Use of CD-ROMs in Higher Education?

MooseMcMad asks: "I am a 16-year old in England + have just started a new school year working towards my AS-Level exams at the end of the year. I was surprised to receive a CD-ROM at the start of my Physics lesson and told that this contained the syllabus + relevant reading material for my course. Where does this leave many schools (particularly state schools), where the pupils may not have access to a computer? I don't know anything about any precedents for this but it was certainly amusing watching the teacher try and fumble about with the software." Cool idea! This makes a lot of sense for college students as it cuts down on the paperwork they have to keep track of (and possibly lose) and keeps everything in one easy to access place. Of course, if you don't have a computer, you are still stuck with the reams of notes and loose paper and the 20 pound text book. When they can put text books on CDs, I'll really be impressed.

About the DMCA and textbooks

[Anonymous Coward]

Someone else linked to the earlier Slashdot article, but I thought I'd spell it out: They are putting out textbooks on CD ROM and starting to require that you use it as licensed software--not allowing resale, time limitations, ban on fair use of the text, etc. They (publishers) are trying to do the outrageous screwing to consumers that software manufacturers have all ready done. They can't do that with paperbacks, by golly.

Re:CD? How 80's

[eomir]

I can see several reasons to put it on a CD as opposed to the internet. First of all, the publisher probably does not want it to be freely distributed. Of course, people can use cdr's and such, but cd piracy is not nearly as big a problem as internet piracy. Also, this guy is from England, and IIRC it is pretty expensive to stay connected to the internet in europe. If you have a CD full of information that is gonna take some time to download. And, what about those without access to the internet. I'd say just about everyone with a computer has a CD-ROM drive, but not everyone has internet access(or maybe you can't connect while you are travelling or something). What do you do if the site with the information is down? I'd say that the benefits of putting it on CD far outweigh the benefits of putting it on the internet. Then again the publisher does get to tell people how it is using the internet to revolutionize education, which sounds much better than using a CD to revolutionize eduction.

Re:Schools May Suffer :-)

[cameloid]

The printer runs out of paper?

Textbooks

[mini me]

I wish they would put textbooks on CD-ROM, I just bought my college text books today and I was thinking why they are not on CD-ROM? I just bought a new laptop so it would have been nice. Oh well, too late for this year now.

I think text books on CD would be a good idea though because it would allow for more interactivity, linking to websites that are relavent to the topic, I guess all the info could be on the net instead of CD but they wont make the money that way.

I know I'd much rather lug around may laptop than all of those big text books! Maybe someday that will be the norm.

Re:CDs are not recordable. Problem

[drinkypoo]

Now, I have to admit that it's been almost 25 years since I stepped into a college classroom as a student, but I do recall that every semester I would buy a whole fresh set of hi-lighters so that I could mark the things I found tough to crack. Study time was spent concentrating on the highlighted phrases until I understood or were forced to find help.

Now, unless the "CD-ROM" you were referring to was in reality a CD-RW and you have a suitable recorder, you end up with a net loss.

There are CD-ROM mount utilities for the Mac (and probably windows) which essentially do the same as a UNIX-style "union" mount; Your changes are made to local copies of the files. If you have changed a file, then the updated copy is stored on disc. Unchanged data is read from the CD.

Likewise, an electronic textbook will frequently have an installer so that the book software runs from hard disk, not from the (slower) cd-rom. The installer will frequently store bookmarks and such on your hard disk.

If your coursework is on the web, you should be saving it to local disk. Failure to do so is irresponsibility on your part.

Re:About the DMCA and textbooks

[drinkypoo]

They (publishers) are trying to do the outrageous screwing to consumers that software manufacturers have all ready done. They can't do that with paperbacks, by golly.

Sure they can. They can OWN the textbook, and make you lease it.

Sure, you can copy the book, but that's expensive and difficult (Or at least annoying) and you don't end up with the same quality out that went in. Likewise, it should be possible to copy the content of a digital textbook, but unless you crack it, you will have the same problems with a paper copy. But you can always screenshot everything and make the resulting series of images into a PDF. Sure, it'll be huge, but then you can just put it on another CDROM. The only problem with that is that it will be all images - IE, not searchable. But then, that's the same as a paper publication.

Re:Who owns the CD?

[bvarro]

This is one of the problems I've had with some textbooks I've bought that come with CD-ROMs. Unlike most books the ones that come with CDs can't be sold back to the bookstore at the end of the semester, I suspect this is one of the reasons so many books are including CDs now. Because It contains opened software the bookstores must refuse to buy it back from you.
More New book sales == More money for the publishers

platforms and formats

[rottcodd]

I've bought textbooks with floppies and CDs included, usually with some lame little DOS or Windows *-based program. The CDs usually have a bunch of extra material not in the book.

I have no strong objections to this, as long as the classes associated do not assume that the stuff is accessible-- I had a class where I was expected to run a dos-based curve fitting program, so I had to build a machine specially for the class. I was pretty irritated (especially since the machine was a 16 MHz 386-- and the coprocessor went out). I've also received homework assignments through email, in unhandy to use Microsoft Office format.

It's a bad idea to assume that students have anything that isn't required!

Of Education and CDs...

[Vuarnet]

Well, I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but here in Monterrey, Mexico, they're requiring all students in 2 of the most important colleges in the city to take laptop computers to class. And they're starting to put some school material online, too.

But I'd still take a school book over a CD-Rom, if only because you can always tell a girl "let me carry your books for you". How geeky would "let me carry your CDs for you" sound?

Re:CD? How 80's

[joepits]

It's definitely a better idea to have the CD. I'm sure it works fine having it on CD-ROM. Here are some reasons.

1. As the other reply says, dial-up access is expensive in the UK.
2. CD-ROMs are faster than the fastest internet connection.
3. Movies and animations can be used on the CD.
4. 650 MB would take a long time to download.
5. CD-ROM distribution would be cheaper than hosting a website and allowing hundreds of people to download 600MB or so each. (even if they had the time and money).

I see it like the MP3 player / minidisc scenario. The minidiscs are far superior in storage and quality, but people like me use the MP3 players because they are newer and use newer techonology.

Re:Textbooks

[hyacinthus]

I've never quite understood why people clamor for textbooks on CD-ROM (or other machine-readable medium.) A few observations:

1. I had to purchase my share of bulky textbooks in college, but I rarely needed to "lug them around". I didn't need to bring them to classes, usually--there were exceptions of course. My books stayed at home, in my room, where I got most of my studying done.

2. One thing I did choose to "lug around", for a while anyway, was a laptop. Mind you, this was 1993, and the state of the art in laptops has advanced considerably since then. But, for a time, I attempted to use a PowerBook for classwork. It weighed nearly seven pounds. (By comparison, the Dell Inspiron 7500 laptop I was issued for work weighs more than nine pounds. It stays on the desk in my office--I never take it anywhere.) It was nearly useless for most note-taking work and it didn't take me long to get thoroughly sick of carrying it around. Occasionally I get to thinking that some new device might do the trick--make no mistake, as skeptical as I am, I'm still somewhat attracted to the idea of carrying around a portable computer. I liked the look of the "Clio", for example (until I got a chance to practice the thing's handwriting recognition.)

3. Nobody likes reading online documentation _now_. What's the first thing anyone does when confronted with a hundred-page online manual in PostScript or PDF format? Print the damn thing out.

4. Books are also suited for quick searching in a way that electronic documents, even those with a table of contents and a good keyword search engine, aren't. It is possible, for example, rapidly to flip through a book and narrow down on a particular page (watch someone flip through the White Pages, for example, looking for a name.)

5. Books in machine-readable format introduce a number of troublesome dependencies--upon the medium of storage, upon the application required to read the format, possibly upon the platform in which that application is written. Paper books do not suffer from these dependencies.

hyacinthus

CD-ROMs, great idea, horribly implemented...

[weave]

More and more book publishers are also including CD-ROMs with text books. The problem here is 1) It requires Windows 2) It requires loading of software to make it work.

The latter is a real problem for those of us who have to administer computer labs. We lock down lab stations with restrictive NT workstation settings that prevent program installs, so when students get CD-ROMs they must use in labs, they don't work unless we go through and pre-install the stupid software for them.

These days, it's stupid to not have autoplay run the program from the CD without the need for an install anyway. If they just did that, people could just insert and run. No hassle.

But, as another poster said, why even bother in the first place? This stuff should be on a web page somewhere anyway.

Schools May Suffer :-)

[lw54]

What happens when all of the non-computer owning students go to the library and print out all 500 pages? :-)

CD's in a UK University

[Manic Miner]

I work in a UK Computer Science department as system programmer / help desk contact point. At the uni, this october every undergraduate will be given a DVD rom which contains a "snapshot" of all the on-line notes for all the course the department offers (and most of the notes / slides are available on-line).

In addition to this, the CD contains course related software (subject to licences), redhat linux 6.2 (as it is used on about 50% of the departmental computers, and various useful programs that are freely available eg. Netscape, realplayer, flash plugins, IE, ftp, ssh etc.

The biggest problem this year is the amount of data, when the concept was run originally the department struggled to fill a CD-Rom, this year it will probably be a DVD-Rom with a Multiple CD option!

The department finds this invaluable as it can ensure that everybody has access to the software at home (provided they have a computer) as well as on the departmental computers. It also allows the students to look up notes etc. without having to make a trip from digs / halls to uni (and without spending what little money they have on modem phone bills ;). But most of all there is the "coolness" factor - you get a free departmental DVD, no other department at our uni offers anything like it :)

I think that this wil be "the way of the future" as the data / software needed to get the most out of the course increases, there has to be CD / DVD's given out for free otherwise people can never go home or have to spend all their cash on modem bills / CD-R's to take thier downloads home on. Plus with a electronic media animated examples / complete code listings can be provided to give the students a better idea of the material being taught (particularly relvant for computer graphics courses).

Manic.

Who owns the CD?

[spell_caster]

Who owns the CD when the class is over? Do you have to give it back or can you sell it to the next group of students?

CD? How 80's

[rjamestaylor]

Why a CD? Why not put all that info on the 'Net -- at least on an intranet. There's no reason to distribute via CD in the 00's. (I mean no reason).

Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers

Access to technology

[yuri benjamin]

All very well. A useful thing BUT the school is now obliged to provide access to PC's IMHO. It would be seriously disadvantaging the kid's with no PC if the school gives out CDs with the required study info, if not all kids can use it. Even if they also provide a paper copy. A computer lab on-campus would remedy this inequality.

CDs are not recordable. Problem

[satch89450]

Now, I have to admit that it's been almost 25 years since I stepped into a college classroom as a student, but I do recall that every semester I would buy a whole fresh set of hi-lighters so that I could mark the things I found tough to crack. Study time was spent concentrating on the highlighted phrases until I understood or were forced to find help.

Now, unless the "CD-ROM" you were referring to was in reality a CD-RW and you have a suitable recorder, you end up with a net loss.

Every single text book I owned had notes in the margin from the lectures, from the Q&A with the prof and the TA, and from peer-to-peer bull sessions. Indeed, some of the older computer texts I use regularly all these years later are most useful because of the margin notes I wrote while listening to others.

Sometimes newer is not better. CDs in school are a case in point.

(But then again, you have a similar problem with web sites unless you get a copy at the end of the course, and that copy has all your "margin notes" that you of course added during the sessions.)

Computers and school

[flikx]

First off, they obviously can put textbooks on CD rom. The only problem is that people do not buy them much. Most people in a college setting have a computer, and virtually every person on campus has access to a computer. The problem is that most people like to have their texts in class. Now I carry a laptop with me everywhere, but I am currently in the minority at my school. Even if everyone carried a laptop, there's still the issue of taking it to class. I get a whopping 8 hours of battery life out of my computer, but most other students are not as lucky. I rarely see someone carrying a windows machine that can make it the whole way through a lecture class. There are only a couple electrical outlets in the room... my point with this that portable computers need to advance a bit more, and become a hell of a lot cheaper. Then you will see almost all materials distributed electronically.

Most of my classes already post the sylibi online, and a lot of the homework assignments are given out this way as well. You can get textbooks on CD very easy though. Last year, I obtained two of my texts on CD rom. This year, I got a demo CD on campus that had a huge listing of books available.

Am I missing something?

[JasonChu]

When they can put text books on CDs, I'll really be impressed.

I could have sworn I just saw this [slashdot.org] . . .