E-xtraordinary

You might be one of the lucky students who has been spotted studying Business Ethics on your iPhone at the nearby Starbucks. You could be that guy seen scrolling down on his Sprint HTC EVO 3D reading Masteringphysics thanks to a third party digital textbook provider like Pearson and their eText app.

E-textbooks are the latest technology surge and schools such as Western Governors University have jumped on board and are providing students with digital texts. This educational institution includes, in its tuition and fees, the cost of the e-texts. For students who are participating in online degree programs, e-textbooks are great tools for enhancing distance learning.

Maybe you are an online student who has some concerns about this whole e-textbook rage. What about making notes in the margins? Or highlighting important pieces of text? No worries.

CourseSmart, a program for delivering the e-texts used by Western Governor’s University, is making sure students have everything needed to be successful. So, you’re able to highlight, print, add notations, search a table of contents, and “check out” sections to read offline. They’ve even created pagination that matches hard copy textbooks!

To better serve online educational universities and their students, these e-textbook companies have thought of everything! In addition to Pearson, McGraw-Hill, Cengage Learning, and John Wiley & Sons have added reading apps that permit mobile studying on cell phones and other devices. In other words, you can read anywhere and any place you have Wi-Fi or a few bars on your cell phone!

Convenience doesn’t even begin to explain the effects e-textbooks are having on education. Western Governors University has realized the immediate benefits of making pertinent information accessible and they are paving the way for other universities and online colleges.

Not only does online learning free up time for its students to work or pursue other interests, the addition of e-textbooks improves access to new educational knowledge and enables students to acquire this information in quicker manner. E-books added into online degree coursework will continue to entice more and more students into looking at alternatives to the traditional classroom.

Another perk of utilizing e-books is that students usually discover they have saved hundreds of dollars they would have had to shell out for hardcover textbooks. As most students know, the value of those hardcover texts usually plummets by the time the semester ends and it’s time to resell the books. Using e-books takes away the additional work and frustration of having to try to get top dollar for the used hardcover texts and finding out it’s just not going to happen.

While Western Governor’s University is searching for and implementing innovative methods to “make education more accessible to students by saving them time and reducing their costs,” other colleges that offer online degrees are catching on, too. These schools acknowledge the difficult economic times and are striving to lessen the financial burdens many students find themselves dealing with.