After 24 years of teaching math at the collegiate level, Northeastern University professor Dr. David Massey decided to change the way mathematics textbooks were created and distributed. What he saw was a space filled with overpriced books and difficult-to-understand text content.
Instead, he envisioned a world where digital textbooks were the standard, not the exception, and where getting the most recent version of a text was cheap and easy for students. So in 2008, he created the Worldwide Center of Mathematics (WCM), based in Cambridge, and began rethinking textbooks for the digital age.
“We’re not a typical tech startup,” says Brian Lepley, the Center’s Director of Business Development, in an interview this week. “We’re trying to innovate from the standpoint of the text and from the standpoint of the business model, because both really need to be changed.”
This fall, the Worldwide Center of Mathematics will release its first rich media textbook — a calculus book that meets the standards for high school advanced placement courses. When the first school bells ring, at least three high school classes will “crack” the PDF-based book — most easily consumed from an iPad — and every Northeastern freshmen in the engineering track will also be downloading it for consumption via their iPads or personal computers.
What’s more, these calc books are actually being released on a free-mium model. That’s right. The basic PDF version is totally free, and it can’t be printed, but it does include a 45-minute video lecture embedded at the beginning of each section. That’s something all WCM books will likely include moving forward.
