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Higher Listenings
Textbooks Are Failing Students (and Other Dangerous Ideas)
Textbooks are the flip phones of higher ed: clunky, outdated, and yet somehow the model persists. The reality is, students aren’t buying them. And increasingly, faculty are asking: why am I still assigning something that isn’t delivering value?
In this episode, Donna Battista and Bradley Cohen join us to explore a provocative new vision for course content, one that’s not just digital, but dynamic. Drawing on dozens of faculty and student interviews, they share insights into what’s broken, what’s possible, and why it’s time to move beyond static, one-size-fits-all materials. Because if the textbook is already on life support… what comes next?
Guest Bio
Donna Battista has spent more than 20 years leading content and product development in higher education. As the Managing Director of Learning Solutions at Top Hat, she is responsible for the strategy and development of our growing catalog of high-quality, interactive digital learning experiences, custom content delivery and content services.
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We're layering on additional features and functionality on a dye model. So we really need to start thinking radically about what a new learning experience can be. Because students are already making the decision not to purchase their course materials. And more and more faculty are going to start questioning why do I keep adopting these if the students aren't using them and aren't getting value out of them?
SPEAKER_01:Textbooks are the flip phones of higher ed, clunky, outdated, and yet somehow the model persists. But what if course materials weren't static encyclopedic tomes? What if they flex to meet student needs, offering just enough content in the right format at the right moment? Well, in this episode, Donna Batista joins Brad and me to explore a provocative new vision for content that actually works. So here's the question: if we're ready to retire the textbook, what comes next? Welcome to Higher Listenings. So today Brad gets to sit in the guest chair along with Donna Batista. So welcome to the both of you. I want to start with the big picture because you both spent hours interviewing faculty and students, like deep dives, not just quick polls or surveys. So what made you walk away thinking, yeah, now is the time to blow up the textbook as we know it?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, for me, it all crystallized really when I had a student focus group at Indiana University. And these were average students, like the kinds of students we see in many classrooms across the country. And I had the focus group because I wanted to get an understanding of how they were using their assigned materials. And if they weren't using their assigned materials, what else were they using? And what I heard from them was that the number one resource they use is their instructor's PowerPoint. And when they need more than their instructor's PowerPoint, they'll go online and they'll find other lecture videos, for instance, or flashcards or other kinds of practice tools, which is a little confusing, right? Why, if your instructor has assigned a resource to you that they believe is the best resource for your learning, would you seek out other materials? Which was the question that I asked them. Basically, I took away two big things from them. The first thing was sometimes I just get it. And textbooks are just so dense, and there's pages and pages on every topic. I just don't need to read all that sometimes. And sometimes I do need more. And when I need more, I don't need more reading necessarily. Sometimes I need another person to explain it to me, another lecture, or I need some kind of animation or something to see how it's working in the real world. So the takeaway from that was really textbooks weren't giving students what they needed. They were often too much for the students. And when they weren't enough, they weren't enough of the right thing. And that's the moment where I said, we need to be doing something radically different.
SPEAKER_01:So there's been a lot of people talking about how AI is going to solve the textbook cost problem. And I'm sure there's more than a few students out there rejoicing at the thought of low or even no cost course materials. But I'm going to lead the witness here just a little. Like, why do you feel the focus on cost is actually missing the real story?
SPEAKER_00:If you replace a$200 textbook that has no value to them as a learner with a zero-cost textbook, that's good for them. It saves them$200 they can eat out for a change. But it doesn't begin to address the need for quality and for impact. What we know is that too many students are struggling and failing to complete in higher ed. This is a potential solution space that we need to focus in on. Cost alone ignores the bigger and in fact more important problem that we need to help students do better and help faculty lean into resources that help them help students more effectively.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I think one of the things that Brad is getting to here is value. What is the value the course materials deliver? Because if they're not delivering value at any cost, they are too expensive, right? I would also say, along with Brad, like cost is an important factor, and we cannot get away from thinking about affordability. I do think one of the reasons that we heard so much about the cost of materials is not only that they kept going up in price and price, which was a problem, but also students weren't feeling like they were being used in a way that reflected the cost of them. But I also think that if you're now looking at things like the free course materials, you're seeing the same issues with that you see with high-priced textbooks. And I think what that has to lead us to believe is at any cost, textbooks are the wrong model.
SPEAKER_01:Okay, I want to dig into this a little bit because we get it, right? You assign a$150 textbook to a student, they read chapter three, and that's about it. Or students discovering that they can actually pass the course and they don't even need to crack the textbook open. So there's obviously a fair bit to dislike there. But what did you find that really frustrates students and in terms of their use of a textbook?
SPEAKER_02:I think it is some of the things that we've already discussed, right? They're not being used in the classroom in a way that really indicates to students that the instructor believes that this is delivering the right kind of learning experience for students. Instructors have their PowerPoint, instructors have their lecture. This textbook is this separate thing that they're supposed to somehow engage with on their own time. And I think that is a very disconcerting experience for students. If my instructor's not using this in the classroom, how am I supposed to be using it and why am I supposed to be using it? The second thing I think is the issue with just how textbooks were developed, right? And we talked about this, Eric, on their podcast about reading, right? So why aren't students reading their textbooks? Textbooks were designed at a time when it was literally the only way to get access to this information. And it's just not true anymore. Students can find all sorts of other ways to access learning that isn't just reading this encyclopedic tone.
SPEAKER_00:So I think what Donna has spoken to are two of what I would say are three major issues that we've identified through our conversations with faculty, especially around this project. And those are the alignment problem. The students see that the textbook isn't aligned to course in terms of its design. They can get an A without cracking the book. That suggests that there's an alignment problem with the textbook. It doesn't add any value to their learning. The second is relevance, that students get a textbook, and the first thing they hear from their instructor is, you can ignore chapters seven through 12. So the textbook has irrelevant material. They also may find that faculty are substituting for sections of a chapter. Don't read sections three through seven in this chapter because I have this other essay that I think treats it better. What we've done is try to take the textbook model into the future while preserving the textbook model. And what AI especially is calling us to consider is that's it's time to give up that model and reconceive the structure and purpose and place of content in courses. So the relevance for students is that the content is written for kind of a prototype student. And it is in no way tuned to their particular interests in their major, their career, their particular starting point as a learner. So it's just not speaking to students as individual learners the way that it could and should.
SPEAKER_02:And the other thing I do think we should speak to, which is personalization. This is another term that has come up over the years about personalizing the content. What that has historically meant is everybody gets the same assessment. And if you don't do well on that assessment, you might get an additional assessment. That's been the extent of personalization in the past, frankly, because we were just limited on the technology side. But true personalization is really going to adapt to the students, their interests, but also their own ability to understand the material and their own interest in finding different modalities when they don't understand the material. And again, I think that is something that is now available to us that had not been available to us in the past. And I think we have to start thinking about a post-textbook model that isn't just about that one piece of the learning experience, but really integrates the complete learning experience. If we could imagine a world in which what happened in class in lecture informed what the students had to engage with outside of class, or what happened in students' homework experience informed the lecture experience. You could see a world in which students are answering questions in the lecture, go back home to do their studying, and what is offered up to them is it looks like you really struggled with this part of your instructor's lecture. I'm going to serve you up some different kind of content to help solidify your understanding of those kinds of things. That is really what I think Brad and I are dreaming about in this kind of post-textbook model, where it is a more integrated learning experience, a more holistic learning experience where the power of AI can really be used as a way to gather all of that data about the student's learning experience and make sure that what they're being served up is unique to them and their needs.
SPEAKER_01:So you've identified six themes based on these interviews with faculty and students. I imagine each one is pointing to a future where content isn't just cheaper or flashier because we're we know that's not really the end goal, but genuinely more effective. So I think to summarize the key themes, reimagine how content motivates students, right? How it's actually delivered, how it adapts to supporting student learning, how it actually empowers instructors, but also respects authority and agency at the same time. So we're gonna dig into this. I think I have that mostly right. So I want to start with motivation because why am I even taking this class is basically the Gen Z battle cry, right? So how does personalization actually move us past the generic why this matters box that you find in a lot of textbooks and actually help students feel more engaged in their learning?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, you you nailed it. Why am I taking this class? Why does this course matter to me? And this is particularly true in that gen ed space, right? When you know every student has to take these classes that don't have anything to do with their major. And as much as we tried, as I said, to try and address this, like it just has fallen flat. So we are envisioning a world in which before a student even engages in the course material, we can learn something about them. We can learn about what their major is, what year they're in, what their career aspirations are, maybe what their personal hobbies and interests are. And that is the information that we can use to adapt the content to their specific interests and goals, and really share with them why it does matter to their particular aspirations, whether it's in school or beyond.
SPEAKER_01:So give me maybe an example of what that looks like if I'm, I don't know, in engineering or nursing or economics. How does that come to life for me as a student?
SPEAKER_02:So this was one of the specific examples that we shared with faculty in our conversations with them. So we we had this fictitious engineering student who was taking a gen ed psychology course. We had him answer some questions about his major, his career aspirations. And we asked the question, why are you taking this course? And the answer was, because it's required. And then we asked the question, what do you hope to get out of this course? And the answer was, I don't know it's required. But then what we were able to do is have the system serve up some information about why psychology matters to an engineer and talk about things like human-centered design, talk about things like analysis, talk about things like critical thinking, and put it all in the context of how an engineer would use these things as a way to motivate interest in the content that seemed so distant.
SPEAKER_00:I think the very idea of a curriculum, a set of requirements outside of my major makes little sense to students. And I think universities have tried in all sorts of ways to try to convey the value of that to their students. But it doesn't really land with students. It's not motivating. So this idea of relevance, I think, is absolutely critical. It is a key determinant of motivation from all the recent research on psychology on motivation. It's got to be relevant to me as an individual for me to give it my attention and to give it any effort in developing. So I do think this is a, in some ways, a setup example, but it's a it suggests a path forward that I think we can anticipate arriving with an improved AI environment and a better design curriculum. So I do think we can point to skills that are developed or flexibility in thinking that is necessary to be effective in any role that you're in. Disciplines are lenses, they're ways of seeing the world. And it's not just about exposing students to philosophy and history because it's good for you. And I think there are ways to make these connections much more direct and meaningful to students in real time when they're interacting with this kind of system because they can press, they can engage in a conversation to get clarity. It's not just a one and done kind of thing. They return to this over and over during the course of the semester. And at every point there are opportunities to make these connections tightly. Like this particular chapter has relevance in these particular ways. And I think there's real hope there, I think, for creating relevance that's down and tuned to the very individual learner.
SPEAKER_01:So speaking of relevance, I think the old method might have been I'm going to assign you 47 pages of dense reading for the next class, as opposed to thinking about maybe just enough of the right type of content. And that might include it's audio for pronunciation-heavy topics or video in some cases, might be a better tool. And I think that plays into the relevance factor as well in terms of how students prefer to learn, what's actually going to be more efficient for their learning. So how do these things actually address the reading habits, as it were, of today's students?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, the first thing I want to say is I don't think either Brad or I are against reading, but the goal should be about learning the material. And the modality should be focused on what is the best way to learn the material. And sometimes the goal is learning how to be a better and critical reader. So I what we envisioned with the faculty that we spoke to is starting with some very streamlined and concise content that would get across the main ideas, not unlike your instructor's PowerPoint, which students were finding very valuable. So that's where you start. And again, it could be narrative, but it doesn't have to be. It could be video, it could be audio, it could be whatever modality made sense in it. And the student has an opportunity to say, this is enough, this is what I needed, I can move on from here. So having that content that it's again starts streamlined and multimodal is, I think, an important place to start with the materials that we delivered to the students.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's interesting. I was thinking about Shakespeare. I I read Shakespeare, but man, when I actually watched a play, oh yeah. The level, the nuance, the understanding, the feeling, like really being clear about the emotion of a particular scene was just so much more obvious to me when I watched actors actually do it. So I'm just imagining a textbook where I'm it's a Shakespearean play, and then there's little video vignettes that illustrate the what's actually happening in a scene so that you get that extra perspective.
SPEAKER_02:I think that's such a great example. As a student, it's really hard to hear the cadence of the play, right? But then when you hear the actor do it, it just the meaning comes across in a different way. And that is really the goal, right? How are we delivering meaning to the students and what is the right modality to do that?
SPEAKER_01:I want to talk about how content gets smarter because you know, AI is all pervasive now, it seems. So right now, everyone starts at the same place and moves at the same pace, supposedly, at least. So, how does an adaptive system flip that on its head?
SPEAKER_00:For a long time, we've known that assessment for learning, assessment that is designed to actually help drive students forward in their learning, as opposed to assessing them to see that whether and to what degree and they have learned, right? So the summative assessment, which has been the predominant mode of assessment in higher ed, this is an opportunity for us to put that into the hands of students in a way that drives their learning in real time. So we can do diagnostic assessment. So instead of opening a textbook and cranking through the chapter and answering the questions at the end of the chapter, I start with an assessment that in real time determines what I currently know, what I don't know. And it takes me to the material that is most important to me in this moment, given that diagnostic assessment. And then throughout my read-in experience, I can then provide some input in the form of some formative assessment that lets the system know, yeah, I'm getting this, move on, or I need some more help here. And that is how every student will begin to diverge in their experience within that environment because their responses to those assessments is going to start to differentiate them.
SPEAKER_01:I can just imagine my textbook telling me you had plans to go out tonight. You need to cancel those because we got to go back and look at chapter three one other time.
SPEAKER_02:But I do think one of the really exciting things about this is you can think about every single class, not just being about learning the content and the ability to apply the content in that class, but also helping students learn how to learn, right? And I think what a lot of the materials have done in the past is been really good at teaching students how to answer questions, not necessarily helping them learn how to learn. And I think one of the things that we believe could be very valuable in this post-textbook moment is really help students develop their metacognition skills. Did you really understand that? And if not, what would help you understand that? And that's what we can serve up to you. So I think that's really going to develop a skill set in students that goes beyond the course content and is really about how do I learn? When do I know that I've understood something? When am I ready to move on? And when do I need to spend more time?
SPEAKER_01:You've said that I think instructors aren't really ready to hand over the keys to a fully AI-generated textbook. And given some of the AI output I've seen, I think that's a pretty reasonable position to have. But they do want content that fits their course. So how are we balancing the need for trust and authority, which I think is what traditional textbooks actually give us with the freedom for faculty to make the content their own?
SPEAKER_02:I think that we have to agree that we have to start with a base of authoritative, peer-reviewed content. That is not going away, at least not in the short term. They need to believe that what they are adopting to use with their students aligns with their own pedagogical goals, their own beliefs about the discipline, all of those things. I do think that from there, the world is their oyster. And some of this is already happening now, actually. There is the ability in Top Pat, there is the ability to go in and adapt the content to meet the needs of your specific course. That could be as simple as taking out the chapters that you're not going to cover. It could be adding your own videos. It could be changing a term to the term that you tend to use when there are multiple terms for the same things. So customization of content, starting from a trusted source of content, is happening right now.
SPEAKER_00:To me, one of the most unexpected, interesting discoveries in our conversations and is comes from this place of wisdom. Experienced educators have a great deal of wisdom. They understand where their students are going to struggle in the course. They understand the trends that students as a community are bringing into their course that they need to manage in the course itself in order to foster a productive and healthy community and actually to move students forward in their own learning. Specifically, take a political science course. Students are going to come in with extreme and raw attitudes, and they're going to be very deeply committed to some of them, to pretty extreme views. And that's a problem in the course when you need to get students to be working in teams, when you need to get them to be coming to a deep understanding and appreciation of a perspective they don't, in fact, share. So you have to manage that kind of extremism in the course itself. And that's delicate, right? And so the last thing I would want to do as an instructor in that environment is allow some unregulated AI system to interact with my students and chat with them about the content. So what we discovered was that what faculty really want is some level of control over how the system understands the context of the course in ways that inform its responses to students. So you could imagine in the same way that instructors spend a great deal of time with TAs at the start of the semester, talking about the course, talking about their assessments, setting expectations for their TAs about how to manage certain conversations that they know are going to come up. So that management of TAs, that kind of practice is what they want to be able to do with any kind of AI system in this environment.
SPEAKER_01:It does bring to bear an important point, which is instructors, like you say, they're pretty dialed in with their students, but you can't understand all the nuance that's happening with your learners. Even the most switched-on instructor is going to struggle to know where each student is actually at. So how do you see AI playing into that in terms of maybe surfacing insights that are going to help educators reach more students, teach more effectively, maybe spot the struggling student, and also the students that are thriving, frankly, because sometimes we don't maybe pay enough attention to the students who are actually really doing well in a course.
SPEAKER_00:I I think again, this is an area where our conversations with faculty were really illuminating and quite exciting. What they wanted and what they think they should be able to get from folks like us is insights. Tell us based on all of this activity, give me some recommendations, give me some insights to where my students are currently in their understanding. How do I meet individual needs where I need to invest time there? Either to take students who are really excellent and mentor them toward a major or toward something challenging. So that's one thing. The second thing is for those who are data savvy, they did want data and they wanted to be able to interrogate that data in a natural language sort of way. So what they wanted was to be able to query, to have a conversation about the data and be able to rearrange the data and probe the data and see if they could arrive at some interesting discoveries of their own, understanding the impact of your design and your choices, and to see based on the data that you get back, how can I improve? How can I try to redesign this to help more students be more successful?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I want to bring this back to the ed tech community. Like, what's the most important step for this community to take to bring this vision to life?
SPEAKER_02:I think the most important thing that we can do is move away from incrementalism because that is what we're seeing right now. We're layering on additional features and functionality on a dying model. So we really need to start thinking radically about what a new learning experience can be. And obviously, from a business perspective, that is a very hard thing to do because today the business is textbooks, right? But as an industry, we need to start thinking about what the future could be and start experimenting with these ideas and getting them out in the market because students are already making the decision not to purchase their course materials. And more and more faculty are going to start questioning why do I keep adopting these if the students aren't using them and aren't getting value out of them?
SPEAKER_00:And it is the innovator's dilemma. I think as a trajectory, Donna's right. It's the time has come to pursue a more integrated learning experience. So I think that's going to drive a lot of a lot of innovation and it will be disruptive in the industry. What faculty can do here, and this is where I'd like to suggest for our listeners faculty have a great deal more agency than I think they appreciate. In the near term, there are things that they can do to make the textbook more valuable for their students. I think they can pursue transparency, do what they can to speak to the students about the relevance that this experience has to them. Try to make clear the purpose of the reading before their students engage in it. Try to help them understand how they should read, which I think a lot of people don't think about. So I think there are things that faculty can do here and now to make the traditional textbook experience better for their students.
SPEAKER_01:So fast forward five years, what's the biggest shift a student's going to feel in their learning experience?
SPEAKER_02:I do believe that if we can deliver on this kind of experience where you have a well-aligned course experience, a more holistic 360 course experience, an experience where students are learning how to learn in every single class. I think the most positive outcome we can get out of that is students stop questioning the value of their education. I think that is the thing that we can start moving to. And I think it is one of the really important things that we need to do.
SPEAKER_00:And what I would hope for is a more fully integrated learning experience. I think the experience that students have today is a really fractured one. They go from course to course, they're radically different experiences. So they're trying to make meaning out of a curriculum that doesn't make any sense to them. And so I think five years from now, I would sure hope students are seeing their learning experience holistically as connected, integrated, and meaningful to them as a human being. That this is going to propel them forward in their career and their life in ways that they value.
SPEAKER_01:Clearly essential work for sure.
SPEAKER_02:Clearly.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you both so much for being on the podcast. It's been wonderful talking with you.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you. It's a lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01:Thanks, Eric. Higher Listenings is brought to you by Top Hat, the leader in student engagement solutions for higher education. When it comes to curating captivating learning experiences, we could all use a helping hand, right? With Top Hat, you can create dynamic presentations by incorporating polls, quizzes, and discussions to make your time with students more engaging. But it doesn't end there. Design your own interactive readings and assignments and include multimedia, video, knowledge checks, discussion prompts, the sky's the limit. Or simply choose from our catalog of fully customizable Top Hat e-text and make them your own. The really neat part is how we're putting some AI magic up your sleeve. Top hat Ace, our AI-powered teaching and learning assistant, makes it easy to create assessment questions with the click of a button, all based on the context of your course content. Plus, Ace gives student learning a boost with personalized AI powered study support they can access anytime, any place. Learn more at Topat.comslash podcast today.