The Indiana University eText Experience: Getting Started
4 The IU eTexts Timeline
David W. Lewis, IU Assistant Vice President for Digital Scholarly Communication and Dean of the IUPUI University Library
2009
Initial assessment of 20 high-enrollment courses — including science, business, and English — gathers quantitative information about the cost of textbooks for IU students.
Pilot program begins with the university and publishers subsidizing the first three semesters of the pilot. Students receive eTexts at no cost during this evaluation period.
Courseload, an Indianapolis based e-reader provider founded by Mickey Levitan, supplies the reading software.
VP for IT & CIO Wheeler meets with faculty authors, student groups, faculty councils, etc. to assess the problem and solutions.
2011
February — eText program kicks off with townhall meetings at IU Bloomington and IUPUI.
February — IU releases Request for Proposal to publishers.
September — IU signs agreements with John Wiley & Sons Inc., Bedford Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, W.W. Norton, Flat World Knowledge, and McGraw-Hill Education.
September—IU President Michael A. McRobbie approves the eText program rollout to all campuses.
2012
January — Spring semester is the first full semester of IU’s eTexts Initiative: 5,300 students in 127 sections use eTexts.
January — The Indiana University Press joins the IU eTexts program.
February — Harvard Business Publishing joins the IU eTextsprogram.
May — Pearson joins the IU eTexts program.
June — IDG’s CIO magazine honors Indiana University as a recipient of the 2012 CIO 100 award based on the eText program.
September — Elsevier’s Science & Technology Books joins the IU eTexts program.
2013
January — In the spring semester, nearly 10,000 students in 250 course sections are using eTexts. Comparisons show that amounts to $200,000 in total savings over next-best options.
March — Cengage Learning and SAGE join the IU eTextsprogram.
May — IDG’s Computerworld Honors Program names Indiana University as a 2013 Laureate for its eTexts initiative.
May — Courseload, Inc. and Indiana University are gold recipients of the IMS Global Learning Consortium’s Learning Impact Awards for the eText initiative.
2014
September — IU expands its eText contracts with McGraw-Hill Education and Pearson to include more titles at better pricing and expand access to digital learning tools.
2015
July — Unizin acquires the Courseload software. IU migrates, without interruption, from the Courseload system to the Unizin system.
2016
September — IU’s pioneering eText initiative surpasses $10 million in total revenue, having grown to more than 40,000 students in the last academic year.
The program is accelerating with more than $1 million in year-to-year growth and 1,350 available titles. Fall semester alone totals $3 million, with more than 27,000 IU students having at least one of 55,000 licensed eTexts.
2017
February — Unizin and Cengage partner to make all of the latter’s digital course offerings available to Unizin’s member institutions as part its eText program.
2018
February — As part of a Unizin contract, IU gets a new deal with McGraw-Hill that provides for a $35 flat price for the eText version of any McGraw Hill eText and either $50 or $60 for one of their adaptive courses including interactive tutorials, homework grading, etc.