Students buying e-books chapter by chapter

Publishers are offering on-the-go learning content in module format

For school and college students, buying textbooks could burn a hole in their pocket. Here is an alternative — buy chapters and learn on the go.

Traditional textbook publishers are offering textbooks as modules or chapters in electronic form to students by joining hands with technology start-ups. For example, a module could cost as low as Rs 10.

Publishers such as Arihant, WordsWorth, Jangran Josh, Chronicle, McGraw Hill, Kaplan and Macmillan, among others, have already partnered with iProf, an education marketplace for content-based learning across different domains including K12 and competitive exams preparation segments.

These publishers are also offering small modules of educational content on such educational platforms. This works out to be very economical for students because they don’t have to buy the whole book; they can purchase the particular chapters they want to study.

Thanks to rising smartphone usage, traditional format of learning has given way to smartphone and tablet routes. “Students have picked up this as a habit. The Wi-Fi zones in schools and colleges have also increased the habit,” says Sanjay Purohit, chief executive officer and founder, iProf.

EduKart is another leading educational marketplace that provides topic-wise content.

The trend has also caught the attention of renowned ‘on-demand’ professors who are making their lectures available through these platforms. “With this, even a student from the remotest corner of the country can access high quality content without spending much,” Purohit.

According to him, the demand for e-books in the education content space is growing. iProf’s users have grown 19 times in the past year over the year before in terms of user addition. The platform has 2.6 million registered users.

Former Penguin Random House publisher Chiki Sarkar had recently started her own publishing house, Juggernaut, to cater to online readers.

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Traditional publishing houses are also investing huge amounts in providing e-learning solutions to students. A recent survey by e-learning research and development firm LoudCloud Systems had estimated the online learning market size in India to grow to $40 billion by 2017 from the current $20 billion. US-based education platform Coursera had reported that of the 2.8 million learners registered in 2013, those from India constituted 8.8 per cent, second only to the United States.

“The publishing sector is going through a rough patch now. The increasing smartphone and internet penetration has given us an opportunity. E-books are an add-on for us. Hence, for us, moving to electronic content is a well thought-about choice,” says Vimal Pathak, head of department- eLearning and e-commerce at Arihant Publications.

Some education institutions say it is too early to term this as a trend. “I don’t think it has caught on that much. It’s like saying that I might as well go out to look for a reference. The appeal of the short modules depends on the specific requirement of the student,” says A P Ramabhadran, senior vice-president, Manipal Global Education Services.

He further adds, “What publishers are trying to do is, they are putting small bytes of information in different modules. But these might become cumbersome. The future of online educational content is an aggregator model that provides users with topics that are of interest to them.”