News for and about the Internet2 community

[Todd Sedmak <>]

Internet2 and EDUCAUSE Offer Spring 2013 Electronic Content Pilot

Colleges and Universities, Courseload, CourseSmart, Elsevier, 
and McGraw-Hill Education Participating in Expanded eContent Pilot

Pilot Session Nov. 8 at EDUCAUSE Annual Conference 2012

DENVER (EDUCAUSE 2012 Annual Conference)—Nov. 6, 2012--Internet2 and EDUCAUSE 
today announced a new pilot in their continuing eContent series. More than 20 
colleges and universities, Courseload, CourseSmart, Elsevier Science and 
Technology, McGraw-Hill Education are expected to participate in Spring 2013. 
The pilots involve platforms, electronic textbooks (eTexts) and other online 
materials (eContent) to provide campuses an opportunity to explore, evaluate, 
and advance the transition from traditional media models, including text 
books, to electronic platforms.

“The Spring 2013 pilot involves a diverse group of higher education 
institutions and providers working together to identify issues that campuses 
and content providers need to address,” said Shelton Waggener, Internet2 
Senior Vice President. “What we learn can help to make eTexts and eContent 
common, affordable, available, and accessible to students and faculty across 
the nation.”

The pilot has two principal goals:

•       Advance the higher education community’s understanding of online 
materials, and what is necessary for them to attain and surpass the 
effectiveness, accessibility, economy, and other relevant outcomes associated 
with traditional textbooks; and
•       Explore innovative business models, terms, and conditions that make 
access to digital educational materials more flexible, economical, efficient, 
and simple for institutions and publishers alike. 

“With its increasingly diverse group of participants and content packages, 
this pilot enables us to explore a broader range of issues related to 
eContent implementation and adoption,” said Greg Jackson, EDUCAUSE Vice 
President. “As findings from the pilots become available, we expect that they 
will enable electronic textbooks to make higher education more effective and 
affordable.”

Institutions intending to participate range from community and technical 
colleges to public and private universities. The pilot delivers electronic 
materials to students and faculty through an institutional license for all 
content, covered by a standard evaluation pilot participation agreement, 
rather than through individual purchases by students. The pilot also involves 
a collaborative research effort to document lessons learned, which in turn 
will be shared with the higher education community. Each package offered has 
two or three tiers with a progressively larger scope. Here are brief 
descriptions of each package:

Package A: McGraw-Hill Education and Courseload (3 tiers)
This package offers a newer version of Courseload’s e-reader and McGraw-Hill 
Education, a global leader of educational materials, information and 
solutions, provides access to their Courseload eText portfolio. To discover 
more about McGraw-Hill Education, go to 
http://www.mheducation.com/home/index.shtml. Courseload is the leading 
device- and content source-neutral aggregator and distributor of digital 
textbooks and course materials. To learn more, click on www.courseload.com.
  
Package B: Elsevier and Courseload (2 tiers)
This is similar to Package A, except it provides Elsevier’s Science and 
Technology texts, and has no optional extras. The list of available texts is 
available at http://textbooks.elsevier.com and clicking the + symbol next to 
the words Science & Technology. To learn more about Elsevier, a world-leading 
provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and 
services, visit www.elsevier.com. 

Package C: Multiple publishers and CourseSmart (2 tiers)
CourseSmart®, a leading Educational Services Platform and the world’s largest 
provider of digital course materials, will allow up to 20 institutions to 
participate in a trial of the CourseSmart Subscription Pack, a one-stop 
shopping experience where students can buy all of their eTextbooks from one 
website for one subscription price over a fixed access period. Institutions 
participating will allow a select number of students at the institution 
immediate access to any eTextbook in CourseSmart’s catalog of more than 
30,000 titles from 40 publishers. CourseSmart’s Subscription Pack offers 
students the ability to place up to 12 titles on their bookshelf at any point 
during the semester.   

All of the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 pilots will be discussed during the EDUCAUSE 
Annual Conference 2012 at the following session: EDUCAUSE and Internet2 
E-Text Initiative: Lessons Learned and Looking Forward, November 8 in Denver, 
Colorado.

For more information about the Spring 2013 pilot, read the pilot’s prospectus 
and additional materials at 
http://www.internet2.edu/netplus/econtent/index.html.

Media contacts:

Todd Sedmak, Internet2, 804-497-0282 or 

Greg Jackson, EDUCAUSE, 202-331-5351 or 

 

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