Posts Tagged ‘eBooks’

OpenStax makes its online learning tools free

The Rice University-based publisher OpenStax announced Thursday that it will provide free teaching resources through the end of the spring semester to support faculty transitioning to online course delivery in response to the coronavirus pandemic. With over 300 universities transitioning to online learning to limit the spread of COVID-19, educators are relying on digital resources […]

Open to Open? An Exploration of Textbook Preferences and Strategies to Offset Textbook Costs for Online Versus On-Campus Students

As open textbook initiatives are on the rise, a burgeoning literature has begun exploring student perceptions of openly licensed textbooks used in higher education. Most of this research has lacked consideration of potential differences in the perceptions of online and on-campus students and has failed to include a control group of students using traditional textbooks. […]

Adopting Open Educational Resources Can Help Students. But It Takes Time, Money and Effort

There’s new evidence that open educational resources may contribute to helping students complete college. Students who took multiple community college courses that used only free or low-cost OER materials earned more credits over time than their peers who took classes that used traditional course materials such as textbooks, according to a new study. The findings […]

Top Hat raises $55M to expand digital courseware, OER

Top Hat, an ed tech company that specializes in creating open educational resources (OER), announced Tuesday that it raised $55 million in Series D funding. The fundraising round was led by existing investors Georgian Partners and Inovia Capital and includes debt and equity financing. The company said in a statement that the funding will help […]

Teaching and Learning Experiences with Enhanced Books in Engineering Math and Science Courses

This study focuses on understanding the implementation of three interactive digital products in the first-year foundational courses (General Chemistry, Physics I & II, Calculus I & II) at the Faculty of Engineering, and the perceptions of teaching and learning experiences with those products. The data were gathered from the instructors, students and Distance Education Unit […]

Student Engagement with E-Texts: What the Data Tell Us

This case study of Indiana University’s e-text initiative reports on students’ actual use of and engagement with digital textbooks. In a typical semester, students read more in the first four weeks and less in later weeks except during major assessment times; in a typical week, most reading occurs between 5:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. from […]

Free-Textbook Group Will Sell Its E-Books on Chegg, for a Small Fee

Some producers of free e-textbooks have had trouble persuading professors to adopt them. So one backer of “open-source textbooks” has decided to sell its titles on Chegg, an online textbook retailer, for a small fee in hopes of reaching a wider audience. Wired Campus Full Article

A Typology for Observing Children’s Engagement with eBooks at Preschool

This research reports a two-phase descriptive study of young children’s engagement with ebooks conducted in Head Start classrooms. Phase 1 focused on the development of a typology as an analytic framework for observing engagement with ebooks in different formats (shared book; independent book browsing) and across devices (stationary touch screen; handhelds). Converging extant research categories […]

Free Textbooks Spell Disruption for College Publishers

Startup companies offering knockoff textbooks are attracting students, and lawsuits. MIT Technology Review Full Article

Now E-Textbooks Can Report Back on Students’ Reading Habits

Denver — Data mining is creeping into every aspect of student life—classrooms, advising, socializing. Now it’s hitting textbooks, too. Wired Campus Full Article