Brad Wheeler said he is working to make textbooks cheaper for IU students.
Wheeler, the IU vice president for information technology and chief information officer, updated the Bloomington Faculty Council on the use of eTextbooks and open access textbooks during a meeting Tuesday.
Since 2012, professors have had the option of requiring eTextbooks in place of ?traditional textbooks.
Students will no longer be responsible for ordering their textbooks.
Instead, a professor that requires an eTextbook orders one for each student.
Then, each student automatically receives and is billed for the eTextbook.
Not only are eTextbooks cheaper than traditional textbooks, but because each student automatically receives and is billed for an eTextbook, they are also compulsory, Wheeler said.
ETextbooks allow the professor to share highlights and annotations with students, project paragraphs and pages on screens and allow the student to search for key words and phrases.
The IU definition of an eTextbook, Wheeler said, expands upon the traditional definition of an eTextbook.
“We use the term ‘the eText program’ or ‘the eText initiative at IU,’ which is a big rubber band we put around a whole bunch of things,” he said.
Inside the rubber band are not only digital versions of textbooks, but also videos, simulations and ?adaptive online work labs.
Wheeler said the advantages of IU eTextbooks outnumber the advantages of traditional eTextbooks. Unlike traditional eTextbooks, IU eTextbooks do not expire and can be printed.
“We dispensed with the debate between print and online: which is bad and which is good?” he said. “We really embraced both. All of our eText agreements have unlimited printing or a bound paper book option if desired.”
Professors also have the option of requiring open-access textbooks in place of ?traditional textbooks.
Though eTextbooks are cheaper than traditional textbooks, open textbooks are free.
Matthew Gough, campus organizer of INPIRG, a student organization recently advocating for the use of open-access textbooks, said open-access textbooks are released under a Creative Commons license.
IU now has eTextbook contracts with what Wheeler calls the “Big Five” publishers, but said it wasn’t easy to negotiate.
“It was tough negotiating,” he said. “It was very tough negotiating. No one had done it for public universities.”
Publishers want to bypass bookstores and sell textbooks directly to students, allowing the publishers, not the bookstores, to determine the price of the textbooks, Wheeler said.
However, students may choose not to buy the textbook or may choose to buy a used version of the textbook, throwing a wrench in such a plan.
IU, therefore, has reached agreements with publishers — similar to its agreements with software companies like Microsoft and Adobe — which allow IU professors to purchase eTextbooks on behalf of all students in their classes.
Then, they automatically charge the students for the eTextbooks, whether they use them or not.
Though the IU professor is purchasing the eTextbooks at a cheaper price than students would purchase the traditional textbook, the professor is buying more textbooks than students ever would.
The publisher, therefore, still benefits.
“We have one golden ?negotiating chip,” Wheeler said. “We have the ability to do bursar billing. So that means if there’s 50 students in Chemistry 101, then the publisher will know that 50 students paid for that book. The key pitch was that there was a win-win-win answer here.”
Students pay less, professors know all students will have the textbook and publishers know all students will purchase the textbooks.
The success of eTextbooks, however, depends on the support of faculty and students, Wheeler said.
“One of the primary means of influencing faculty behavior is through the ?students,” he said.
And students should influence faculty, Wheeler said.
“It’s those individual choices by faculty members, that, when you add them up, they determine your cost of attendance,” he said.
