Going Digital: E-textbooks

Sick, injured, or traveling students can continue working and stay on top of their studies. Our course libraries offer nearly 250 middle and high school electives, career exploration, and career technical education course options. Interactive course content is often proprietary to the publisher and can include resources such as online homework assignments, quizzes, and instructor presentations.
Your credit card will be charged 2-3 weeks before 
e text bookses begin. Even if you submitted your textbook order when you registered for classes in June or July, you will not be charged for them until 2-3 weeks before classes begin. DEN Community Share ideas and resources, access professional development experiences, and collaborate with a network of educators. Unlock the power of discovery with standards-aligned, digital curriculum resources and easy-to-use technology. Review our wide range of textbooks to find the best fit for your course. Join the thousands of professors who have switched to our textbooks.

Use of light-emitting devices at bedtime also makes one more alert, so it’s hard to fall asleep. Further, the report found, it’s not always obvious how students can opt out of the billing if they want to search elsewhere for textbooks. Reputable companies typically use PayPal or pay by check once the transaction is completed, and the payment is made quickly and efficiently.
What better way to do that than give them the closest thing to a hands-on approach to what they’re learning? They’re the key to a learning experience that will keep your students’ attention. There are so many ebook formats out there to support the various different e-readers people use. Whether you’re reading on your laptop, phone or tablet, the formats are meant to support them all. But one thing you must keep in mind is that not all formats allow for interactivity. Most ebooks are static or fixed, and as such, aren’t compatible with interactive elements.

Moreover, eBooks are less expensive than paper textbooks cost average of 50% less than printed version. A book of anatomy and physiology can cost more than $200 and the same electronic textbook costs an average of $100 with more features to help students learn and memorize quicker. There are also no costs for shipping and delivery when you order an eBook. You can simply download and have access to the material instantly.
Most video-sharing platforms, such as YouTube and Vimeo, provide an embed code with every video to help you embed them easily wherever you choose. It is sometimes possible to find books in hard-copy braille from places such as BARD. When I was in college, I found an agency that produced braille volumes for me at a nominal cost. The problem I found was that the books took up a lot of room, and became out-of-date in just a few years.
GAFE is a collection of online services created by Google that have been compiled specifically for use within our school district. The most notable service that you might recognize is Google Drive, which includes the ability to create and share documents, presentations, spreadsheets and more. Most importantly, as a tool designed for education, GAFE offers more privacy and student safety protections than Google’s general offerings and many other online resources. And while it’s not an entirely new concept, OER has gained momentum in recent years, particularly as support has picked up at an institutional level, rather than on a course by course basis. According to a 2018 Babson College survey, faculty awareness of OER jumped from 34 percent to 46 percent since 2015. Another big benefit is that you can always have them with you and read them on the go.

With a little ingenuity and strategic timing, students can save a lot of money by avoiding the peak buying periods and buying textbooks during the off periods when prices are at their lowest. Buying textbooks cheap is certainly every college student’s goal, and with a bit of strategic thinking and leg work, it is possible to find very low prices on the textbook you need for your classes. This article includes some insight designed to help students find the best time to buy textbooks and save money. Renting college textbooks is a simple process; however, there are a few tips that can help students navigate renting textbooks quickly and ensure that they get the best deals when renting textbooks online. A number of companies that rent textbooks to college students engage in environmentally conscious and sustainable activities in addition to renting college textbooks. Chegg.com, for example, has worked with the American Forest Global ReLeaf program for the past three years in a concerted effort to go green.
Print options are typically offered in a looseleaf (low-cost print) format. If a looseleaf print option is unavailable, you can work with your campus bookstore for an alternative print option. Digital textbooks are available through your IvyLearn dashboard. Simply click on an eBook or select digital content in IvyLearn to access it. If an access code is required, a pop-up window will appear to prompt you to enter the code to access.

Recently, Liu et al. used eye-tracking technology to study the online reading behavior of 52 advanced learners of English. In this study, the participants read electronic textbooks with six support features at the micro and macro level that included glosses, vocabulary focus, footnotes, illustrations, infographics, and photos. The results of the study showed that when participants were reading the electronic textbooks for learning vocabulary, vocabulary focus and glosses received significant fixations. However, in reading for text comprehension, the participants focused more on illustrations and visual aids. A number of studies in the literature explored different aspects of reading electronic textbooks on computer screens by university students, however, these studies reported conflicting results. Chou studied the screen reading behaviors of five graduate students from different disciplines over a period of one month.
Students prefer noise and movement, becoming more and more enamored with visual learning. That’s why looking at big blocks of text reduces their ability to retain information. Another drawback to studying from a digital textbook is that it’s a lot easier to get distracted. Print textbooks, on the other hand, are easily stained and torn by stray drinks and careless fingers. Bookshare provides ebooks in a variety of formats including DAISY, electronic braille files, and EPUB, which allows for easy reading of books on any number of mobile devices, both mainstream and blindness-specific. Bookshare books are text only, and do not contain an audio option.

Links connect the material to a broader context and allow you to direct students to relevant articles and content from your digital interactive textbook. By including hyperlinks when you cite your sources, you can encourage students to dive deeper into the subject and do some non-required reading. It’s also a good way to include background information that might not otherwise fit in the text–simply link to additional material. You can create an online textbook full of multimedia lessons with a video segment in just a few clicks. This is an exciting way to engage visual learners and help students connect with the material on a deeper level. Everyone remembers how much they enjoyed watching movies in class, and now you can bring video content to the textbook as well.
Scenes like this, with students picking up multiple printed textbooks, are becoming a thing of the past at UW-Stout. Despite never having used a digital text before coming to UW-Stout, she wouldn’t go back to printed books. UW-Stout has become a digital text leader in the UW System and nationally but not overnight. Ten years ago, Butterfield helped start an e-textbook pilot program in eight class sections. The effort has grown annually as digital texts become more available, students and professors adapt and costs are streamlined.