Conference Keynote to Report on the Demise of the Textbook

University of Phoenix Provost to Present How Online Students Learn

New York, NY (March 29, 2005) – The keynote address at the eBooks in Education Conference on Thursday, April 14, 2005 in New York City will be presented by Craig D. Swenson, Ph.D., the Provost and Senior VP for Academic Affairs at the University of Phoenix. Conference information is available at www.openebook.org/education. Dr. Swenson will present “How Professionals Learn Today—Intentional Learning and the Irrelevance of Textbooks”. During his address he will demonstrate how the University of Phoenix has replaced textbooks with digital materials and how it has fundamentally changed the way students learn.

University of Phoenix is the nation’s largest private university with an enrollment of more than 240,000 students. It has more than 140 physical locations in 37 states, Puerto Rico, Canada and the Netherlands in addition to its Online Campus headquartered in Phoenix. All students enrolled in the University of Phoenix can complete 100% of their educational and administrative activities online and can access an online collection of over 14,000 digital journals and 20,000,000 full-text articles for their classes and research.

During the one-day conference attendees will hear from leading educators, publishers and technology vendors on advances in the access and delivery of digital academic content. In addition to Dr. Swenson, presentations will be made by executives and representatives from WebCT, Connections Academy, Virtual High School, Blackboard, OverDrive, Thomson Learning Labs, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, Microsoft and others.

Exhibitors of the conference include Design Science, Live Ink, OverDrive, Microsoft, Thomson/Gale, Green Point Technology Services, Founder Electronics Corporation, the Alternate Text Production Center and Simba Information.

About the Open eBook Forum

The eBooks in Education Conference is presented by the Open eBook Forum, the international trade and standards organization for the electronic publishing industry. For more information, please contact Nick Bogaty, Executive Director, 212-924-9081, nbogaty@openebook.org. The organization is supported by membership dues and the generous support of Adobe Systems, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, OverDrive, Inc. and eReader.com. An OeBF member list and membership information can be found on the OeBF Web site at www.openebook.org.

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