1. Photo by Edward Headington - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License https://www.flickr.com/photos/34619394@N07 Created with Haiku Deck
2. Photo by Tmuna Fish - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License https://www.flickr.com/photos/38739655@N00 Created with Haiku Deck
3. • Digital course materials solutions
• Cost-saving innovations & best-in-class vendor
relationships
• Consulting and store assessment services
• Insights & recommendations about your students’
preferences
• Strategies for affordable educational resources
Your trusted partner on campus!
www.indiCo-uniting.com
indiCo is the independent college store’s dedicated partner providing:
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5. Why Go Digital?
• Affordable course materials
• Improve student access to/consumption of course materials
• Test innovative vendor partners
• Put store in the digital conversation on campus
• Gather student usage data for faculty/administration
6. Top Reasons Students Acquired Digital Access Codes
(Student Watch - Spring 2014 Term)
8. Students are Positive about
Access Codes because…
Students are Neutral about
Access Codes because…
Students are Negative about
Access Codes because…
Easy to use Cost and worth Difficult to resell textbook
Improve learning Engaging Difficult to Share
Access Codes
The Good, The Bad, The Neutral
(Student Watch - Spring 2014 Term)
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10. Digital Content Tools
1. Textbook adoption platform
2. POS system
3. Digital content delivery platform
4. Custom content design and distribution
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12. Stops on the Map
• Connect with digital initiatives on campus
• Sell digital course materials
• Lead a digital transition for a class or department
• DESTINATION: Academic Resource Center
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14. Connect with Digital Initiatives on Campus
• Talk with relevant department contacts
• Create a Digital Collaboration Committee
• Establish a system to share digital insights
• Set regular communication schedule
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16. Sell Digital Course Materials
• E-texts from traditional content providers
• Print/digital bundles
• Campus-generated custom materials
• Adaptive Learning Products
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18. Digital Transition for a Course or Department
• Determine department objectives and set goals
• Confirm content provider and distribution partner
• Engage other campus stakeholders
• Establish evaluation for the student/faculty experience
• Share experience and design expansion
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24. Become an Academic Resource Center
• Establish position in campus digital discussion
• Secure relationships with distribution partners
• Set goals for campus digital evolution
• Select courses for digital transition
• Promote digital initiatives and store role
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26. indiCo Solutions
• Store mapping guide
• Vendor selection worksheet
• Store mentors
• Virtual lunch dates, webinars, regional seminars
• OnCampus Research
27. NACS Resources
• Academic Content Licensing white paper
• Campus Stakeholder Interview Guides in the Campus
Relations Toolkit
• Creating a Good Faith Course Materials Campus -
Guidelines
• Eight Steps to Bringing Digital Content to Your Campus
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31. Photo by Avatarmin - Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License https://www.flickr.com/photos/55010357@N02 Created with Haiku Deck
32. Pick a Partner
• Solicit digital interest from faculty and students
• Highlight store’s existing digital capabilities
• Determine required features and services
• Select a vendor that accommodates innovation
• Establish a pipeline for feedback and requests
35. RedShelf @ The Cornell Store
Decision to use RedShelf
Introduced to the company at ICBA and met
with Tim Haitaian
Impressed by Business Model & Enthusiasm
Easy Integration with Verba Price Comparison
Tool
Provides instant ISBN matches to digital
materials
Designed into Verba software
Ability to upload Digital Custom Course Packets
if desired
36. RedShelf @ The Cornell Store
Setup & Training
Creation of white label site done by RedShelf team with
direction provided to our sales manager Gordon Elson
Only needed to provide design recommendations &
store logo
RedShelf provided walk through of parameter changes
required in Verba to display products
Update RedShelf to appear as “Cornell eBook Affiliate”
Enter in custom URL into parameter fields within Verba
Automatically displays ISBN matches within the Price
Comparison Tool
Minimal training to Textbook Management and Floor staff
required
All transactions take place online, floor staff need to
understand that offers exist but do not need to offer
much support
39. RedShelf @ The Cornell Store
Fall 2014 Sales
Strongest of all digital affiliate programs
High conversion rate of 66% of all titles put into a cart
purchased
Second only to Amazon for affiliates (70%)
Assisted by White Labeled site
RedShelf Best Practices
Promotion of Verba Price Comparison Tool to all
students
Branded the site as the “Cornell eBook Affiliate”
Use of a White Labeled site w/ campus images &
store logo
40. Future of Digital Materials
@ The Cornell Store
Digital Course Materials pilot development w/ Academic
Technologies – Estimated Pilot Fall 2015
Offer Digital Textbooks & Course Packets via the LMS –
Blackboard
Purchase verified upon sign in to course (single sign in for
students)
If purchase has not been completed, the digital course
materials are added to Cornell Store e-commerce cart
for checkout and instant access
Professors can load open-source content to reader free
to students
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42. Don’t Travel Alone
• Tune up: access upcoming webinars and archives,
attend ConTEXT at CAMEX 2015
• Be a backseat driver: Share your story!
• #arewethereyet BYU-I University Store
Testimonial – Academic Resource Center
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Introduce yourself, this is an indiCo initiative “helping independent college store distribute digital content on their campus.
Let me slow down and take a brief moment to talk about indiCo.
Give a brief overview of indiCo
There are many reasons why your college store should be delivering or prepared to deliver digital content. These are some that we have identified so far in talking to stores. Are there other reasons or motivations that any of you are experiencing?
Let’s first understand a little of the student perspective of digital content. This chart shows the motivating factors for students in obtaining digital content. A professor truly requiring it through assigning homework and quizzes that uses the content is important.
This chart shows what students are using the digital content for. Notice that the top two items are related to a student’s grade.
These students who are purchasing and using the digital content find that they have a positive experience in the usage and improving their learning and they are neutral about cost and worth as well as whether or not the content is engaging. What is not going to be a surprise to all of you is that they are negative about the ability to resell the textbook and that it is difficult to share.
Before we start our journey on this digital roadmap we need to stop and do a quick assessment of our preparation. Have we packed the right tools and resources?
How many of you do not currently have one of the first two items: textbook adoption platform that is either part of your POS system or a stand alone system that is or is not integrated, and a POS system that tracks and manages inventory and sales?
If there are hands – ask what they use?
What about an e-commerce platform for online sales integrated with their POS solution?
We will talk about the 3rd and 4th items that are necessary and how to select a good partner later in this presentation, but how many of you feel like you already have a good distribution partner that handles both publisher content and local campus custom?
There are different stops on our roadtrip that will lead us to the desired destination.
These steps will lead us to the destination and we are going to be your tour guide through each one of these.
The first stop is connecting on campus. How many of you already have a committee, discussion group or some other organized group that meets on a routine basis to discuss campus initiatives on digital, specific dept or class needs, or just explores the options?
If so, how many of you participate in that group and/or lead the conversations?
If there is not a group on your campus that is already meeting, we encourage you to start that group. Reach out to necessary departments and those that have an interest in digital. Campus IT, LMS management staff, library, online learning, department chair or faculty that are using a lot of digital already are all places to start. Set up a routine time to meet as a group to talk through campus goals, department goals, interests, etc… Create a place (email distribution group or shared drive) to exchange articles, ideas, information gathered, etc…) Meet as a group as often as feels necessary for the projects that your group comes up with, but also make sure that you meet individually with those that have a strong interest in digital.
While starting the conversations around digital or at least participating in them is important, it is critical that your store is prepared to sell digital course materials. How many of you sell and/or distribute course materials other than the card board access codes that are either bundled with a textbook or is sold as a card board access code off the shelf?
To be prepared to sell digital content, a store needs to be able to sell e-texts from publishers digitally through their ecommerce and register systems (not just the cardboard printed codes), print and digital bundles purchased together or as upgrade options (purchase the digital content and opt for a less expensive version of the traditional book later, possibly even a POD version), local custom materials that can be licensed for digital distribution, and the adaptive learning products or access codes that we are all familiar with.
How many of you have at least one course on campus that has already transitioned to 100% digital content?
When a faculty member or department is interested in a digital transition it is important to make sure that you work with them to understand their goals so that you can provide the best assistance. Confirm with the content provider and your distribution partner that the content is available and your store can distribute it in a way that meets the stated goals, engage other campus departments:
IT – is this a large enrollment class that will be all accessing online content at the same time in the classroom and will the wireless network support that.
LMS – is the link to the content available and active so the students and faculty member will be successful on the first day of class.
Evaluate the experience take note of what worked, what didn’t, and modify the process for the next time.
Share experiences with the faculty and/or department so that everyone can be more successful.
Communication and customer service are the key to success.
How many of you currently use the VERBA products? For those of you who do, VERBA has a new feature that allows you to run reports to identify courses and departments that you would want to discuss digital with. Under reports on the top menu bar you select digital coverage.
From there you can see a variety of details about departments that have a high percentage of adopted content that is available digitally.
You can see which courses have a large or 100% digital materials available
And specific titles. There are other features of this report not shown that also identify what publishers you have the most digital opportunities with as well. This is great information that will be important for those of you that are trying to identify where to get started with conversations on campus.
Becoming an Academic Resource Center is the destination that stores should be aiming for.
Being an academic resource center means that you have established your store in the campus conversations around digital content, you have distribution partners for digital content, you are participating in setting goals, helping transition courses that have asked for assistance, and actively promoting to your campus what capabilities and services your store provides. You are establishing a reputation that you are the go-to source for digital course materials assistance and any other course materials discussions.
Wow, so that is a lot of work. How many of you feel like you have everything you need to run out and get this all started right now?
We have put together some tools and resources to assist in this process. It is not an easy process, but these tools should be helpful and the effort will result in a better long-term strategy for course materials on campus.
NACS also has a number of resources available to support your store. These resources are available in the Hub and on the NACS website.
One of the first tools that we created for you is to help you chart your store’s course on this digital road map.
This assessment tool will walk you through the things we discussed today about starting or participating in the conversation on campus, identifying what tools you already have versus what you will need, what your campus goals are, etc… As you fill out this assessment it help you to identify where you need to start and at the end of the assessment you can print out a pdf form that will compile your answers in a way that you can use them to set goals and make plans. There is a question at the end of the assessment that asks if you would like one of us to contact you to help you talk through a starting point and a road map specific to your store.
To get to this tool you will go to the OnCampus Research website, click on College store Services from the top menu, click on campus survey services from the left side menu, then scroll to the bottom to find the digital road map assessment.
No one likes to travel alone and none us want to have to figure out digital content distribution without a distribution partner. Selecting a partner can be overwhelming with all of the options out there.
We suggest that you consider these things when selecting a distribution partner and we have also created a tool that will assist you with partner selections.
This assessment tool will list several features that should be considered when selecting a partner and taking the time to assess them on the same scale is helpful in seeing which one best meets your needs. Listening to varied sale pitches where they each highlight what they want you to know doesn’t always provide you with the best information to make decisions, this will let you ask the right questions and make a decision based on apples to apples information about each option. We will have this available on the indiCo website soon, in the meantime we are happy to email this to you.
Cornell university recently went through a selection process and was willing to share some of their experience with us
The identified some of the considerations that lead them to their choice to launch RedShelf this past Fall rush
Overview of the ease of set-up and minimal training needs
Integration with Verba for students to have digital as an option while still seeing the traditional choices of new, used, and now rental.
The website that is branded to the Cornell store that houses the digital content that students who purchased form redshelf use to access their content each day.
And the sales results. As you can see this was clearly a successful launch for the Cornell store in the first semester that it was launched.
Taking that success a little further, they are now working with campus to expand their digital to offer course packs and integrate with their LMS as a goal for Fall of 2015.
Traveling alone can be scary, not to mention boring. And, you don’t have to chart the course yourself when there are so many resources and others willing to share their stories.
Let indiCo help you on chart your path, a webinar on this very topic was presented and recorded on October 28th. Join us for the upcoming webinar to discuss how to plan for CAMEX and ConTEXT educational tracks. Encourage your staff that will participate in digital in your store to sign up.
PLEASE share with us what you are doing that works and what hasn’t. Together we can get to higher places.
Finally, we would like to end with a short video from Doug Mason at BYU Idaho who has created his store as the Academic Resource Center on his campus and his challenge to each of you.
If there is anything that we can do to assist you in your digital course materials journey, please do not hesitate to call us. Your store’s survival is our goal.
