Case Study: Flat World Knowledge | Inc.com

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-01-27

Summary:

"The Backstory As an executive at textbook publisher Pearson Education, Jeff Shelstad saw an industry stuck in the past. High production costs drove up the prices of college textbooks. To preserve sales, publishers released new editions often, making it difficult for instructors to keep up. And instructors had limited flexibility to adapt texts for their courses: If the books omitted relevant content, instructors often had to assign supplementary texts, further inflating students' bills. So in 2007, Shelstad and his Pearson colleague Eric Frank co-founded Flat World Knowledge in Irvington, New York. Shelstad sought to make textbooks affordable for students and customizable for teachers. He started by making all of its textbooks available digitally. Using the company's online platform, instructors could edit and remix the books' content, choose among versions, and move to new editions on their own schedules. Flat World was well placed to address an emerging movement in higher education: open educational resources, or OER. Institutions had begun publishing instructional content that was free to use, adapt, and distribute. But the quality of many OER materials was untested. Flat World's textbooks, on the other hand, were peer reviewed, lending added credibility. Flat World made basic editions of its textbooks available for free on its website and offered hard copies starting at $30, a fraction of the price of most college textbooks. It also sold downloadable mobile versions. The company raised $10 million in 2009. A year and a half later, Flat World's books had been adopted for more than 1,000 college courses nationwide..."

Link:

http://www.inc.com/magazine/201302/april-joyner/case-study-iffy-business-models.html

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) ยป abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.publishers oa.universities oa.oer oa.costs oa.students oa.textbooks oa.prices oa.courseware oa.case.books oa.colleges oa.flat_world_knowledge oa.business_models oa.books oa.hei

Date tagged:

01/27/2013, 16:45

Date published:

01/27/2013, 11:45