As an undergraduate student majoring in chemistry and biochemistry, I spent a lot of money on science textbooks. When classes ended, I kept all of my books instead of selling them back for pennies on the dollar. I thought that I would be able to use those books as references in graduate school and beyond. Sadly, I never cracked open most of them again, and now they’re too outdated to sell.
The main problem is that textbooks are not research-oriented, nor are they up-to-date. Most are already behind the times by the time you buy them. Of course, the relevance of having an updated textbook is field-dependent. Topics in biochemistry and molecular biology change much more quickly than those in general chemistry. Nevertheless, for many fields, an up-to-date textbook could be a useful tool, both for the professors who have to teach from it and for any students that continue in the field.
Textbooks are also falling behind when it comes to technology, as any interactive content has to be provided via separate media. Thus, it was exciting to see the implementation of what’s being claimed as the “first interactive textbook” called Principles of Biology. Introductory biology courses in the California State University (CSU) system will use Principles of Biology as the primary text for the 2011/2012 academic year. We got in touch with Vikram Savkar, senior vice president and publishing director at Nature Publishing Group (NPG), to get the details on how students can benefit from interactive, digital textbooks.
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