® CONCLUSION:


Major educational publishers are essentially “sold” on the benefits of digitally published educational content and have now developed internal strategies to attempt to meet the needs of clients. However, there are still teething problems with understanding the real-world, practical requirements of teachers and students – many approaches are (and publishers admit this) “too theoretical”. The best illustration of this problem would be the slow development of enhanced content that serves a practical use, although the particular emphasis publishers are now placing on data-gathering interactive content, such as in-textbook testing, shows that there’s now a more utilitarian approach to including interactive content.


Teachers are simultaneously requesting more digital content due to the changing digital landscape of classrooms (primarily with the emergence of tablets) whilst not accurately understanding what it is that publishers can do for them. This necessitates a greater effort on the part of publishers to educate teachers and schools about what it is that their offerings can do, as well as on the part of the digital vendors themselves.


The overall picture that is emerging is that the initial mistakes of fragmentation and in-house proprietary publishing solutions are starting to be ironed out and that educational publishers are now finding their feet, developing sound strategies and finding willing markets all across the educational space, from postgraduate schools right down to primary-level education. There is still work to be done on the periphery, but the core foundation to help change the learning landscape as a whole is now there.


CONTRIBUTORS


ELT Publisher, London Education Publisher, London Education Publisher, Cambridge Education Publisher, Dublin ELT Publisher, Oxford Education Publisher, London


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