Q&A sessions for faculty

Next week, we are offering Q&A sessions for faculty using eTextbooks. You can find a collection of help documents and self-paced tutorials on the Getting Started page of this site. A trainer from Courseload (the e-reader for the textbooks), will lead these sessions online. We’ve asked her to provide highlights from the documentation, but she suggests that we also go through the materials in advance.

Please consider attending one of these sessions if you’re available! Recent studies have found that when faculty and students use collaborative features like shared annotations, feedback is more positive.

The two sessions are identical; one will be held at the Davis Family Library and the other will be held at the Armstrong Library. If you can make it, please let me know which date/time you plan to attend. I’m at cmacfarl@middlebury.edu, 802-443-5018, Davis Family Library 209.

The sessions will be held:
-Tuesday, September 4, 3-4 pm in Davis Family Library 145 (lower level), or
-Wednesday, September 5, 11 am – 12 pm in Armstrong Library computer lab (lower level)

Let me know if you have any questions.

Thank you!

Carrie

Ordering a subsidized looseleaf print copy

Regarding student print copies, when a student launches the eTextbook site from the Course Hub, they will see a link titled, Prefer a printed copy (additional cost)?

When a student clicks on the link they will be able to purchase a looseleaf, three-hole punched, black and white version of their book directly from McGraw-Hill and the site is promoted by a SEO company online so it reach more users. The price of the print version is $28 for books under 600 pages, and $34 for books over 600 pages. (Students can print on their own too, either through their LIS account or on a personal printer.)

These copies are ground shipped from a single location in Ohio, so it should take 2-5 days for students to receive their print version. Here are a few examples. The sample to the right is for one textbook but the one below shows three textbook options, all which are required for the course. Students have the option to order all three for printing, only the textbook, and so on.

The economics of McGraw-Hill at Middlebury

McGraw-Hill is the sole publisher participating in this e-textbook pilot. What does that mean for us? Well, on the one hand, concentrating on one publisher helps us focus on the project planning. We were able to quickly identify courses and then move on to the work of confirming access and testing the technical requirements. A more comprehensive exploration into electronic textbooks will certainly require a wider cast of publishers. But for this pilot, we hope to identify the initial pros and cons and the opportunities and challenges of eTextbooks.

Here are a few numbers:

Each semester, the College Bookstore orders between 1,000 – 1,300 individual required and suggested titles for our courses

In the Fall 2011, the Bookstroe ordered 31 textbooks by McGraw-Hill

This was 2.4% of our overall textbook titles.

The average cost of these McGraw-Hill titles was $113.

Based on the number of students enrolled during the fall 2012 semester in classes using McGraw Hill eTextbooks, the cost per student use will be roughly $30.

Roughly $300 for the required textbooks for Spanish 101 and German 101

$198 for a Chemistry textbook

$197 and $174 for two different Economics textbooks

$150 and $130 for two Psychology textbooks    

$42.70 for an Education Studies textbook

$10.70 for a book of poetry