'Bye the book: In educational publishing, the only certainty is change

摘要

ANYONE SHOULD BELIEVE in digital learning materials, it's Phil Schmidt. The University of Texas mechanical engineering professor spent eight years developing a showpiece of multimedia, interactive education: ThermoNet. The thermodynamics website contains 800 pages worth of material, far more than the textbook he and three others have written to accompany it. But when his students are offered a free E-text of that book, what does he advise them? Pay for a hard copy. "I don't know of a single student in my class this semester that doesn't have a printed copy," Schmidt says.