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Tuesday, February 14, 2012

E-books and Tablet Rental Pilot

Augustana College experiments with Kindle Fire rental program to deliver e-textbook, according to this article. The college is charging $35 a term to rent a Kindle Fire, and the cost of purchasing the books they'll need is about $18. The print versions of the books cost about $40.  This will be an interesting study to follow since not many schools with e-textbook pilots have included tablet rentals as part of the program, although a number of campuses have given away devices as part of the pilot programs.

This pilot is somewhat reminiscent of earlier e-reader device pilots on campus.  A number of those pilots ended in response to challenges that the devices did not meet accessibility requirements for course materials in the classroom.