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3 Comments on this article:

Report as: spam offensive Lauren on 3/07/08 at 9am

I appreciate the desire to reduce the financial burden on students, but I don't think this is a corner worth cutting for many reasons.
Many many students will still go to the trouble of printing and binding these readings, because having a hard copy you can highlight and take notes on is crucial in the learning process. Additionally, my readers are valuable resources that I have referred to time and again, in classes and while working.
So, for my classes where professors have opted to post readings online, I've spent hours upon hours downloading and organizing the files, taking it to kinkos or printing it at home, and getting it bound. This has always ended up to be just as (or more) expensive as a bookstore reader. The added hassle to worry about printing the readings each week is a headache that students probably don't want to worry about.
I would urge the people pushing this idea to recommend a two tier system with hard or soft copies available, so that people who value the convenience and learning advantage of a hard copy can still have access to that. And for the people who would rather just go with coursework files, they can just opt for that.

Report as: spam offensive Jillian on 3/09/08 at 11am

I'm disturbed by Nho's quote that faculty members won't have the time to upload readings onto coursework. Seriously, they can't find an extra few hours to save loads of money for their students? Most of them have TA's that can do that work anyway.

Report as: spam offensive Shiraz on 3/11/08 at 2pm

I am tired of carrying the readers; the covers are not hardback so they wear out and I would love to refer to them on my computer; or atleast be able to search through them. You can neither do word searches, nor reprint smudged/overhighlighted or dirty pages (you can highly in acrobat reader and remove the highlights when done). It will also be easy on my back because I am tired of carrying soo many books. That way I can have more children and my future wife won't complain that I can't love her because my back gives out during the process. This is the way of the future. How do I digitize my present reader is there a scanner on campus that can be used? Is there one of those bulk scanners so I don't have to hold every sheet and wait an eternity for a page to scan?

thanks




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