News for and about the Internet2 community

[Todd Sedmak <>]

Internet2 and EDUCAUSE Partner To Deliver eText Pilot At Colleges and 
Universities Nationwide, Fall 2012

McGraw-Hill Education, Courseload and 25 higher education institutions test 
new approaches to making electronic textbooks and other learning materials 
more affordable through new business model

Washington, D.C. and Ann Arbor, Mich.–-Sept. 4, 2012--EDUCAUSE and Internet2 
today announced a series of pilot efforts to evaluate technologies and 
business models in the fast evolving migration from traditional textbooks to 
digital learning materials. For the fall 2012 term, the pilot is being 
conducted in partnership with McGraw-Hill Education and Courseload, through 
which more than 25 colleges and universities will provide eTexts to their 
students.

Including educational institutions across the spectrum from major research 
institutions to community colleges, this pilot aims to advance a new model 
for the purchase, distribution, and use of electronic textbooks and digital 
course materials. Participating colleges and universities are listed at the 
end of this announcement.

The pilot departs from current eText practices in three key ways:

1.      Replaces individual purchases by students with site licenses 
negotiated and funded by campuses;
2.      Substitutes paper textbooks owned by students with electronic 
materials licensed for use in specific classes; and
3.      Uses an e-reader not associated with a specific publisher.

Based on the pilot, EDUCAUSE, Internet2, and the participating institutions 
will assess the new model for appeal and pedagogical benefit to faculty and 
students, scalability of the approach, ease of integration with campus 
learning management environment, and especially how the model supports 
increased value and lower costs of educational materials. The pilot will help 
higher education progress toward adoption of more cost-effective procurement 
of electronic class materials, which are in turn much less expensive than 
their print predecessors.

Students in participating courses will use McGraw-Hill Education eTexts and 
digital learning material selected by faculty, as well as the Courseload 
reader and annotation software, which allows content to be delivered directly 
through their school’s existing learning management system (LMS).

Students will receive their eTexts at no cost as the institutions are 
subsidizing the study. The    e-reader will enable students and instructors 
to access, highlight, and annotate their eTexts and learning materials on 
almost any Internet-enabled device, even when they are not connected to the 
Internet. Students who want a printed copy may print portions of their eText 
directly, or may order a print-on-demand version of the eText for a fee.

The fall 2012 pilot expands upon a more limited experiment involving the 
University of California at Berkeley, Cornell University, the University of 
Minnesota, the University of Virginia, and the University of Wisconsin at 
Madison, and a successful earlier effort at Indiana University. These initial 
efforts demonstrated the appeal of the new model -- more than 100,000 online 
pages read, with almost none printed--with balanced reactions from students 
or instructors. Feedback also indicated that in addition to the substantial 
cost savings the approach represents, those involved appreciated the ability 
to digitally annotate content and share those annotations while using less 
paper.

As a faculty participant at the University of Virginia said, “the main 
benefits have been for the students, who […] can have their texts on the 
various machines they carry around with them all the time.” The initial 
efforts also underscored important goals for future efforts, such as ensuring 
that eTexts are accessible to students with special needs and others 
requiring special accommodation. Here’s a link to the Internet2 eTextbook 
Spring 2012 Pilot Final Project Report.

“Our core mission,” said Greg Jackson, vice president of EDUCAUSE and former 
chief information officer at the University of Chicago, “is to advance higher 
education through the use of information technology. This pilot will help us 
understand how the advent of appealing, affordable eTexts can enable 
fundamental changes in the relationships among students, instructors, 
campuses, and publishers, and thereby address a major obstacle to college 
affordability.”

“More and more universities are eager to explore new approaches to delivering 
content to students. These pilot programs offer an alternative to the legacy 
textbook model to which students and campuses are anxious to find 
alternatives as eTexts become mainstream,” said Shel Waggener, senior vice 
president of Internet2 and former chief information officer at UC Berkeley. 
“We continue to invite other publishers and e-reader platform providers to 
join our efforts to explore new models for improving the delivery and use of 
electronic content so that everyone benefits.”

“We're in the midst of a digital transformation in higher education, as more 
and more institutions, instructors, and students recognize the power of 
technology in the classroom,” said Tom Malek, vice president of Learning 
Solutions and Services for McGraw-Hill Higher Education. “We are excited to 
partner with Internet2, EDUCAUSE, and the institutions to explore new ways of 
delivering our world-class content and transformative digital learning tools 
to all students at a fair price and through campuses’ existing 
infrastructure.”

“We are delighted to continue our collaboration with the higher-education 
community,” said Mickey Levitan, CEO of Courseload, “and we very much 
appreciate that EDUCAUSE and Internet2 have encouraged a broader array of 
institutions to experiment with new models and share their experiences and 
outcomes.”

List of participants, as of Sept. 4, 2012:

●       Baylor University
●       California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
●       Colorado State University
●       Cornell University
●       Dartmouth College
●       Iowa State University of Science and Technology
●       Madison Area Technical College
●       Miami University
●       Michigan State University
●       Middlebury College
●       Northern Kentucky University
●       Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville
●       Stony Brook University
●       University at Buffalo, The State University of New York
●       University of Alaska
●       University of California, Berkeley
●       University of Hawaii
●       University of Iowa
●       University of Kentucky
●       University of South Florida
●       University of Virginia
●       University of Wisconsin, Madison
●       Vermont State Colleges
●       Virginia Tech
●       Wichita State University

Pilot leaders will speak about the eText pilot at the Fall 2012 Internet2 
Member Meeting in October and the EDUCAUSE 2012 Annual Conference in November.

Media contacts:

●       Todd Sedmak, Internet2 (http://internet2.edu), 202-331-5373 or 

●       Greg Jackson, EDUCAUSE (http://educause.edu), 202-331-5351 or 

●       Brian Belardi, McGraw-Hill (http://mheducation.com), 212-904-4827 or 

●       Erin Wray, Courseload, (http://courseload.com), 317-602-1427 or 


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