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Overwhelmingly, students are open to adopting digital alternatives to traditional resources because they provide value on price, content, and portability. These are all areas where traditional textbook publishers have stopped innovating and fallen flat. Our findings suggest that students have already adapted to cost and access barriers with behaviors not supported by the traditional textbook market. We are at a new precipice in education, one where digital innovation will define the way our students work, learn, and interact - all in a post-textbook world.

Boundless has been met with a number of lawsuits from top textbook publishers and is currently trying to resolve these differences in court. But, in the meantime, it's pressing on and is today officially adding a familiar name - some legitimacy - to its open textbooks through Creative Commons.

"Last month in a blog post titled "Better Than a Textbook?", I noted that some faculty find it easier to think about the massive open online courses (MOOCs) provided by vendors like Coursera as "super-textbooks" than as actual courses. Earlier this month, Vanderbilt computer science professor Doug Fisher wrote a guest post for the blog ProfHacker titled "Warming up to MOOCs," in which he described his experiments in using MOOCs in this fashion."

"Sometimes free costs too much. As of January 1, 2013, Flat World Knowledge, which used to describe itself as the world's largest publisher of free and open textbooks online, will no longer offer content at no charge."

Colleges following what the company calls the Textbook Zero model would offer a section using open-education alternatives for every required course and elective needed to earn the degree. Lumen is now testing the model with an unnamed community college on the East Coast, and is also looking for colleges interested in applying the model to general-studies and computer-science degrees.

"Replace your STEM textbook with an affordable, interactive zyBook proven to inspire success and save time."

""We welcome Acrobatiq's team to the VitalSource family," said Pep Carrera, President of VitalSource®. "VitalSource already does more than just deliver learning materials.  We empower students and faculty with the resources necessary to promote greater success. By combining Acrobatiq's cognitive and data science-based platform with VitalSource's valued relationships with publishers and institutions, we have an opportunity to bring high impact learning to the market at an unprecedented scale."  "

""We want to bring the HigherEd course experience into the modern era," said Silagadze. "The go-to-market strategy is direct to professor and student pay model." Once they've gained a foothold on a campus they quickly expand to other departments and course with strong support from inside sales."