Algonquin College says it plans to expand access and use of its digital textbooks for students for the 2014-15 academic year.
Algonquin began implementing digital textbooks in 2013-14, offering them for courses in 34 programs and reaching approximately 4,000 students, according to Glenn MacDougall, Algonquin’s director of learning and teaching services.
He said Algonquin intends to increase these numbers to around 120 programs and nearly 12,000 students. This amounts to about two-thirds of Algonquin’s total students and programs.
“The objective really is to have 100 per cent of the students, in every course, get all the resources they require,” MacDougall said. “The point never was that we were that enamored with online textbooks, or even digital textbooks. We knew that somewhere between 60 and 70 per cent of the students going into any course were able to get the textbooks, and more often than not, because that’s about how many could actually afford the textbooks.”
Lower textbook prices have been cited as a primary factor for implementing this new system, according to MacDougall. He said the move online would reduce textbook prices by about half.
Although traditional textbooks will still be offered for purchase, digital textbooks can be printed by students into a hard copy through the Algonquin publishing centre for a fraction of their original retail price.
“Our main objective, in the first place, is just to ensure that every student started from a level playing field, and to do that, we needed to make sure everybody had all the resources they needed on day one,” MacDougall said.
Valerie Critchley, an associate librarian at Carleton University, said the future of digital textbooks, both at Carleton and other universities, is uncertain.
“Right now, eTextbooks are still evolving, the marketplace is still volatile, and they don’t have standard models yet,” she said. “Whether or not an eTextbook works is still very much a question and it’s going to vary so much.”
MacDougall said not all programs at Algonquin would feature as many digital textbooks because some textbooks display content that is difficult to replicate effectively on devices, such as very small print or detailed images and figures requiring high-resolution for clarity.
Regardless, the school intends both digital and traditional textbooks to be the norm for all students.
“One of the things that clear to us, right from the beginning, is students want a choice,” MacDougall said. “We have been surveying students throughout. I would say, generally speaking, about 50 per cent of our students prefer a printed version and 50 per cent are happy with the digital version.”
MacDougall said he favours Algonquin’s digital textbook system compared to that of most Canadian colleges and universities. He said others use a system in which a digital textbook requires access to the Internet and is only leased for the term.
“Our model isn’t like that,” he said. “All of our books are downloadable, on up to four devices, and they belong to the students for life.”
MacDougall said the provincial government and especially the Minister of Education have been watching Algonquin’s implementation closely to assess its benefits to students pursuing post-secondary education.
“If we get this right, and I’m pretty optimistic that we will, we will see this becoming more and more a model for all students at higher education,” he said.
