NPR interview with Northwest Missouri State University

Earlier this week, NPR featured a radio interview and related article with Northwest Missouri State University President, Dean Hubbard and a few students participating in the e-textbook pilot at the university. As mentioned in a previous posting, the university is conducting a pilot with e-textbooks that can be downloaded to laptops as well as testing out Sony PRS 700 e-readers. The interview notes that about half of the students at the school still say they prefer physical textbooks however at least one professor has noticed that the students are more likely to bring their laptops to class than their textbooks and in turn students could be more likely to read the digital text over the printed version. This article also incorrectly cites a statistic from NACS that 18% of college students have purchased an e-book. The actual finding shows that 18.5% of students have either purchased or accessed digital course materials; this includes materials such as digital articles or applications like Pearson’s MyMathLab.