Missouri College makes the switch to electronic textbooks.
Colleges around the country are shifting from paper bound college textbooks to e-textbooks. As a way to support student learning and save money, Missouri College has begun to replace traditional paper texts, with digital versions. The article: Paper Cut: Missouri College Embraces E-Textbooks, discusses how electronic textbooks provide supportive reading environments with the potential to facilitate learning by allowing students to “search, mark pages, highlight, and cut and paste passages…share notes in a kind of social network…or even click on a video”.
Looking at E-Textbooks such as those Missouri College is adopting from the point of view of the NCSeT typology, these books incorporate the following supportive resources:
- Presentational resources allow readers to change the text size, font and color.
- Navigational resources allow readers to search, bookmark and otherwise navigate.
- Illustrative resources in the form of supplemental videos.
- Enrichment resources, such as footnotes and bibliographies, and additional information.
- Collaborative resources such as chatting and other social networking features.
- Evaluative resources such as quizzes.
Macsai, D. (2008). Digital textbooks gaining favor. Business Week.