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DVDIGITAL BOOKBAG SEVEN DENTAL SCHOOLS OFFER FOUR YEARS OF TEXTS AND IMAGES ON A SINGLE DISC.
Sun Sentinel; Fort Lauderdale; Mar 26, 2000; LISA GUERNSEY The New York Times;
Abstract:
Instead, each incoming student will be asked to purchase a DVD containing the entire curriculum -- textbooks, manuals and lecture slides -- for all four years of dental school. Each semester, students will trade the old DVD for an updated version. Creators of the technology estimate that the DVDs, each weighing less than an ounce, will replace more than 2 million pages, thousands of images and more than 400 pounds of books and manuals.
Full Text:
(Copyright 2000 by the Sun-Sentinel)
Starting this fall, students at seven dental schools will be spared the strain of toting heavy textbooks to and from the library. They won't even need to go to the bookstore to buy a single textbook, workbook or laboratory manual.
Instead, each incoming student will be asked to purchase a DVD containing the entire curriculum -- textbooks, manuals and lecture slides -- for all four years of dental school. Each semester, students will trade the old DVD for an updated version. Creators of the technology estimate that the DVDs, each weighing less than an ounce, will replace more than 2 million pages, thousands of images and more than 400 pounds of books and manuals.
"It essentially provides all of the textbooks, all the course syllabi, all of the handouts and most of the images that faculty will be using throughout the entire curriculum from the first day of class," said Dr. Fred Moore, associate dean for academic affairs at the College of Dentistry at New York University, which is participating in the project.
Educators and electronic publishers have talked for years about the advantages of creating digital replacements for heavy and often quickly outdated printed textbooks. But digital textbooks have been slow to appear, a lag that has been attributed to everything from technological limitations to publishers' fears of copyright infringements. Most students still buy printed textbooks, although many books now come with CD-ROMs that provide supplementary material.
Books totally replaced
The dental schools' use of DVDs is a sudden leap forward. Experts in textbook publishing say it is the first time that digital content has completely replaced books for all students in a school. And it is almost surely the first time that an institution of higher education has attempted to put an entire curriculum -- from handouts to manuals -- in one integrated electronic format for all four years of a degree program.
Still, whether students will embrace an entirely digitized curriculum is an open question. Some digital-textbook experiments have shown that students facing a lot of reading prefer printed books, said Gary Shapiro, senior vice president for intellectual property at Follett, a company that manages college bookstores. Follett, for example, has conducted focus groups to test students' reactions to online or CD versions of textbooks. Based on the company's findings, Shapiro said, "It is unlikely that a student will sit in front of a computer and read a textbook."
Price is another issue. Because the discs are designed to include four times as much material as students are typically asked to buy, the price for DVDs, or for other digital vehicles for presenting information -- will be anything but cheap.
Developers say that a DVD with updates will cost roughly the same as the total for the books students are expected to buy now: $3,000 to $6,000, paid over time. And coordinators of the project acknowledge that students will have no choice but to buy all the books they might use in four years, instead of picking and choosing.
Still, Wayne Loney, a third-year dental student who tested the concept, said he thought that students would accept the cost.
Paying for convenience
"You're paying for more convenience," said Loney, a student at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, where the project originated. "If I had to leave for the weekend, all I had to do was just take my Powerbook and fire it up from wherever I was."
The software's searching capabilities provided an even more important convenience, Loney said. "If I was looking for a piece of information, all I had to do was type it in, and the software would give me a list of every place that topic came up."
Even images of microscope slides could be found with a simple search. "It was like we had a full-blown histology lab at our fingertips," he said.
It was the integration of four years' worth of laboratory slides, textbook entries and professors' manuals that provided the impetus for adopting the DVD model, administrators and professors say.
"The first year of school is basic science, and sometimes students fail to see the relevance of that to what they will need to know," said Pamela Jones, co-director of the project at the dental school at the University of Buffalo, which announced its participation two weeks ago.
The other four participants are the dental schools of Boston University, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the University of Florida at Gainesville and the U.S. Navy Postgraduate Dental School.
Some experts said that publishers of dental textbooks might be better situated than other textbook makers for a transition from print to digital. Because there are fewer than 10 publishers of dental textbooks, it may be easier for dental schools and software makers to agree on how to create digital textbooks, industry experts said.
And the ease of searching digital information may be more appealing to dental students, who often use their textbooks as references to be read in short chunks instead of as continuous text, chapter by chapter.
The structure of dental education also helps, administrators said. Within a school, dental students take virtually the same classes, are taught from the same books and are asked to read the same manuals and handouts. Each dental school will choose the books, handouts and slides that will appear on the DVD developed for that school.
In addition to the curriculum DVD, students will have to buy a laptop with a DVD player. Most students, administrators say, will add the cost of the computers and the DVDs to their requests for financial aid.
Part of the dental schools' strategy in making these purchases mandatory is to ensure that the computers and discs qualify for federal education loans, which cover only required materials.
To further help with the costs of the laptops, the schools are talking with computer manufacturers to come up with four-year leasing programs.
Meanwhile, a company called Vital Source Technologies has been digitizing hundreds of textbooks, manuals and professors' handouts to be included in the DVDs.
The company, which is based in Raleigh, N.C., has also been negotiating with publishers on behalf of universities to license the books in electronic form. (It will not disclose the publishers' names until a formal announcement is made April 1, but representatives at the universities have said that most major dental textbook publishers are involved.)
Clicking through pages
The company's main contribution, however, is its technology. Dr. Todd Watkins, the founder of Vital Source, has developed software that will enable students to do several things with the same set of digitized materials. During an interview in his office recently, he demonstrated how it worked:
Clicking on a title opens a window showcasing a book's cover. By clicking on each page, students can turn pages as if they were reading a printed book.
Students will also be able to search for specific words as they appear in the table of contents of one book, the full text of one book or the full text of all books and images that are included on the DVD. They will also be able to create online bookshelves containing anything they wish to link together, like chapters from several books related to the same topic.
For now, professors and administrators in the seven dental schools are eager to see how the DVDs will change the way members of next year's class absorb and understand what they have been taught.
"Students will be taught more concepts and be given more strategies to access much broader sources of information," said Moore, of NYU. "This changes the whole paradigm for learning."
-------------------------------------
Remember, Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health is also implementing DVD technology starting fall 2003
Sun Sentinel; Fort Lauderdale; Mar 26, 2000; LISA GUERNSEY The New York Times;
Abstract:
Instead, each incoming student will be asked to purchase a DVD containing the entire curriculum -- textbooks, manuals and lecture slides -- for all four years of dental school. Each semester, students will trade the old DVD for an updated version. Creators of the technology estimate that the DVDs, each weighing less than an ounce, will replace more than 2 million pages, thousands of images and more than 400 pounds of books and manuals.
Full Text:
(Copyright 2000 by the Sun-Sentinel)
Starting this fall, students at seven dental schools will be spared the strain of toting heavy textbooks to and from the library. They won't even need to go to the bookstore to buy a single textbook, workbook or laboratory manual.
Instead, each incoming student will be asked to purchase a DVD containing the entire curriculum -- textbooks, manuals and lecture slides -- for all four years of dental school. Each semester, students will trade the old DVD for an updated version. Creators of the technology estimate that the DVDs, each weighing less than an ounce, will replace more than 2 million pages, thousands of images and more than 400 pounds of books and manuals.
"It essentially provides all of the textbooks, all the course syllabi, all of the handouts and most of the images that faculty will be using throughout the entire curriculum from the first day of class," said Dr. Fred Moore, associate dean for academic affairs at the College of Dentistry at New York University, which is participating in the project.
Educators and electronic publishers have talked for years about the advantages of creating digital replacements for heavy and often quickly outdated printed textbooks. But digital textbooks have been slow to appear, a lag that has been attributed to everything from technological limitations to publishers' fears of copyright infringements. Most students still buy printed textbooks, although many books now come with CD-ROMs that provide supplementary material.
Books totally replaced
The dental schools' use of DVDs is a sudden leap forward. Experts in textbook publishing say it is the first time that digital content has completely replaced books for all students in a school. And it is almost surely the first time that an institution of higher education has attempted to put an entire curriculum -- from handouts to manuals -- in one integrated electronic format for all four years of a degree program.
Still, whether students will embrace an entirely digitized curriculum is an open question. Some digital-textbook experiments have shown that students facing a lot of reading prefer printed books, said Gary Shapiro, senior vice president for intellectual property at Follett, a company that manages college bookstores. Follett, for example, has conducted focus groups to test students' reactions to online or CD versions of textbooks. Based on the company's findings, Shapiro said, "It is unlikely that a student will sit in front of a computer and read a textbook."
Price is another issue. Because the discs are designed to include four times as much material as students are typically asked to buy, the price for DVDs, or for other digital vehicles for presenting information -- will be anything but cheap.
Developers say that a DVD with updates will cost roughly the same as the total for the books students are expected to buy now: $3,000 to $6,000, paid over time. And coordinators of the project acknowledge that students will have no choice but to buy all the books they might use in four years, instead of picking and choosing.
Still, Wayne Loney, a third-year dental student who tested the concept, said he thought that students would accept the cost.
Paying for convenience
"You're paying for more convenience," said Loney, a student at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, where the project originated. "If I had to leave for the weekend, all I had to do was just take my Powerbook and fire it up from wherever I was."
The software's searching capabilities provided an even more important convenience, Loney said. "If I was looking for a piece of information, all I had to do was type it in, and the software would give me a list of every place that topic came up."
Even images of microscope slides could be found with a simple search. "It was like we had a full-blown histology lab at our fingertips," he said.
It was the integration of four years' worth of laboratory slides, textbook entries and professors' manuals that provided the impetus for adopting the DVD model, administrators and professors say.
"The first year of school is basic science, and sometimes students fail to see the relevance of that to what they will need to know," said Pamela Jones, co-director of the project at the dental school at the University of Buffalo, which announced its participation two weeks ago.
The other four participants are the dental schools of Boston University, the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the University of Florida at Gainesville and the U.S. Navy Postgraduate Dental School.
Some experts said that publishers of dental textbooks might be better situated than other textbook makers for a transition from print to digital. Because there are fewer than 10 publishers of dental textbooks, it may be easier for dental schools and software makers to agree on how to create digital textbooks, industry experts said.
And the ease of searching digital information may be more appealing to dental students, who often use their textbooks as references to be read in short chunks instead of as continuous text, chapter by chapter.
The structure of dental education also helps, administrators said. Within a school, dental students take virtually the same classes, are taught from the same books and are asked to read the same manuals and handouts. Each dental school will choose the books, handouts and slides that will appear on the DVD developed for that school.
In addition to the curriculum DVD, students will have to buy a laptop with a DVD player. Most students, administrators say, will add the cost of the computers and the DVDs to their requests for financial aid.
Part of the dental schools' strategy in making these purchases mandatory is to ensure that the computers and discs qualify for federal education loans, which cover only required materials.
To further help with the costs of the laptops, the schools are talking with computer manufacturers to come up with four-year leasing programs.
Meanwhile, a company called Vital Source Technologies has been digitizing hundreds of textbooks, manuals and professors' handouts to be included in the DVDs.
The company, which is based in Raleigh, N.C., has also been negotiating with publishers on behalf of universities to license the books in electronic form. (It will not disclose the publishers' names until a formal announcement is made April 1, but representatives at the universities have said that most major dental textbook publishers are involved.)
Clicking through pages
The company's main contribution, however, is its technology. Dr. Todd Watkins, the founder of Vital Source, has developed software that will enable students to do several things with the same set of digitized materials. During an interview in his office recently, he demonstrated how it worked:
Clicking on a title opens a window showcasing a book's cover. By clicking on each page, students can turn pages as if they were reading a printed book.
Students will also be able to search for specific words as they appear in the table of contents of one book, the full text of one book or the full text of all books and images that are included on the DVD. They will also be able to create online bookshelves containing anything they wish to link together, like chapters from several books related to the same topic.
For now, professors and administrators in the seven dental schools are eager to see how the DVDs will change the way members of next year's class absorb and understand what they have been taught.
"Students will be taught more concepts and be given more strategies to access much broader sources of information," said Moore, of NYU. "This changes the whole paradigm for learning."
-------------------------------------
Remember, Arizona School of Dentistry and Oral Health is also implementing DVD technology starting fall 2003
