Is Logos going to continue to update Mobile Ed courses?

DMM · 2025-07-05T14:08:33+00:00

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I have enjoyed many of the Logos courses I have taken, but one thing that has concerned me is that it seemed most of them are becoming outdated - not that the content is outdated, but in that many of the books in the suggested reading are no longer available in Logos, or the reading might be from the 1st edition and now there's currently a 2nd or 3rd edition, etc.

I saw this recently in BI131 - the course was released in 2015-2022. The instructor wrote a book that came out in 2007, this book is heavily referenced in the course. But a newer edition of the book was also released the same year the course came out. Both books are available in Logos, and at about the same price ($28 and $30). I almost got the book, in the end couldn't justify it. I didn't want to buy the older edition when there was a newer edition out, but the course only links to the older edition, if I bought the newer edition the links in the course wouldn't have worked and it would just be using my best guess as to what they had wanted me to read… In the end I didn't buy either book and Logos lost a sale.

I noticed today when looking at Heiser's BI101, that many of the suggested readings are listed twice, though a little different.

The IBI takes you to the 1st edition, which is no longer for sale. The IBITE takes you to the 3rd edition.

So it does appear that Logos CAN update these.

According to the file info, this course was released in 2018 and then was updated in 2020 (assumably that's when the links to the 3rd edition were put in).

So Logos can update these, and has done so previously.

The question remains… Are they going to do so with others? If Logos wants to keep these courses being useful, then they need to make sure that the suggested readings are still usable. It will be understandable that it may not be possible to do it exactly, if the book was updated in the particular spots that the reading was at and the reading was only for a few paragraphs, but it certainly should be able to get it very close the vast majority of the time.

@Joe McCune (Faithlife) @Rick Mansfield (Logos)

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Wild Eagle

I wonder if it's hard to create an automatic redirect link when updates are made to the editions.

DMM

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1373400#Comment_1373400

I don't think that's possible - it's not that the old edition is removed and replaced (like as if there was a typo or something… and the old one is gone and only the new one remains)…. but rather that the new edition is a completely separate book.

Furthermore, you would not want to remove the old link to the original book, because others may have originally purchased the original book and that wouldn't be fair to them.

In the Courses tool, there's a list of all the books that each course makes use of. If when they release a course they added that to a database or even a simple Excel sheet, they could easily keep track of what courses use what books, and then when new books are added to their online store they could be checked to see if they are on that list, and if so then it can be flagged to see about having the new edition added.

Along the same lines, it would probably go a long way in keeping their store cleaner and up to date if when they added a new edition of a book, they put a note on the older edition page letting people know that there's a newer edition out. They seem to do this on some pages but it's very inconsistent.

DAL

At one point someone said they were going to do away with Mobile Ed courses and stop producing them, but I guess something changed.

DMM

https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1373414#Comment_1373414

It did seem that way - there hadn't been any new ones for many years, and there were dozens and dozens of them just seeming to rot in prepub for years.

That would be a shame because I think they have a lot of potential. I have certainly enjoyed them. But if they aren't going to be updated at all… then they certainly aren't worth the $$$ price they value them at.

Simon’s Brother

You will find not just the mobile ed course but many other books in your library will reference older editions and potentially be linked to within Logos. In some cases the specific content being referenced in the older edition is not in the newer edition making the newer edition irrelevant in terms of what is being referenced. In some cases the newer edition may not be in Logos and in other cases the older edition may not be either. It’s not just a straight forward updating of links and it would not be wise to actually update the existing links but rather would need the links to new resources added alongside the links to the older edition links as many owners of these courses may have the older edition and may not want to run out and buy the new edition so the links in the course still work for them. To new editions of books there really is no end and to be continually updating these courses when one comes out is not I would think be an expense to Logos that would result in a return that justifies the cost of doing so.

in terns of new mobile Ed courses I think the challenge is that it is once again probably not a financially profitable venture for then when so publishers are now bringing out there own streaming platforms of lectures that people can subscribe to for a yearly fee equivalent to the cost of a single mobile Ed course. Sure they don’t offer curated readings and quizzes but all the same very difficult for mobile Ed to complete against such services when consumers have to make choices on how to spend a limited budget.