Plymouth University has announced a collaboration with Vital Source Technologies, Inc., an Ingram Content Group company, to provide textbooks for their institution-wide digital initiative, which is the largest e-textbook programme ever undertaken in the UK.
Plymouth University's e-textbook programme, launched this month, has already provided more than 30,000 e-textbooks to the University's students. Vital Source is providing e-textbooks from more than 16 publishers to students in programmes in science and technology, business, arts and humanities, medicine and health and human sciences. Widespread access to required learning materials will allow the University to transform the educational process and to make full use of the suite of learning tools built into the VitalSource Bookshelf platform.
The textbooks are included in the students' fees and are accessible to all, including those with print related disabilities. Students will access the textbooks directly through Plymouth University's Digital Learning Environment, and almost half of the materials will be available in reflowable XML and EPUB formats to provide rich, robust interactive content. The textbooks can be used online or they can be downloaded onto the students' preferred devices including smartphones, tablets and web enabled e-readers such as Kindle Fire.
Vital Source integrates directly with a broad array of colleges and universities across the United Kingdom and Europe. The company claims to be the only platform that can integrate with VLEs on a mass scale, and has partnered with more than 25 institutions across the United Kingdom and internationally in the last year.
