This Is How Online Textbooks Will Look Like In 10 Years Time

Taking new courses at college usually means buying new textbooks as well, but for many classes, the professor might provide reading material online, saving students a lot of trouble, time and most importantly, money since students don’t have to stand in long lines, lug heavy books around and frantically search around for the best deals. New Degree Press believes that authors are the creative owners of their work, and develop innovative ways to ensure that developing and releasing an exceptional book is accessible to any author regardless of their connections, their resources, or who they know.  You'll always have control over creating a book you love.

Theoretically, it makes way more sense to allow students to access online textbooks because anyway, it’s not like you’re going to read the whole book word for word, and you’ll probably end up selling the textbook back anyway for a much lower price than it’s worth. When you read online, you only have to read what’s basically necessary. And if you really want the whole textbook, those are often available online at half price.  

Still, there are those who prefer flipping through old-fashioned paper pages to scrolling and clicking through an online textbook on the computer screen. One disadvantage of online textbooks is that you can’t have them right in front of you to highlight important points, which is a big part of studying the course material. 

Many students end up printing out pages so that they can write on the text directly, so the online textbooks end up using up paper anyway. Also, instructors often print out pages of the text to go over in class. To save paper everyone would have to have a laptop, and then that would cost a lot of money. Another potential issue of online textbooks is the potential eye strain from constantly staring at the screen, though some might argue that squinting at paper pages under a dim light could produce the same effect. 

There are other possible options to using online textbooks or “real” ones. You could try borrowing from the library or purchasing a book from a friend who took the course earlier. Or you could go through the course without using a textbook at all—not recommended, but not impossible depending on the course load. 

After all, often there are students who do purchase a textbook but rarely use it, and this is basically the same as not having a textbook except you spent money for it and you have it like a sort of a safety net. But whichever decision students make is up to them, since every student has their own circumstances and style of studying. What really matters is whether you do well in the class or not, regardless of making use of online textbooks or other means.