Learning to learn via ebooks

You know when the Coca Cola (I think) marketing team was rethinking their marketing strategy and looking at consumers’ demographic and consumption profile, they employed an out-of-the box sort of approach. Instead of thinking about competition in a linear way, they looked at all the various ‘drinks’ that Coke’s target audience was consuming and realized that Coke was not just competing with other ‘carbonated unhealthy’ drinks - but with ALL drinks. Yes - I mean, water, milk, coffee - all sorts of DRINKS in the non-alcoholic sub-section! And I think that’s the history behind the re-marketing strategy that Coke employed - where Coke needed to become the substitute for all DRINKS. So every time some one was thirsty and thought of drinking water or milk (yikes!) - Coke wanted them to reach for Coke! It was no longer Coke vs other similar soft drinks like Pepsi, etc. But, Coke vs ALL DRINKS! This ‘Coke is the substitute for any non-alcoholic drink’ (thirst quencher) strategy obviously got Coke a much wider market share and a lot of unhealthy folks - of ALL age groups.

This suddenly popped into my head yesterday at a seminar called Leading the E-Revolution at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival. You know why? The host, Catherine Godfrey, brought a whole new angle to the actual competition for e-book applications like the Kindle! We have been actively debating Kindle vs the obvious competition - print books. But she said, from a higher education publishing point of view - the actual competition for applications like the Kindle is laptops! If the kindle had features like the laptop - which includes, taking notes, editing texts (as we do or should do, in the margins of actual textbooks!), etc - then there’s something! Interesting, huh?

Just to digress a little, I think we are predisposed to looking at all these issues of new-age digital technologies vs traditional print, etc - largely from a fiction and news production, consumption point of view. We never think of this in relation to the massive education industry - which really is the biggest stakeholder and most profitable market share, I might add, for the publishing industry as a whole. I thought it was interesting to look at an economically viable end of the spectrum, which we tend to forget to consider while debating these hot issues.

Integrating digital and traditional forms of learning - is the only way to go for this market apparently. This is not only for University level (undergrad largely), but also for high school curriculum in Australia. The mode is fast becoming an interactive, participatory sort of learning - where kids learn on the LMS, email their tutors (expect and get immediate responses), ‘read’ a book not in isolation, but together in an e-group and then discuss it via blogs. E-learning products are apparently the way to go for academics, teachers and students.

It’s interesting to keep this in mind especially when you think of an Australian National Curriculum - that is common throughout Australia - something that is being actively reviewed and looked into, besides other issues like parallel importation, emissions trading scheme, etc