CourseSmart Could Quite Possibly be the Worst Blend of Technology & Education
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.
Hey Jason,
Interesting review. We at Shmoop (www.shmoop.com) couldn’t agree with you more – that technology should help – not hinder – you in your education.
Shmoop is just getting started (we currently cover literature, US history, and poetry), but we’re adding many more subjects to come. Drop us a line with suggestions of what other topics you’d like to see us add.
Shmoop is written pimarily by Ph.D. and Masters students from Stanford and Berkeley (grad students can surely sympathize with the pain and expense of textbooks, right?)
We’d love to know what you think of Shmoop. Hope you’ll check it out.
Brady
Great post! Just wanted to let you know you have a new subscriber- me!
Damned Coursesmart. I was actually hoping to be able to print to PDF so that the file would actually be useful and portable. I get that the publishers want to prevent us from sharing their content, but it’s adding hurdles for honest users at the same time.
Thanks, I was thinking that if I went with coursesmart that I could print it to pdf and utilize it on a Kindle or Sony Ereader for class. I hat lugging so many darn books around. They need to figure this out quick. When I buy a book I expect to keep it for a time and have the decision on when to toss it into the fire. Tonight I am utilizing a book that I purchased a few semesters ago for a reference in an essay. The book I am quoting from is not even in the topic for the essay but has a good line in it that I wish to convey. With a subscription I would need to purchase again. Come on! I have enough books to buy just to pull a single line quote from.
Thakns for this.
Just made me not buy my textbooks from coursesmart..
I think that they are in the beginning face like p2p was ages ago.. Give it a couple of years. People will hack was is useless to something usable.
ebooks less trees less CO2 better life! (and cheaper for the suppliers) Get with the program!
Good review. Reading the information page on CourseSmart, that is exactly how I thought it would turn out. Thank you for confirming my fear.
Couldn’t agree more with you. I’ve been downloading since 10:23 am, It’s 6:33pm now.
I was looking at coursesmart to purchase my public health book. I noticed you said there are a lot of hindrances, but if I just needed the Etextbook to look at the chapters, and say use the word search feature to help me while taking my quizzes and tests, would it be worth my while? I don’t need to print any pages (if I did it wouldn’t be more than 10). Do you think I should purchase it, it would save me like 40 bucks also.
Thanks,
Logan
I wish I would have found this sooner. I downloaded an engineering etextbook from CourseSmart and I regretted it the second I got into the reader software. I was expecting to have a leg up on my classmates because I assumed I would be able to use regular pdf readers for the file which would give me many more options than my e-impaired fellow learners. As you know, that assumption was wrong. Oddly enough, I can’t rotate an image (page, etc) or use many of the other functions of my favorite pdf readers and as such I am likely the first engineering student ever to have to tilt my head at a 90° angle to read a complex graph. Not a happy customer.
I was considering coursesmart but I can’t stand the fact that you don’t own the textbooks when you are done. As a science major I want to be able use the texts as references. I refuse to pay for an ebook that is ‘timed’. Your review of the software just made me confident of my decision that ebooks are just not ready for prime-time.
I can’t thank you enough for your post.
After seeing a video demo of CourseSmart, I had my suspicions that it was a piece of seriously bloated and limited software. Your post confirmed what I thought.
I’d like to think that college students generally know better than to be duped into purchasing this mediocre product offered by CourseSmart. Sadly, those who don’t know better allow companies like CourseSmart to continue doing business… my heart weeps for this travesty.
As you suggest, iChapters is a limited alternative but a MUCH better one at that. iChapters allowed me to download a sample chapter of the book I am considering purchasing. It was a speedy download and, since it was a PDF file, I opened it without problems using AdobeReader. The only difference I noted was that they took some clever precautions to prevent people from digitally “reprinting” the file as another (presumably) unrestricted digital file.
Ultimately, I might wind up settling for iChapters, but I don’t see myself highly recommending it.
CourseSmart lets you print (although only 10 pages at a time) so what you can do is print them to a PDF file. After that you can use a pdf editor to crop out the extra margins all at once and voila!
Heh… thanks to your blog and comments, I tried installing the CourseSmart software before buying the ebook. It didn’t run in a Win7 VM (using VirtualBox in Linux). So, going to try another option.
Thanks for writing about this.
Updating my previous post: I opted for the “web view” version of the textbook with CourseSmart, and am printing it to PDF files (using FireFox under Ubuntu) in 10-page sections. Using an app called pdfsam that merges PDF files to stitch all the PDFs into one book. So far, so good, and no need to install their software.