Textbooks represent an 11 billion dollar industry, up from $8 billion in 2014. Textbook publisher Pearson is the largest publisher—of any kind—in the world.

    It costs about $1 million to create a new textbook. A freshman textbook will have dozens of contributors, from subject-matter experts through graphic and layout artists to expert reviewers and classroom testers. Textbook publishers connect professors, instructors and students in ways that alternatives, such as open e-textbooks and open educational resources, simply do not. This connection happens not only by means of collaborative development, review and testing, but also at conferences where faculty regularly decide on their textbooks and curricula for the coming year.

    It is true that textbook publishers have recently reported losses, largely due to students renting or buying used print textbooks. But this can be chalked up to the excessively high cost of their books—which has increased over 1,000 percent since 1977. A restructuring of the textbook industry may well be in order. But this does not mean the end of the textbook itself.

    While they may not be as dynamic as an iPad, textbooks are not passive or lifeless. For example, over the centuries, they have simulated (模拟) dialogues in a number of ways. From 1800 to the present day, textbooks have done this by posing questions for students to answer inductively (归纳性地). That means students are asked to use their individual experience to come up with answers to general questions. Today’s psychology texts, for example, ask: “How much of your personality do you think you inherited?” while ones in physics say: “How can you predict where the ball you tossed will land?”

    Experts observe that “textbooks come in layers, something like an onion.” For an active learner, engaging with a textbook can be an interactive experience. Readers proceed at their own pace. They “customize” their books by engaging with different layers and linkages. Highlighting, Post-It notes, dog-ears and other techniques allow for further customization that students value in print books over digital forms of books.

解析：C。根据students expected to do和learning process可定位到原文第四段。第四段第三、四句指出，从1800年至今，教科书都是在提出问题，让学生进行归纳性回答。这就要求学生利用他们的个人经验总结问题并做出回答。这一流程可以总结为学生使用教材进行的学习过程（learning process），题干中的are expected to do和本句中are asked to相对应。C项中Answer questions对应原文的answers to general questions，personal experience对应原文的individual experience，与原文表述一致，故正确。