PROFESSORS PUBLISH FIRST WEB-BASED TEXT; ALLOWS FOR CURRENT INSIGHTS IN REAL TIME

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- A professor in S. Michael Groomer's field of expertise has written a textbook and a solutions manual on financial accounting that together weigh close to 10 pounds.

You can read and highlight key points in the margins of its 1,000-plus pages, which contain information that probably took a couple of years to go from the professor's mind to the printed page.

"It gets frozen in time," said Groomer, an associate professor of accounting and information systems in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University.

Compare that to the new textbook published by Groomer and Uday Murthy, a professor at Texas A&M University. It is just as comprehensive on accounting information systems, is totally interactive, and yet weighs less than a feather.

Accounting Information Systems: A Database Approach is believed to be the first business textbook published exclusively on the World Wide Web. Business faculty at nearly a dozen universities in the United States and Canada -- such as the University of Miami and the University of Texas -- have adopted Groomer and Murthy's "cybertext" as their AIS text.

"It really is a paradigm shift -- from Gutenberg and movable type to publishing in the electronic environment . . . for the timely delivery of information and knowledge," noted Groomer, who is also a partner with Murthy in the Bloomington-based company CyberText Publishing. The two originally met when Murthy was earning his doctorate at IU.

"A common complaint leveled against conventional print textbooks is that their content can become rather outdated," he said. "This is a living book -- a dynamic piece, rather than a static piece. We believe that Internet delivery of instructional materials provides authors and teachers with a unique opportunity to keep the information passed along to students as up-to-date as possible."

At the end of each chapter, there is always a date showing when the information was last updated, and the authors revise the material prior to the beginning of each semester to reflect changes in technology and the underlying subject matter.

Groomer and Murthy's texts are accessible in password-protected areas on their Web site at cybertext.com

In addition to 13 chapters and an appendix, a key feature of the book is the numerous "hyper-links," found throughout each chapter. These are words underlined in blue that, when clicked upon by the computer mouse, take the student to a related section of the chapter, book or a related Web site on the Internet.

"We have provided links from the learning objectives outlined at the beginning of each chapter to the appropriate location in the chapter that addresses the objective," the professors explain in their preface. "These hyper-links allow you to review a chapter quickly to brush up your knowledge on topics you might not fully understand on your first reading of the chapter."

Another key feature is an online quizzing system that enables students to take a self-test on each chapter. They can get immediate feedback on quizzes consisting of a random set of five questions for each chapter, which professors can require students to take before the material is covered in class. This approach virtually guarantees that students come to class prepared, having read the relevant chapter beforehand.

Instructors can access grade reports in real time, and also have access through the Web to sample exams and an online solutions manual. Those who prefer the feel of paper are encouraged to print out chapters off the Web site.

The book's subject matter, accounting information systems, is well served by the book's format. It is one of the few AIS texts that utilizes something called the "events-oriented entity relationship approach," an information systems method that uses databases to meet the needs of the entire business.

Historically, accounting systems have consisted of making journal entries about narrowly interpreted financial transactions and then generating financial statements from them. Data were stored functionally, and in many cases, were duplicated and didn't always agree among various departments within a company. As a result, this method didn't provide the kind of urgent cross-functional information about business events needed by managers who are making decisions very quickly.

"It was because of the narrow focus on financial transactions and the way the data were stored," said Groomer, an IU professor since 1974. "But with the events-oriented entity relationship approach -- which results in an integrated relational database of financial and non-financial information -- the accountant can query the database to essentially answer any question that a manager might raise."

For more information about Groomer and Murthy's text or their company, Cybertext Publishing, call 1-888-288-3913 or visit their Web site at cybertext.com

(George Vlahakis, 812-855-0846 or 812-855-3911, gvlahaki@indiana.edu)

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