By Jennifer Howard, Chronicle of Higher Ed
Colleges aren’t the only enterprises interested in the possibilities of free, online courses. Publishers have begun to investigate whether so-called MOOC’s, or massive open online courses, can help them reach new readers and sell more books. For the moment, providers of the classes encourage professors not to require students to buy texts, in order to keep access as open as possible. So publishers can’t count on MOOC’s to generate a course-adoption sales. It’s the year of the mega-class—and The Chronicle is making sense of all the buzz. But online courses do have recommended-reading lists, and enrollments in the tens of thousands. If even a small percentage of those online students buy books, the sales could add up to a nice boost for a textbook.
http://chronicle.com/article/Can-MOOCs-Help-Sell/134446/
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