Change

    The authors also describe seven vectors of change along which the “areas to monitor” and the ecosystem, in general, will evolve during the next few years. An abridged version of those items appears below.


    1. There will be continued momentum in digital, social, and connected. Digital, adaptive learning content will likely dominate the academic landscape in three to five years.
    2. The intensifying focus on student success will continue. The role of learning content in student success is likely to come under scrutiny.
    3. Conditions will favor “minnows and giants.” Power has long favored the publishers and distributors in the learning content ecosystem. “Going digital” favors giants (like Amazon) and small, agile, and customer-focused “minnows” (like campus stores) to dominate niche markets.
    4. Higher education student academic services are becoming unbundled and privatized.
    5. The use of courseware will rise, while the use of textbooks will decline. The student trend away from new textbook purchases will likely continue or accelerate. Large publishers will continue to move to courseware that integrates classroom lectures and discussion with content that would have been found in textbooks.
    6. General education courses and programs will become more standardized.
    7. The power of the consumer is rising. In a nutshell, students have options.
  • Scenarios

    These vectors of change draw attention to a gathering storm that will very likely define the learning content ecosystem in the next three to five years. College store professionals are encouraged to use this short timeframe to plan around the following possible scenarios (including probability predictions from the authors). An abridged version of those items appears below.


    1. The heated frog. The water temperature is rising (p=.95); college stores are resourceful and will likely take action, so likelihood of staying beyond the boiling point is low (p=.3).
    2. The triumph of commercial courseware. High quality courseware is likely to find acceptance in fully online graduate programs (p=.7), may also gain traction in the general education curricula of two-year colleges (p=.6), but is less likely to be widely adopted in the near-term by career ladder teaching faculty (p=.2).
    3. The virtual hub becomes central…key campus service centers or another party(ies) position to aggregate and integrative student learning services, but not likely in the next three to five years (p=.4).
    4. A giant comes knocking. The likelihood that Amazon/others come knocking is high (p=.99).
    5. Coming from behind…OER is gaining speed. OER is a dark horse candidate (p=.5).
  • Three Core Strategic Options

    The authors implore store leaders to create strategies and take action to secure their future role and contributions in the learning content ecosystem. At the core, these plans will need to center on one of three general visions or philosophical approaches:


    • Become a “minnow” and develop the capabilities—largely analytics and customer relationship management—that allow you to dominate the learning content market at your institution. To do so, you must know your students better and get to them faster than the giants who will beat you on price. Success as a minnow likely demands an effective set of campus partners: administration, IT, library, student academic services, and others.
    • Manage learning content as a channel for a giant. If partnering with Amazon, Google, or another giant can assure: (1) net revenues for the institution; (2) improved affordability of learning content for students; and (3) a positive student experience and one whose halo includes the campus, such a partnership could liberate college store professionals and space to provide better service and assure store independence.
    • Become the campus’ general merchandise and convenience store. Look at the writing on the wall regarding the learning content business and retreat to and fortify a strong general retail position at your institution. For stores/campuses considering a move to outsource course materials in a hybrid model, the remaining role for the college store would include serving as a focused campus outfitter and convenience retailer.
  • Actions to Consider

    The tactics for store action plans should include (to the extent possible) the nine specific “actions to consider” presented by the authors. To help identify a starting point, the project offers a “Do This” imperative for each of the nine suggested actions. An abridged version of these items appears below.


    1. Use data analytics. Know your students and your faculty adopters. DO THIS: Take an assessment of your current survey methods and sources of data on your student consumers.
    2. Help formulate institutional policy. Engage in and align with institutional strategies. The college store has the needed knowledge, skills, and relationships, and must be at the table. DO THIS: Every college store and its institution need a learning content strategy. Start the effort!
    3. If Amazon (or another giant) comes-a-calling, consider taking that call—with caution. DO THIS: Develop a well thought out response to the potential inquiry from your campus administrators regarding a possible relationship or business agreement with Amazon.
    4. Delivery anyone? Concierge services from your college store. College stores might consider providing store-to-door concierge type services. DO THIS: Evaluate and create strategies to enhance the personal relationship your store has with each and every customer.
    5. Consider becoming the student outfitter. DO THIS: Create a list of new ways your store can be the ultimate student outfitter for your campus, evaluate the potential new offerings, and select at least two to implement in the coming 12 months.
    6. Become an indispensable resource to students and the institution on the long migration path to courseware. DO THIS: Initiate/Evaluate relationships with the campus CIO, librarian, and provost; begin paving a productive path for courseware on your campus; and serve as your campus’ knowledgeable resource on the economics of courseware in these discussions.
    7. Become the institution’s affordable learning content solutions broker. DO THIS: Start planning and taking strategic action toward the store’s transition to “coach” regarding content formats, options, and general use.
    8. Hitch the college store’s wagon to student success. DO THIS: Investigate the state of student success and learning support services on your campus. Determine if there is role for the store related to these services (as they currently are or as they could be re-envisioned).
    9. Reform is not a period of retreat. Review the last five years’ revenues, margins, and earnings from learning content; project them forward five years; and make informed business decisions about the path ahead. DO THIS: Conduct the prescribed analysis of five-year performance figures and five-year projections. Use the insight to determine how to best serve faculty and students and to support the learning and academic success goals of the institution.
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