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Ball State Works with Courseload To Expand Faculty Adoption of Digital Content

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 04/09/13

Ball State University will be promoting greater use of digital course materials among faculty members and students following completion of an e-textbook pilot. The Muncie, IN-based campus has been testing the use of curriculum from Flat World Knowledge and delivered by distributors Courseload and Barnes & Noble since January 2012. Now the university plans to participate in Courseload's eContent Readiness Program to build out use of digital content among its 21,000 students.

"We evaluated Courseload during a pilot program last year as a means for delivering textbook content to students in a digital format," said Yasemin Tunc, assistant vice president for academic solutions. "Courseload was selected based on simplicity, accessibility, and the additional teaching tools it provides for both the faculty and students as they interact with content."

Among those features provided by Courseload:

• The ability for an instructor to pull together content from multiple sources;
• A means for distributingn content to students based on what classes they're in;
• A set of tools for highlighting, annotations, search, evaluation, and collaboration;
• Analytics to expose students' use of content; and
• Management of the transaction of selling the curriculum to students for a given course.

The Courseload program will provide Ball State with people to help recruit faculty and help them make the transition to digital course content, manage re-engineering of business processes related to curriculum, and perform support for faculty and students in the use of the digital formats, among other services.