Plymouth U To Provide 30,000 E-Textbooks to Its Students
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In the largest e-textbook program ever undertaken in the United Kingdom, Plymouth University is rolling out more than 30,000 e-textbooks to students institution-wide. The school collaborated with Vital Source Technologies, the digital textbook arm of Ingram Content Group, to provide e-textbooks from more than 16 publishers to students in science and technology, business, arts and humanities, medicine and health and human sciences programs.
Students will access the textbooks — including the suite of learning tools built into the VitalSource Bookshelf platform — directly through the university's Digital Learning Environment. Almost half of the materials will be available in reflowable XML and EPUB formats for interactivity. The textbooks can be used online or they can be downloaded onto mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets and Web-enabled e-readers. They also are fully accessible for students with print-related disabilities.
"This initiative is driven by a determination to ensure that no student is disadvantaged in terms of learning," said Phil Gee, Plymouth's e-books project manager, in a press release. "Providing personal electronic copies of core texts significantly cuts the cost of university, and gives all an equal opportunity to succeed. We are immensely proud that Plymouth is pioneering this very practical way of supporting students, and it delivers on our strategy to enrich what we do through appropriate use of digital technology."
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