Effective immediately, the organisers of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) can negotiate special rates regarding the purchase of Springer print and eBooks. Students who have registered for a free online course can order these books through a special URL. Additional types of content, for example journal articles, can also be provided for use as course material at a reduced rate.
Once the organiser – as a rule, a university – has negotiated the usage conditions, Springer provides it with an access-controlled URL that leads to the selected book. For the duration of the MOOC, all registered students can purchase the book at a discount.
MOOC instructors can request course material which is specially tailored to their MOOC students. Furthermore, Springer authors can publish a new edition or an adapted version of their own books which meet the specific requirements of their courses.
In early February, Springer author Peter Corke from Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia, will be offering a MOOC. Corke, an internationally respected researcher in the field of robotics, will use his Springer book Robotics, Vision and Control as course material. So far, roughly 1,200 students have signed up for the course.
Last year Springer conducted a number of pilot projects offering textbooks for selected MOOCs in the computer sciences, statistics, medicine and the social sciences. One particularly impressive example was demonstrated by the MOOC organised by the TU Eindhoven, which used the textbook Process Mining. A total of 41,000 students registered for the course and 5,500 wrote the corresponding assignments.
