College students and tenured faculty agree: When all else is equal, they'd rather use print textbooks. But newly minted faculty may be predisposed toward digital course materials.
Guy Adams, who's in charge of academic publishing and outreach for the UCLA Store at the University of California Los Angeles, has noticed that the newer faculty on his campus are the ones most comfortable with online materials. Adams was part of a panel presentation addressing Best Practices in Course Materials on March 7 at CAMEX 2014 in Dallas, TX.
He said the new faculty became accustomed to using online resources while preparing their dissertations and doing other work for their doctorate studies. That comfort level is now carrying over into their teaching and they're more apt than older faculty to choose digital materials for their courses, often materials accessed through the school's learning management system (LMS).
"They're very facile with using this and teaching with this," Adams told the audience. "The bookstore is not involved with this process at all." For that reason, he advised campus bookstores to learn as much as possible about their institution's LMS and look for opportunities to get involved.
