Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/52321
technology Students will pay nearly two-thirds less for traditional books and 50 percent less for digital textbooks. The school chose Indiana-based company Course- load to provide software that will allow students to read and annotate their electronic textbooks; tag, search, and collaborate on the material in study groups; and view multimedia related to the books on their computers and mobile devices. Faculty who opt to use Courseload can integrate additional notes and links in the digital texts they use. IU Strikes E-Book Agreements IN SEPTEMBER, INDIANA University at Bloomington announced a comprehensive digital textbook initiative. The university has established agreements with publish- ers John Wiley & Sons Inc., Bedford Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, W.W. Norton, and Flat World Knowl- edge. Through IU's "eText agreements," the publishers will provide IU students with access to textbooks in either digital or printed formats. UNH Expands E-Book Initiative In Fall 2011, the University of New Hampshire's Whittemore School of Business used only a digital textbook for an entire class for the first time. The 600 students in "Introduction to Business" paid $33.25 for unlimited online access to the book for a semester—much less than the average $150 cost of a traditional hardcover, say school representatives. This test was part of a larger initiative to expand the use 58 January/February 2012 BizEd of e-books at Whittemore. So far, approximately half of the textbooks sold at the UNH bookstore include a digital option. The initiative—which is the result of a textbook licensing agreement between Whittemore, the UNH bookstore, and open textbook publisher Flat World Knowledge—has saved business students more than US$70,000 in textbook costs, according to the school. The school estimates that as a result of these agree- ments, students will pay nearly two-thirds less for traditional books and 50 percent less for digital text- books. Students will have uninterrupted access to all of their electronic textbooks while enrolled at IU, and they can use a print-on-demand option if they would like to keep hard copies of the material after gradua- tion. In exchange, students pay a small fee when they enroll in courses that use e-books. Students appreciate that the agreement circumvents some of the drawbacks that often come with digital text- books, says Corey Ariss, undergraduate student president at Indiana-University-Purdue University Indianapolis. Current electronic textbooks "often cost more than used books or rentals, have too many restrictions, and expire after a limited period of use," says Ariss. "IU's eText approach solves many of these problems, and the ability to search and annotate a text is excellent." For more information about IU's eText initiative, visit etexts.iu.edu. F1 ONLINE/GLOW IMAGES