Electronic Textbooks
E-books are being widely adopted as alternatives to traditional textbooks. Here you'll find articles detailing new developments in the area of e-book and e-textbook technologies, along with stories about institutions adopting them.
Last year, the State University System of Florida embarked on an "action plan" to give students "access to quality and affordable textbooks and other instructional materials, thereby increasing the likelihood of their success in higher education." The system has partnered with open educational resources company Lumen Learning to provide course materials within its textbook affordability mandate.
Two faculty members from the University of Georgia have developed a lab manual for anatomy and physiology and made it available as an open educational resource.
The vast majority (82 percent) of college and university faculty are responsible for selecting course materials for at least one of their courses, yet 35 percent in a recent survey said they don’t know where to start or what to do to reduce the cost of those materials.
OER Commons, an organization focused on creating open educational resources for education, has developed a new tool for authoring OER.
Digital course materials company Top Hat is launching six new “Intro Courses” that provide a variety of learning materials and instructor resources in an all-in-one course solution.
Learning materials publisher FlatWorld has introduced a range of new capabilities for its digital platform, including enhanced accessibility for its digital titles as well as improved functionality for instructors.
The University of Texas at Arlington is investing half a million dollars this year in funding for projects using open educational resources. That's the largest award by any public academic institution in the state specifically to support OER usage, according to the school.
In an effort to increase the use of open educational resources across its nine campuses, the Houston Community College System is partnering with OER provider panOpen.
Education technology company Perceivant has updated the mobile app that works with its digital courseware. The newest version of BearTracks enables students to access courseware from the mobile application and receive push notifications.
Two major players in the curriculum segment have signed on to work with each other. The platform produced by VitalSource for delivering digital curriculum will be used by Barnes & Noble Education for its BNC FirstDay access.
