A system of publication and distribution of instructional materials and method therefor

Abstract

A method for the electronic publication and distribution of customized educational materials comprises an educator compiling a set of customized educational course materials from selected segments of educational works stored in an educational materials database of available materials (150-180), and indexing the set of customized educational course materials in an electronic database where it is available for purchase in an electronic format by students (270, 277). Copyright infringement is discouraged by providing the educator the option of electronic testing and grading of only those students that have purchased the educational materials. Hence, only such students are eligible to receive a grade in the class (265, 280). The customized educational course materials are easily updated without the publisher incurring traditional printing and distribution costs, simultaneously reducing the time to market for new editions of educational materials.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] This application claims the benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 60 / 513,907, filed Oct. 23, 2003.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] The present invention relates to methods of publishing and distributing custom compilations of available books, articles and related published and unpublished matter that are prepared or specified for specific instructional courses. [0003] Historically, the method of marketing and selling of instructional materials has been to directly approach the instructors employed at educational institutions via a publisher's sales representative and advertising campaigns through the mail and, most recently, through order placement from online catalogs provided by the websites of major publishing houses. Shipping costs and returns are born by the publisher, as well as sampling of books as promotional materials. Small circulation textbooks are expensive, due to both the high fixed and variable costs of traditiona...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

Small circulation textbooks are expensive, due to both the high fixed and variable costs of traditional publishing.

Instructors tend to be very selective when choosing which portions of available books and supporting materials are to be used for their classes.

Students therefore are customarily saddled with purchasing a very expensive set of educator materials that will be only partially used for required course work.

Moreover, instructors are usually limited in their choice of educational materials in rapidly evolving fields since the availability and quality of available textbooks become outmoded and include errors that will not be corrected until another edition goes to print.

The costs of such an inefficient system are not only reflected in the price of books, which is ultimately borne by students, but in the difficulty of meeting the needs of instructors seeking materials for course instruction, and in supplying students with current content in a timely manner.

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