When students read e-textbooks, e-books will be reading
students, reports The Chronicle of Higher Education.
CourseSmart, which sells digital textbooks, will provide “a new
tool to help professors and others measure students’ engagement
with electronic course materials.” Say a student uses an
introductory psychology e-textbook. The book will be integrated
into the college’s course-management system. It will track
students’ behavior: how much time they spend reading, how many
pages they view, and how many notes and highlights they make.
That data will get crunched into an engagement score for each
student. The idea is that faculty members can reach out to
students showing low engagement, says Sean Devine, chief
executive of CourseSmart. And colleges can evaluate the return
they are getting on investments in digital materials. Students
will be able to opt out if they don’t want Big Teacher
monitoring their reading habits, Devine said at the Educause
conference. “We do understand the Big Brother aspects of it.”