Evolving content for mobile delivery synthesis discussion and recommendations March 2011 by Gill Needham Associate Director (Information Management & Innovation) the Open Univeristy

1. Event Held 7th March 2011
Evolving Content for Mobile Delivery
Synthesis of Workshop Discussion and Recommendations
Opportunities
There was general agreement that mobile delivery offers huge opportunities
for students, for universities, for libraries and for publishers. There is huge
potential to increase the flexibility of access to quality academic content and
allow students to make more use of time in their studies. As the profile of the
student body evolves and changes, it may make it easier to reach a broader
and more diverse user population (examples might include work-based
learners or learners in countries with poor internet access). More importantly
perhaps it makes it possible to make academic content easily accessible to
younger students for whom the mobile device is the channel of choice for
learning. To ignore this opportunity is to take a major risk of libraries and the
content they broker becoming less relevant to this ‘new’ group of learners.
Furthermore, the most sophisticated devices such as the iPad open up
opportunities to go beyond text and develop a new interactive form of eBook
(such as those developed by the Open University and launched on iTunesU)
incorporating video, images, audio and interactive activities.
Challenges
It was felt, however, that, at this point in time the challenges are considerable.
These were identified particularly from the librarians’ perspective as they are
increasingly aware of the needs and frustrated to be unable to respond.
Authentication and access management are complex and off-putting to users.
There is work to do to develop business models for eBooks and, indeed, apps
which can be licensed by libraries for flexible use by their communities.
Another major challenge is that there is as yet very little substantial evidence
about student preferences and behaviour. Publishers are unlikely to commit
significant resources in this area if they have yet to be convinced that students
will be prepared to read academic content from small mobile screens. This is
a circular challenge as we need content to be available in order to
demonstrate to students what can be provided and to elicit meaningful
feedback. There is currently very little high quality content available which
works effectively on mobile devices, whatever the claims of publishers and
suppliers. Developments will need to take into account the different types and
models of device students will be using, ranging from standard phones to
iPads and the variety of platforms. The content which is available is invariably
text-based
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2. Recommendations
From this discussion, a long list of practical recommendations was developed
as follows:
1. Librarians and publishers should work together to further develop
detailed requirements for effective mobile delivery
2. More research should be conducted with students to build the evidence
base re preferences and behaviour
3. Systems and processes should be developed to collect user data and
make it available across the sector to inform future developments
4. Librarians and publishers should work together to identify and evaluate
a range of options for new business models for eBooks – to include
micro-payments at one extreme and open access at the other.
5. There should be general and widespread adoption of emerging
common standards such as ePub and html5
6. Publishers and librarians should pool their expertise, supported by
JISC to experiment with new forms of content and delivery
7. Priority should be given to exposing reference type material which
works well on small screens (dictionaries, encyclopaedias etc.)
possibly linked to journal content.
8. There should be joint investment in technical innovation in this area.
Suggested next steps
• Respond to the JISC call and assess what contribution this is will make
to the above
• Set up a joint task group including representatives from the Library and
Publishing communities, with support from JISC
Gill Needham 4/4/11
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