News | Digital Course Materials

Licensing initiative could change Stanford course content pricing policies

by admin on 2/22/2012 • Category: Digital Course Materials

Academic leaders at many universities are examining the ways in which technology such as digital textbooks can make course materials more accessible for students. According to The Stanford Daily, the student publication of Stanford University, licensing could prove to be another tool in reducing the cost of textbooks.

The university's CodeX innovation center, operated by the school's Center for Legal Informatics, aims to maximize the effectiveness of publishing budgets through the application of information technology. Copyright licensing of course materials is among the initiatives being examined by CodeX, including a "Print on Demand" system of publishing.

"Our university pays several million dollars to get access for our students to certain materials, and frequently when professors did course readers, they didn’t check what the university had rights to," Roland Vogl, project director of the Stanford Intellectual Property Exchange (SIPX), told the news source. "We built a system that automates many of those processes and also takes into account the rights the student already has under the library’s permission."

The SIPX is primarily responsible for the development of the Print on Demand system, which will leverage the strengths of Stanford's learning management system (LMS) to provide students with access to digital textbooks at an optimal cost. The SIPX is also developing new ways of distributing digital course materials to mobile platforms such as tablet computers and smartphones.

Other colleges, such as the University of Denver, are experimenting with new ways of providing students with access to course materials at reduced rates. According to The DU Clarion, the university's student newspaper, management of the college bookstore has been outsourced in order to expand the number of digital textbooks available through the school's LMS, in addition to increasing the availability of course materials offered through rental programs. School officials claim that students will soon be able to access significantly more digital textbooks and twice as many titles through rental programs.

According to the National Association of College Stores (NACS), more than 2,500 academic establishments offer rental programs for either digital textbooks or print publications. NACS officials estimate that such initiatives saved students approximately $200 million in the fall of 2011 alone.

ED MAP can assist academic leaders in making the transition from print publications to digital textbooks simply and cost-effectively. As a trusted partner, ED MAP can help colleges save money and make course materials more accessible.

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