TECHNOLOGY
On the user experience side, Courseload has created a platform based on student, faculty and administrator input that serves as a new digital intermediary between creators and users of academic content. The Courseload platform has introduced capabilities that disrupt the status quo:
• Annotation, highlighting and search tools usable across publisher, open and self- generated content)
• A “course” approach rather than a bookshelf approach that hosts in one place all course related content - eTextbooks, articles, videos, instructor PowerPoints, study notes, etc.
• A device- and format-neutral platform that is accessible both online and offline
• Mix and mingle options for instructors to customize course materials
• Single sign on with LMSs and other school systems
• Early warning analytics to alert instructors about “at-risk” students and help guide remediation
students will be carrying backpacks full of printed text- books five years from now. Te answer is no. Middle schools students are more digitally immersed than today’s college freshmen. Considering current state initiatives underway with aggressive timetables to go digital in K-12, how likely is it that students coming out of high school will be willing to revert to printed text? Reacting to this growing sense of inevitability around
the move to digital course materials, more than 75 schools will be deploying or piloting the Courseload platform in fall 2012. Courseload will continue to work closely with school partners to address key needs and concerns, offer publisher partners a path to intellectual property protection and profitability and deliver a great user and partnership experience. Te higher education industry has been holding out for a scalable solution like Courseload’s. It is just a matter of time until colleges and universities make a full transition to digital and reap the cost and pedagogical benefits.
The Courseload approach offers fur- ther advantages because all students in a class access their course materi- al on a common platform:
ACCESS: In community and career colleges, a major contributor to underachievement and
dropout is that students cannot afford required materials or acquire them too late to catch up.
With the Courseload approach, every student has access to all course content from day one.
COLLABORATION, ENGAGEMENT
AND ANALYTICS: With all students on a com- mon institutional platform (as opposed to pur- chasing digital texts through multiple vendors), Courseload offers richer tools for collaboration, engagement and analytics. Students especially
value instructor comments inside a text to guide their learning and peer to peer interactions work better with all classmates immediately reach- able. Analytics are most useful when they can be gathered across all content from all courses rather than a single text.
OUTCOMES: While much study remains to be done, there are early indications that effective use of digital tools with all students can contribute to a richer learning experience and improved edu- cational outcomes.
ACCESSIBILITY: A common digital platform that aggregates all content from all sources and provides a consistent user experience also offers many advantages in addressing the issues around accessibility.
lEArnMOrE@COUrSElOAD.COM
Mickey Levitan is the Chief Executive Officer and Founder of Courseload. He has worked for Cummins, Apple and Emmis Communications and has served on numerous business and non-profit boards.
SEPT/OCT 2012 •
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