E-Texts and other digital course materials are becoming more and more available to students for a fraction of the cost of printed materials.

The Miami UBooks Program will begin in the spring 2020 semester and is led, in partnership, by the Office of the Provost, Information Technology Services, University Libraries, Bursar, AccessMU and eLearning offices on the Oxford and Regional campuses.

Miami UBooks is an eText platform and reader available to Miami, as part of the university’s membership in the Unizin Consortium. The Unizin Engage platform provides:

• an overall more affordable option than what Miami or individual students could obtain on their own;
• significantly lower prices for eTexts (typically 40% to 80% off list print prices);
• instructors and university control over annotation features and usage data;
• a consistent user experience;
• publisher software packages at discounted prices, which typically allow students to retain access to the eText for as long as they are a student at Miami;
• the ability to print the eTexts.

The Miami UBooks reader also enables faculty to:

• Utilize highlighting and annotation tools to explain or clarify challenging subjects within the online learning materials Highlight and annotate the text;
• Print pages from the course material;
• Print annotations;
• Review analytics to make sure students are reading and engaging with the content.

Procedure

Instructors select the eText material (and Digital Learning Tools, if they choose) for their respective course(s). This material can come from a variety of sources including publisher textbooks, openly licensed materials, or faculty created/supplied content. The selected eText is automatically pre-purchased for each student upon enrolling in the course. The eText is then made available via an integration with the Canvas course site. Each student is charged the cost of the course’s eText by the Bursar’s Office via their tuition bill. Students who already have a copy of the text or wish to purchase the text from another vendor may opt out of this opportunity, and their bursar bill will be credited.

Students are only charged for each eText once and DO NOT need to buy a print version of the textbook. If students are financial aid recipients, the aid will be applied to the cost as appropriate. Refunds for course withdrawals will follow standard tuition refund rules.

The Unizin Consortium has established agreements with 19 publishers representing a collective catalog exceeding over 100,000 titles to deliver digital content to students. Agreements include eTexts and courseware and require eTexts to be delivered through Miami UBooks digital content platform.   Current publishers include: Cambridge University Press, Cengage, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Pearson, SAGE UK and US, Springer, and Wiley.

Unizin has Courseware agreements with Cengage, Human Kinetics, Macmillan, McGraw Hill, Pearson, and TopHat.

Instructions for faculty using Miami UBooks can be accessed via the Affordable and Open Educational Resources Canvas site. Please contact ubooks@MiamiOH.edu to be added to the Canvas site.

Instructions for students can be accessed at the Miami UBooks for Students webpage.