Sacramento State will offer a new digital textbook rental program beginning fall 2012 providing students with affordable access to a wider variety of electronic textbooks.

The California State University formed a partnership with Follett, Cengage Learning and CourseSmart to develop the program as a part of the Affordable Learning Solutions Initiative – a plan launched in 2010 by the CSU system to make education more accessible by driving down the costs of course materials for both faculty and students.

“By the agreement, we are requiring that the books that the publishers and vendors provide to us be marked down 60 percent,” said CSU spokesperson Erik Fallis.

Fallis said the new digital textbooks will have a greater discount rate than those currently offered.

Many of the tangible aspects of having a print textbook can be found in the digital versions such as note-taking and highlighting, but Fallis said there are benefits to electronic materials that print materials cannot match.

“There are a lot of things being in the digital realm allows,” Fallis said. “Instead of having graphics flat on a page that describes a certain process, (the digital text) may have an animated detail of the process. Not every book is going to have every single feature that being digital makes possible, but many will have augmented instruction that you wouldn’t get just reading a (print) textbook.”

For students who like to keep their textbooks, the digital rental program enables limited quantities of the text to be printed.

“The digital textbooks will be licensed for the entire term (semester) and students have the ability to print 15 percent of the book,” Fallis said. “If students see a chapter that will be helpful for them in the future, they can keep it for their own personal library.”

Fallis said this is useful for students who may not want the entire textbook, but only sections for future references.

The digital material will be available on the vendors’ websites and are accessible offline. Students will be able to read the material on a variety of devices including laptops, desktop computers and tablets.

“It was important to us that while we accommodate e-reader technology the material still be accessible through PC and Apple computers,” Fallis said.

Senior humanities and religious studies major Laura Becker said she is fond of the idea of using digital textbooks, but feels her major restricts her from taking advantage of what this technology has to offer.

“This semester, I thought it would be great to have digital versions of textbooks, but there were none available,” Becker said.

She said much of the material she studies has not changed much over the years.

Although cost is not a deciding factor for Becker, she said she is a proponent of the financial and physical burdens these digital textbooks alleviate.

“Let’s make backaches a thing of the past,” she said.

Senior recreation, parks and tourism administration major David Milldrum said he feels technology is moving in the right direction, but the characteristics of a physical book are ingrained in his learning habits.

“I really like the idea,” Milldrum said. “There are many good qualities (of the digital textbooks) that I wasn’t aware of, but I still need to have a book with physical pages.”

He said palpable habits such as page-bending and highlighting are crucial to his ability to retain knowledge.

“I think many hands-on people like me still prefer (print) textbooks,” Milldrum said. “I could be sold on digital, but I’m going to fight it for awhile … might just be that 90-year-old man using a typewriter.”

Fallis said this is a legitimate response for students who have not quite adapted to the digital method of learning, which is why the program emphasizes the importance of choice in terms of attaining educational materials, instead of pushing for an immediate transition from print to digital text.

“It’s been an evolutionary process … which is part of the reason we focus on choice,” Fallis said. “The problem is that even though digital textbooks have been available for a while, faculty and students aren’t aware that they have the choice.”

Fallis said a goal of the Affordable Learning Solutions Initiative is to make people aware of their options.

“By making faculty and students more aware of these specific titles that are deeply discounted, faculty will be more aware when they make a selection for their class curriculum and students will know to check the electronic availability of the textbook,” he said. “As people get more comfortable with reading on a computer screen or another device, the idea of digital textbooks becomes more common … this is where the trend seems to be going.”

Alex Slavas can be reached at [email protected].