Austin Peay Tests Day One Access to E-Books

college student holding textbooks

This summer, Tennessee's Austin Peay State University is piloting a program to put textbooks in the hands of students from the first day of class. The institution is testing out Barnes & Noble College's "First Day" in 10 of its courses. The program delivers e-books to a class learning management system, making the curriculum available by day one of the course and automatically adding the cost of the digital book to the student's tuition bill.

Students are guaranteed to have the right materials on time at deeply discounted pricing, accessible with single sign-on.

The institution estimated that students participating in the pilot would save more than $10,000 collectively, which could rise to $120,000 for the fall semester. Students may also choose to opt out of the program or access print versions of textbooks through the bookstore.

Chad Brooks, APSU associate provost for research and dean of the College of Graduate Studies, said he hopes to expand the program across campus in 2020. "As information dissemination becomes more freely available, open source free digital textbooks are becoming increasingly available and approaching the high standard of much more expensive textbooks," he noted, in a campus article about the project.

The program grew out of a task force convened to address textbook affordability. The group met with members of the faculty, vendors and campus bookstore management.

The First Day approach "will help drive affordability and accessibility, ensuring students are ready to begin learning on the first day of class," said Bookstore Manager Shonte Cadwallader. "This is a game-changer. I think you're going to see more of this."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • student reading a book with a brain, a protective hand, a computer monitor showing education icons, gears, and leaves

    4 Steps to Responsible AI Implementation

    Researchers at the University of Kansas Center for Innovation, Design & Digital Learning (CIDDL) have published a new framework for the responsible implementation of artificial intelligence at all levels of education.

  • glowing digital brain interacts with an open book, with stacks of books beside it

    Federal Court Rules AI Training with Copyrighted Books Fair Use

    A federal judge ruled this week that artificial intelligence company Anthropic did not violate copyright law when it used copyrighted books to train its Claude chatbot without author consent, but ordered the company to face trial on allegations it used pirated versions of the books.

  • server racks, a human head with a microchip, data pipes, cloud storage, and analytical symbols

    OpenAI, Oracle Expand AI Infrastructure Partnership

    OpenAI and Oracle have announced they will develop an additional 4.5 gigawatts of data center capacity, expanding their artificial intelligence infrastructure partnership as part of the Stargate Project, a joint venture among OpenAI, Oracle, and Japan's SoftBank Group that aims to deploy 10 gigawatts of computing capacity over four years.

  • laptop displaying a phishing email icon inside a browser window on the screen

    Phishing Campaign Targets ED Grant Portal

    Threat researchers at cybersecurity company BforeAI have identified a phishing campaign spoofing the U.S. Department of Education's G5 grant management portal.