There were a couple of reasons I chose to go with an etextbook (for a class I’m currently taking) as opposed to a traditional textbook. First, I had actually gone the etextbook route a while back using iChapters.com. iChapters actually allows you to purchase individual chapters or the entire etext. Overall, the experience wasn’t too bad… and I’m a technological snob, if ever there was one. Second, time was running out at the beginning of the semester and I didn’t have a book. The campus bookstore was out and ordering from Amazon would ensure that I wouldn’t have the textbook in time for the first quiz… which I subsequently failed anyway. Ahem.

So, I figured I’d save a few bucks (vs. Amazon) and order the electronic version from CourseSmart. This was a mistake and I’m about to detail why.

Let me first say that, when dealing with education, technology should act as a helper, not a hindrance. It’s difficult enough to learn what needs to be, um, learneded without having to worry about/deal with technological annoyances.
With that in mind, let me take you through the voyage of ordering and using a digital textbook from CourseSmart.

Problem #1: I can’t even begin to tell you how long it took me to find an electronic version of the required text on the InterWebs. Yes, fortunately, there was one and I wasn’t left up the creek without a paddle. But, seriously, it’s 2009… is it wrong of me to EXPECT digital versions of college (or even high school) textbooks? I honestly don’t think so… and I’ve even attempted to look at this situation objectively. McGraw-Hill, et al., I’m speaking to you: embrace technology and, for the love of all that is good and pure in the world, advertise the product you’re trying to sell. Advertise on Google/Yahoo!/MSN. Partner with campuses nationwide and get the word out that a student has another option when it comes to getting his/her textbook(s).

Problem #2: The etextbook is nearly 200mb and the site from which you download this monstrosity is as slow as molasses. I’ve never actually had use that euphemism, either. Molasses, when "flowing" downward is pretty slow and I never once thought I’d ever encounter anything quite as slow. This was. I was even using a campus Internet connection… on which I can pretty much get any information I need at a remarkable speed (CNN video, torrents, last night’s episode of 30 Rock from Hulu, torrents, etc.)

Problem #3: So, I’ve paid almost $100 for something that’s 100% intangible. (BTW, according to Windows Live Writer, “untangible” isn’t a word. Scoff.) What now? Well, before I can read the first word of the first chapter, I have to install a 3rd-party application: the CourseSmart software. "So, you mean to say that you couldn’t just double-click on that 200mb file you just downloaded and read it with a standard app that you might already have installed?" No. No, you can’t.

I can’t open it with Adobe Reader. (Which I could with iChapters’ files. They were just secured PDFs.) I can’t open it with FoxIt. I can’t open it with Microsoft Word. I’m absolutely forced to install yet another piece of software – just to read some words and see some pictures.

If you’re even still reading this, you might be thinking: "well, if this etextbook requires it’s OWN piece of software in order to view it, there has to be a bunch of interesting/unique features included… right?" As much as I’d like to say that you’d be correct with that assumption, you wouldn’t. You’d be dead wrong. Here are the types of features you can expect to find in the CourseSmart software: Highlighting! Text search! Bookmarks! Might one find all of these features in Adobe Reader/Acrobat? Yes… and about a thousand more features.

Okay, so, I’ve got this huge, 200mb etextbook that takes forever to load in this bloated, featureless software. It’s a bad experience thus far but I’ll just forget all my troubles and print the sucker off. That takes me to

Problem #4: Printing. I’m pretty sure the license varies depending on which textbook you purchase but, with the gem that I was able to acquire, I can only print 10 pages at a time. 10. pages. at. a. time.

An average chapter, friend, is between 25-30 pages. That means that even if I did want to print off one chapter of a digital book I paid seventy-five clams for, and, perhaps, take that someplace quiet like the library man’s ultimate thinking room (read: the can), I’d have to sit there and hit print three separate times. I’m inclined to say that this is to prevent me from printing the whole thing to a PDF and sharing it with my classmates… classmates that, perhaps, didn’t pay money for this digital product (as if I’d even want to go to that trouble). Well, they already answered their own question to that little dilemma by ensuring that pages being printed are sent through some kind of funky distiller and that the output (one page, in this instance) is actually just one large image. It’s not even text. So, even if was able to print off the entire thing in one shot to a PDF, it would be pretty much useless as I wouldn’t be able to highlight, search, copy/paste (into OneNote, EverNote for instance), etc.

To summarize…

I didn’t like the fact iChapters prevented me from loading their PDFs on any computer I wanted to (I work on four different computers on any given day) but, compared to CourseSmart, iChapters is the educational software equivalent of Google, circa 1995 and, for now, if you need a digital textbook (hopefully you can tell by now that they don’t carry McGraw-Hill titles), I’d highly recommend that you check them out.

So, allow me to reiterate what I said a few paragraphs back: "…when dealing with education, technology should act as a helper, not a hindrance. It’s difficult enough to learn what [you need to] without having to worry about/deal with technological annoyances."

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One additional thought…

In addition to being a rather shabby educational information provider (my humble opinion), CourseSmart appears to also be a censor. I made a comment on the official CourseSmart blog a couple of weeks ago. Once posted, I was notified that my comment was "awaiting approval." If you’ve ever commented on a blog posting, that’s a pretty standard procedure and comments on other blogs usually show up in about a day or so if the blog is regularly maintained… and it appears as though the CourseSmart blog is. My comment, like the preceding text, wasn’t flattering but it wasn’t hateful or beligerant, either… it was an honest opinion… and it has yet to be approved.