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There is no doubt that interactive eBooks enable En gineering & Technology educators to present materials and concepts to learners in a rich and co mpelling manner that can enhance education. It is also evident, the technology to create and de ploy eBooks has reached a tipping point. However, there are few guiding principles for how t he eBook publishing process can exist within the requirements for tenure track faculty to undert ake the Promotion & Tenure process with its rigorous peer review component. There is also a lac k of ompelling evidence for how to best structure interactive educational activities to max imize learning across a variety of different devices (PC, Tablets, mobile phones). This paper presents the best practices developed by a collaboration of faculty and an eBook publisher to best maximize learning and address the unique requirements of tenure-track faculty publishing eBooks. The author also discusses the i nstructional design process used to best adapt instructional content to the eBook format across a variety of devices. State of Publishing Industry The textbook industry is amidst a transition in whi ch authors, publishers, and students are not only trying to figure out how to capitalize on eBoo ks, but also renegotiating their relationships. Students are ultimately looking for learning materi als at a reasonable cost that enhance learning. They also want materials that can be accessed from a variety of different devices in a convenient and immediate manner. There are two predominant approaches to eBook publi shing that have been adopted by publishers. Large publishers have centered their ap p o ch on the idea of bringing their vast library of existing content directly to their stude nts via direct-to-consumer internet distribution. CourseSmart, a collaboration of Pearson Education, Ce gage Learning, McGraw Hill Education, and John Wiley & Sons, aggregates textbooks from a ll of these publishers into a centralized online store from which students can purchase or rent eBooks. 1 For the most past, these publishers have held on th eir traditional publishing roots and their valueproposition is to offer students their content in t his more convenient format. Specifically, these publishers use the same author royalty structure fo r their eBook offering as for their traditional books. Typically authors earn from 10% to 15% royal ties from both their traditional sale and the eBook sales. 2 The actual content of the books is also the same for their eBooks as for their traditional books. In sense, they have taken their traditional textbooks and any multimedia supplements that ship with their traditional books and dumped them into an eBook format. Across the boards, these publishers have also creat ed custom eBook readers to allow students to create annotations in their text. In contrast to the large publishers, some academic authors have taken to self-publishing their materials because the cost-of-entry and expertise r equired to enter the ePublishing industry are fairly low. Anyone with skills in computer graphics and ecommerce could set-up an eBook that compares with the eBooks offered by the large publi shers prima facie. Some of these publishers P ge 22827.2 also seem to have taken designing their content in a variety of different ways to try to maximize learning. Across the board there seems to be more e xp rimentation in trying to create materials and some interesting innovations. However, the qual ity varies greatly. The promotion & tenure process mandates academics t o have publications that have undergone a rigorous peer review process. The self-publishing a pproach seems to result in a wide variety of quality and ultimately is not adequate for getting the author’s work through the promotion & tenure process. At the author’s institution, self-p ublished materials rank extremely low on the pecking order of the items that count as a publicat ion. This is not a problem for the large publishers, whose established publishing process re sults in peer reviewed textbooks. An Academic Industrial Collaboration Staring in 2004, a collaborative effort between the author and an eTextbook publisher, tried to create a publishing scenario centered on the idea o f creating the most instructionally effective content while addressing many of the needs of the m ain players in this arena --the students and the authors. Toward the goals of creating the most effective ins tructional contents, the group decided to institute a publishing process similar to that foun d at industrial training facilities. In this paradigm, the authors are treated as Subject Matter Experts (SME) who are augmented by a team of Instructional Designers and media creators. In a cademia, most Professor have a graduate degree in their area of expertise, but not formal t raining in Instructional Design or educational research. This set-up allows the authors to concent rat on their subject matter, while receiving feedback from someone who is versed on the latest r esea ch findings in the design of instruction. The media creation team allows the instructor to on ce again concentrate on their writing and the media creation team on creating media for the instr ucto . To address the strict review requirements of the pr omotion & tenure process, the group decided to create an automated publishing process in which te nical reviewers are part of the process. In other words, the team built a web-application th at takes an author’s manuscript and manages the process of interfacing the author with appropri ate academic peer reviewers. At the end of the process, the publisher ends up with an eBook that h as undergone a rigorous review process that is appropriate for the promotion & tenure process. The review process is valid as it fulfills the function of the traditional review process, review by SME (Subject Matter Expert) while allowing for the convenience of the online publishi ng arena. The back-end platform will be demonstrated at the conference. With a heavy investment on the publishing platform, the team felt it was important to pass the result of those business efficiencies to the author s. Thus, they elected two business policies that are central to the collaboration’s mission : 1. The authors keep the copyright to the work 2. The authors receive a 70% of the gross revenue g en rated by the book The decision to allow author’s to keep the copyrigh t to their own book was grounded in the belief that authors would be more motivated to make continual improvements to their work if P ge 22827.3 they retained the copyright to their book. It was a lso believed that by keeping the copyright in the hands of the authors, the company would be continua lly motivated to keep the interest of its authors on its list of priority items. The seventy percent gross revenue policy is a resul t of the efficiencies instituted by the company. By automating many of the aspects of publishing act ivity and relying on the custom tool to also automate the process of collaborating among the pla yers in the publishing of a book, it is very possible to base the author’s royalties on 70% of t he gross revenue of the book and use the remaining 30% for the company expenses. In addition to addressing the author’s needs, the t eam decided to place importance on the student’s experience with the eBooks. In surveys c onducted by the group, they found: • Students are accustomed to paying for digital goods • Students want to access their eBooks on a variety o f different devices • Students like the convenience of not carrying aroun d physical books • Making digital annotations was requested by some of the people • Students want books that are current To this end, the group decided to create a set of t ools to allow them to create annotatable eBooks that are accessible from a multitude of different d evices including desktops & laptops, mobile phones, and tables such as the iPad. To accomplish this task, the group experimented with a variety of different methods that resulted in multi -p atform offering of their eBooks. Interestingly the best method for each book varied depending on t he content. For example, books with a potential for lots of animations and multimedia wor k best as native apps on the iPad. Books with little animations could be deployed across multiple platforms using the ePub or secure PDF format. Implications and Recommendations At the end of the day, the author can offer this se t of recommendations to anyone interested in entering the eBook publishing arena. Bear in mind that these recommendations are based on an ePublishing experience in which the author has a ve sted interest. Thus, take them with a grain of salt. 1. Start with a clear idea of instructional objecti ves In addition to writing the TOC for your instruction al content, also communicate to the rest of your team the instructional objectives for the chap ters in your eBook. This will help your team to create any ancillary materials. 2. Apply one of the well known educational models f or creating instructional content. An instructional design model such as the Dick & Ca rrey model provides a great framework that has been research validated for creating solid inst ructional content . When this is applied to an eBook by a knowledgeable SME, it can result in a ve ry effective content. 3. Treat the author as a SME and surround him with an instructional designer and media team Page 22827.4 If you reduce the distracters that can get in your author’s way and at the same time help him with a team of experts, you will create a better product . 4. Use the electronic mechanism of the eBook to col le t data and iterate quickly. The electronic nature of eBooks makes it very easy to collect data about the book’s usage which can be used to make improvements about the book. If you include some formative and summative evaluation questions in the text, you can also collect data about the effectiveness of the instructio

Implications of Publishing eBooks on PCs and Mobile Devices for Engineering Technology Educators