However, since its introduction, there have been many issues of controversy surrounding DRM technology and its users. Some argue that DRM has created a “permission culture” since it prevents a user from reading an ebook on more than one device, despite a legitimate purchase. While DRM does support the anti-piracy movement, some believe it deprives customers the control to their purchased movies, television shows, and ebooks. In some cases, the consumer needs the copyright owner’s permission to play a piece of music both on a home computer and on a car stereo.

Tor UK, the science fiction and fantasy division of Pan Macmillan, recently reported that they will launch a 3-month trial to sell their ebooks without DRM technology. Tor UK president and publisher Tom Doherty writes:

“Our authors and readers have been asking for this for a long time…DRM is a constant annoyance to them. It prevents them from using legitimately-purchased e-books in perfectly legal ways, like moving them from one kind of e-reader to another.”

The switch will assure that readers can buy an ebook through Amazon and use on a Kindle, but also read on other ebook devices, such as Sony Reader, or with Apple’s iBooks.

Click here to read more about Tok UK’s decision to go DRM-free.

There are alternatives to using DRM technology that will still discourage file sharing. In 2011, JK Rowling chose to sell ebook editions of the Harry Potter series that are DRM-free. Rather than encoding the literature files with DRM technology, she added a digital watermark to discourage users from copying them illegally.

What is the future of DRM technology? What do you think the solution is to preventing piracy and ensuring copy protection for digital data?

On a majority of these sites, you are required to either be a recognized customer of the site, or sign into the service in order to use the feature. On the Jones & Bartlett Learning website, you can be a returning user or a first time visitor and you can still “look inside” over 4,000 of our titles!

Jones & Bartlett Learning uses Google Preview to allow our customers to take a sneak peek into a book of interest. Browsing through our titles offer a limited preview, so you’ll only be able to view the number of pages that the copyright makes available. It allows the customer to look through titles just as you would in a bookstore, but with the ease of never having to leave your computer. Jones & Bartlett Learning allows you to browse through up to 10% of all content in our books that have this feature.

If you like the ease and style of browsing through your favorite book online, Jones & Bartlett Learning offers a variety of apps and eBooks so you can read and study on the go on your phone or tablet.

Please visit our online product catalog to “look inside” our titles as well as read customer reviews, author biographies and see what additional format options are available for our products, from eBooks to mobile and online solutions.

The report showed that as of February 2012, 21% of Americans had read an eBook, and that owners of eReaders read an average of eight books a year more than people without the devices – those using eReaders read approximately 24 books per year vs. traditional book readers who only read 16 books per year.

But what eReaders/tablets are people using?

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG)  and Bowker Market Research interviewed 1,000 eBook readers about their attitudes toward eBooks and eReading as part of the Consumer Attitudes Toward eBook Reading study.  This research uncovered that two out of five eBook readers who choose a tablet as their primary reading device use an iPad; at the end of 2011, two-thirds of those e-book readers were using an iPad, roughly a 25 point drop.  Some 25% of all readers who read eBooks are now reading on tablets, up from under 20% at the end of 2011.

About 10% of consumers who read e-books chose the iPad as their e-reading device of choice at the end of 2011 and in the most recent version of the BISG study. Over that same period, the percentage of people who chose an Android tablet as their e-reading device of choice shot up to about 15% from 6% in the earlier period.

But that isn’t stopping Barnes & Noble or Amazon as you can see from the graphic above.

At the end of last month Microsoft announced their collaboration with Barnes & Noble’s Nook.   Microsoft has agreed to invest $300 million for a 17.6% equity stake. The remaining 82.4% will be owned by Barnes & Noble – making the deal worth $1.7 billion in total.

The new joint-venture is planning to release a Nook app for Windows 8, Microsoft’s new operating system for PCs, tablets and other touch-sensitive devices.  It is also targeting the educational market, through Barnes & Noble’s Nook Study digital textbook store.

Despite recent news that Amazon’s Kindle Fire “fell off a cliff,” there appears to be some confusion around shipments vs. sales.  Reports have now clarified that Kindle Fire shipments were down, but that had more to do with resellers, not consumers.  In fact, according to NPD’s Consumer Tracking Service the Kindle sold 1.8 million units in the first quarter.

Jones & Bartlett Learning has many eBook and other digital formats to choose from.  For an overview of all our options, check out our eContent page on our website.  Or  get a quick snapshot from our online catalog as to which of our titles are available as eBooks and other formats:

Regardless of which eReaders or tablets people are using, it is obvious that these devices are here to stay.  Do you use an eReader or tablet to read?  If so, do you find yourself reading more or less?

Why does the thought of teamwork assignments make entire classes of students and professors cringe? Despite years of research and numerous articles emphasizing the need for teamwork experiences in higher education, few instructors have been formally educated in methods to teach teamwork. There are even fewer courses devoted exclusively to teamwork, despite some excellent texts (Freshman, Rubino, & Chassiakos, 2009). Many of us stumble along, and, if we are lucky, find mentors who have years of experience in classroom teamwork assignments. I was fortunate to have colleagues who believed in the need for teamwork for our discipline, even when many other faculty members found it too frustrating to deal with.

We shouldn’t wait until people are in post-graduate programs to introduce them to applied teamwork (Nash, 2008; Newell, 1990). That road leads to disappointment. Habits of doing everything alone have been instilled and teaching teamwork must undo many of these “I can do it all” or “I should do it all” attitudes. Teamwork education must begin at the undergraduate level and continue through graduate school and beyond (Drake, Goldsmith, & Strachan, 2006; Lerner, Magrane, & Friedman, 2009). Once employed, our graduates will be judged by their supervisors and colleagues on their ability to be team players. In healthcare, lives literally depend on good teamwork (Sehgal, Fox, Vidyarthi, Sharpe, Gearhart, Bookwalter, Baker, Aldredge, Blegen, & Wachter, 2008).

So, how can instructors encourage effective teamwork participation in the online environment? Here are some tried and true methods I have used you can apply to your courses.

• Post a syllabus that explicitly addresses the value of teamwork and the rubrics by which students will be judged. Students want and deserve to know what they need to do to achieve their educational goals in a course. The proportion of their grade for the course related to teamwork should be meaningful. One to five percent of a course grade is not adequate to motivate students to actively engage in teamwork. A bare minimum of ten percent of the course grade should be assigned to the team projects. In addition, for teamwork, they should be judged by their peers, not only by the instructor. There are a number of teamwork rubrics; I happen to like the one I created with my colleagues (Buchbinder, Cox & Casciani, 2012, p. 374). The tool addresses key criteria for successful team players, including: attendance, preparation, collaboration and goal identification, active participation, open-mindedness and willingness to modify opinions, concise presentation of ideas, timely submission of assignments, respectful and considerate interactions with teammates, fulfillment of responsibilities and active work on achievement of group consensus. Used as an Excel file, students can easily total up the scores. Students are required to explain why they gave a teammate a score of under 3 or over 8 on a scale of 1 to 10.  They must also indicate whether they would work with this person again (Yes/No) (Buchbinder, Cox & Casciani, 2012, p. 374).
• Establish ground rules for netiquette. Most universities have guidelines for student civility and for respectful online interaction with instructors and peers. Place these guidelines in your syllabus and separately in your online course, and make a point of referring students to these documents. If a student behaves inappropriately later on, he or she cannot claim ignorance.

• Do not allow the students to self-assign to teams. Just as you have students who will congregate in face to face courses, alliances will appear in online courses. Students often “see” each other again and again in online courses and know how their colleagues interact. As the instructor, it is up to you to assign students to teams. You can do this by alphabet or by random number generator, but however you do it, make sure the assignment is transparent to the students. Remember, students always look for equity in the classroom. Teams can be for the duration of the course, or for one project, but you set up the teams.
• Create group rooms for each team. Most online teaching systems have options for group rooms. The instructor usually has to enable these. Assign the students to teams with names that do not have a value-laden association. You can make it something fun and competitive, like baseball, NHL, NBA or NFL team names depending on the season. You can even use bird names if you’re a birdwatcher, but no “Vultures,” or “Hummingbirds,” please. Require students to post all group work in these rooms. There should be no offline conversations on projects. Again, transparency is critical here.
• Assign yourself to each team in each group room and monitor the conversations. In a very short time, you will be able to see who really takes leadership and who is lurking and slacking. I recommend you do not interact with the team, unless there is some major problem that needs to be addressed, e.g., team members drop or withdraw from the course and you need to reassign them to new teams. Students will soon forget you are there and behave in a natural manner. You will have documentation (through course statistics) of how much time each student spent in each area of the course. This is true of the group rooms, too.
• Throughout the course, reiterate the importance of team work in the real world, i.e., ask your students if they want to get and keep a job.Healthcare needs more interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary team players to address “wicked problems” (Buchbinder, 2007; Conklin, 2008). People who can learn the needed interprofessional skills to work effectively in teams will always be in demand. Wicked problems cannot be solved by one person or one discipline. We need to remove our disciplinary hats and address these issues with interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary teams. If your students are confused by the terminology, here’s a brief overview you can share:

If you want to be alone in your silo, working only with like people, you are a unidisciplinarian. If you like working with other disciplines to address an issue, but don’t feel the need to learn new constructs and theories, then you will probably be happy in a multidisciplinary team. If you are interested in learning more about other disciplines and are willing to take a risk and cross boundaries of potentially conflicting theories and constructs, you might enjoy working on an interdisciplinaryteam. If you want to build new theories, products, sciences and ways of knowing the world and the problems to be solved, then you may also enjoy working on a transdisciplinary team. (Buchbinder, 2009, p. 5).

• Show your students what a successful interdisciplinary team can accomplish. Perhaps the most readily accessible and highly engaging exemplar of success is the Disease Risk Index @ Harvard School of Public Health (Emmons, Viswanath, Colditz, 2008). This project “brought together clinicians, epidemiologists, behavioral scientists, and decision scientists.” The plan was to help individuals to calculate their disease risk–but they quickly discovered computer-based calculations and technology would enable everyone access to risk estimations, not just those who were good at math. The key to the success of this effort was the inclusion of the community as equal partners. As a result, the project addressed community concerns in a timely manner.
• Provide frequent and meaningful feedback. Students are often confused by course expectations despite what we believe are crystal clear instructions. One of my colleagues meets with teams face to face three times over the course of the semester to see how things are going. You can apply this online through the use of a chat room, a conference call or SKYPE. You may have to juggle schedules a bit if your students are not all in the same time zone, but this offers a way to provide non-judgmental feedback and guidance before things go awry. If you find you have students with specific skill gaps, this is a good time to contact them privately and recommend support services. I have referred students to counseling services on occasion for debilitating shyness or anger management.  This is part of their professional development.

While students may complain they hate teamwork, after two decades of teaching in higher education, I have found they will come back to you and thank you. Like farmers, we plant seeds of professional development and wait for them to grow. If you’re lucky, you’ll receive this positive feedback early on when students are completing their internships. Often it may take a year or two of working in the real world of healthcare for students to realize what a gift you have given them. Be patient and you will be rewarded with their gratitude.

Here are some references if you are interested in this topic.

Buchbinder, Sharon B. (2009, September 17). Can we tame the wicked problems in health  care? Available at http://blogs.jblearning.com/health/2009/09/09/can-we-tame-wicked-problems-in-health-care/

Buchbinder, Sharon B. (2009, October). AJPM special supplement explores: Interdisciplinarity and the science of team science. Association of Integrative Studies Newsletter. 31:(3) 5-8.

Buchbinder, Sharon B., Cox, Donna M & Casciani, S.J. (2012). Healthcare management case study guidelines. In Buchbinder, Sharon B. & Shanks, N. (Eds). Introduction to health care management, 2^nd Ed. Boston , MA: Jones & Bartlett, 2012, pp. 367-374.

Conklin, J. (2008). Wicked problems and social complexity. Retrieved fromhttp://www.cognexus.org/wpf/wickedproblems.pdf

Drake, R., Goldsmith, G., & Strachan, R. (2006). A novel approach to teaching teamwork. Teaching In Higher Education, 11(1), 33-46.

Emmons, K.M., Viswanath, K., Colditz, G.A. (2008). The role of transdisciplinary collaboration in translating and disseminating health research: Lessons learned and exemplars of success. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 35(2S), S204-S210.

Freshman, B., Rubino, L., & Chassiakos, Y.R. (2009). Collaboration across the disciplines in healthcare. Sudbury (MA): Jones and Bartlett Publishers.

Lerner, S., Magrane, D., & Friedman, E. (2009). Teaching Teamwork in Medical Education.Mount Sinai Journal Of Medicine, 76(4), 318-329.

Nash, J.M. (2008). Transdisciplinary training: Key components and prerequisites for success. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 35(2S), S133-S140.

Newell, W. (1990). Interdisciplinary curriculum development. Issues in Integrative Studies 8, 69-86. In W. Newell (ed)Interdisciplinarity: Essays from the Literature (pp. 51-65), New York (NY): College Entrance Examination Board, 1998.

Sehgal, N. L., Fox, M., Vidyarthi, A. R., Sharpe, B. A., Gearhart, S., Bookwalter, T., Baker, J. Aldredge, B.K.,  Blegen, M.A. & Wachter, R. M. (2008). A Multidisciplinary Teamwork Training Program: The Triad for Optimal Patient Safety (TOPS) Experience. JGIM: Journal Of General Internal Medicine, 23(12), 2053-2057.

Helen Osborne, pictured here with Marketing Manager Grace Richards, received two awards: a 2012 Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Communication and a 2012 Neil Duane Award of Distinction at the New England Chapter's biennial Writing Awards Luncheon on Saturday, May 5, 2012.

Health Literacy From A to Z: Practical Ways to Communicate Your Health Message, Second Edition by Helen Osborne has been awarded two high honors: a 2012 Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Communication and a 2012 Neil Duane Award of Distinction from the New England Chapter of the American Medical Writers Association (AMWA).

According to Jill Shuman, director of the Will Solimene Awards program,

“Helen’s book was selected from among the many outstanding entries submitted to this year’s competition. The Will Solimene Awards and Neil Duane Awards are presented biennially for print and electronic entries that represent excellence in overall biomedical communication, as judged by a panel of experienced and award-winning writers and editors. Health Literacy From A to Z, Second Edition was initially one of 18 winners selected for the Association’s Will Solimene Award and was later selected from that elite group to win a Neil Duane Award.”

The First Edition of Health Literacy From A to Z received the 2006 Will Solimene Award for Excellence in Medical Communication.

“Congratulations to two-time award-winning author Helen Osborne on these prestigious achievements. Jones & Bartlett Learning authors are world-leading experts and these awards show why,” said Alison Pendergast, Chief Marketing Officer, Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Jones & Bartlett Learning author, Helen Osborne, also presented the 2012 Honors Award to recipient Dr. Timothy Johnson.

Founded in 1940, AMWA is a nonprofit professional society that promotes high standards in medical writing with chapters throughout the United States and Canada. During the ceremony, Osborne presented the 2012 Honors Award to G. Timothy Johnson, MD, MPH, a Senior Medical Contributor for ABC News and one of the best known medical and health communicators in America. Previously, Dr. Johnson was the Chief Medical Editor for ABC offering on-air medical analysis for “World News,” “Nightline,” and “20/20.” He has provided commentary on medical problems and solutions on “Good Morning America” since its debut in 1975.

Health Literacy From A to Z: Practical Ways to Communicate Your Health Message, Second Edition by Helen Osborne, M.Ed, OTR/L teaches key principles and strategies of effective health communication. Featuring an easy-to-use, innovative format, this practical reference guide includes hundreds of ideas and strategies for daily clinical practice. Visit http://go.jblearning.com/HealthLiteracy for more information.

Furthermore, college-educated men and women are facing a lower entry-level salary than past generations. The Economic Policy Institute reported that men ages 23-29 earned an average $21.68 an hour in 2011, a 7.6% decline from 2000, while the women’s corresponding figure fell 6%, to $18.80.

As some graduates are not able to easily find a steady income or position in their chosen field after college, they are also faced with an overwhelming amount of loans – based on the latest findings, for example, two-thirds of students from the class of 2010 graduated with student loans totaling an average amount of $25,250. Chatzky reported that the average debt today for a college graduate is $26,000. In addition, the Stafford loan interest rates are due to increase this July from 3.4% to 6.8%. This raise will nearly double the amount of interest for one of the most popular loans that are available to students. Since tuition numbers and loan figures are expected to continue to increase, graduates are expected to spend a majority of their well-earned dollars on monthly payments to lenders. Rather than purchasing vehicles or putting a down payment on a new home, they will be forced to delay financial independence.

What suggestions do you have for graduates who are not able to find a position in their chosen field after college?

Journal Sections
Research
Investigative related research, both quantitative and qualitative, is the leading reason for the creation of the ISJ, and is considered to be the most important section for its readers.  It is critical that both practitioners and academicians conduct research that will have policy implications on the quality and processes of investigations.

Case Studies
These studies provide the experiences of others and help to illustrate and clarify ideas and concepts as found during the course of conducting other investigations.

Tech Notes
This section of ISJ will describe the new techniques that others have discovered that could be useful practices for the investigator.

Legal Issues
The legal parameters investigators work with are forever changing and as a result the investigator needs to stay abreast of all the decisions.

Book Reviews
This section provides reviews of the latest writings and books regarding the investigative process.

If you are interested in submitting your research, writings, case studies, or a book review, please contact James M. Adcock directly at Editor@InvestigativeSciencesJournal.org.

“You’ve got to be there,” explains Pat Tutunjian, Vice President of International Sales at Jones & Bartlett Learning. With its diverse list of nearly 25,000 attendees, the 3-day event offers thousands of impressions and the potential to create and build relationships. The JBLearning team took advantage of this opportunity by scheduling meetings with sales agents, foreign publishers, as well as book sellers and distributors from Brazil, Lebanon, South Africa, Malaysia, Australia, and all throughout Europe. Tutunjian and the team feel that face to face interaction is crucial when speaking with international customers about their needs.

Each year, the London Book Fair showcases one country through their Market Focus initiative in order to provide unique market recognition and programs. China served as the Market Focus in 2012, and it was reported that over 180 publishers and 21 authors came from China in order to develop new connections with exhibitors and attendees. It was announced that Turkey will be the Market Focus country in 2013.

Overall, the Jones & Bartlett Learning booth was consistently busy and well-attended – both Tutunjian and the JBLearning team are looking forward to attending the London Book Fair in 2013!

Re-posted from Wired:
Facebook Asserts Trademark on Word ‘Book’ in New User Agreement

Facebook is trying to expand its trademark rights over the word “book” by adding the claim to a newly revised version of its “Statement of Rights and Responsibilities,” the agreement all users implicitly consent to by using or accessing Facebook.

You may recall that Facebook has launched multiple lawsuits against websites incorporating the word “book” into their names. Facebook, as far as we can tell, doesn’t have a registered trademark on “book.” But trademark rights can be asserted based on use of a term, even if the trademark isn’t registered, and adding the claim to Facebook’s user agreement could boost the company’s standing in future lawsuits filed against sites that use the word.

“Unregistered marks are quite common in the US,” University of Minnesota Law Professor William McGeveran told Ars. “Rights arise from use, not registration (though registration does give you some other advantages). That’s how Facebook can try to claim ‘book.’” If you see a ™ next to a name, that indicates an unregistered, claimed trademark, whereas an R in a circle signifies a registered one, McGeveran notes.

A search of the trademark database maintained by the US Patent and Trademark Office shows Facebook with 73 active trademarks, many of them covering different uses of the words “Facebook” and “like.” Other registered trademarks cover the letter “F,” “Face,” “FB,” the number “0″ with a period, “F8,” “Facebook Developer Garage,” “Wall,” “Facepile,” “Nextstop.com,” “Facebook for good,” “Friendfeed,” Facebook Insights,” “Facebook Pages,” and “Facebook Ads.”

“Book” doesn’t appear on the US list. In November 2010, the Los Angeles Times reported that Facebook was successful in trademarking “Face,” but might have a tougher time gaining rights to the word “book.” A company called myEworkBook filed an application to get the “Book” trademark in the US, but abandoned the application in February 2012 after an unfavorable decision by the trademark review board.

Facebook has a pending trademark application on “book” listed in the European Union’s trademark database, but the current status is “application opposed” with “likelihood of confusion” listed as the reason for opposition. There are already numerous European trademark claims over “book,” but in different contexts than the social media one claimed by Facebook.

We want to hear from you.  What do you think about Facebook copyrighting the word “book”?

However, there are some improvements that would need to be in order to increase the use of e-textbooks in the classroom. The first problem is that a computer or e-book reader with an internet connection is mandatory for the student to read the book, and these can be an extra expense. Printing pages or important passages is often limited, and e-textbooks cannot be returned, depending on the vendor. There are also few color options on the cheaper and more basic e-book readers with black and white screens.

So what is the future of e-textbooks? The past holiday season has proven that both tablets and e-book readers have grown in popularity. According to Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, “the number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December [2011] to 29% in January [2012].” In fact, it is estimated that 1 in 5 Americans are reading e-books on an electronic device. Consumers have absolutely taken advantage of the variety of tablets and e-book readers available; it would not be difficult to purchase a quality e-book reader with a long battery life and crisp text for under $100.

Check out the eContent available from Jones & Bartlett Learning.

How do you think your students prefer to read and study from their textbooks? What do you think as the biggest advantage/disadvantage of using a tablet in the classroom?