By: Joseph Cacciotti
This fall semester marks the first official release of the E-textbook, allowing students to access course related materials and textbook passages instantly through Blackboard.
“Our program is in its first year of becoming a “mobile learning” program, so they’ve actually made all the books we need available through e-books,” said Jessie Anderson, a first year Community and Justice Services student.
Students of level one in 35 selected courses have access to this feature.
Some students are less comfortable with accessing their material online and would prefer an option to opt out of E-textbook enrolment. Diana Becerra of the Event Management program is one of those students.
“Some students go out and buy the books anyways and it would be nice to see if not the option to choose between an online resource or a book, a deal on hard copy materials.”
Another option is allowing pages to be printed from online resources.
“Personally I’d rather not go through the school for my textbooks, I usually use Kijiji or other sources to find materials at the best prices”, said Kirsten Wood a second year massage therapy student.
Since it’s a new system not all issues have been resolved though there is a dedicated team ready to assist students with the software involved.
“I have had a lot of problems accessing the materials. There seems to be misunderstandings everywhere about where to get our books, what programs to run them through and who to contact when these programs or books don’t work,” said Anderson.
The E-textbook feature remains the first of its kind to be implemented on such a large scale. Hopefully the system will be expanded and perfected to deliver the best learning experience, encompass more publishers, and become a standard of content delivery for students worldwide.