Academic Technologies spent the last two academic years researching how Notre Dame faculty and students used tablets to augment or replace traditional paper-based course materials.  The OIT Academic Technologies team partnered with faculty and staff from the Mendoza College of Business, Notre Dame Law School, Hesburgh Libraries and the Center for the Study of Languages and Cultures to purchase 50 Apple iPads and 60 Samsung Galaxy Tabs for faculty and students to use in pilot courses.  We spent a significant amount of time with each faculty member involved in the tablet course pilots to find electronic versions of their textbooks that provided students the most interactivity. The level of interactivity and quality of the interaction features available depends on the content and the capabilities of each tablet app.  We also discovered that tablets with large color screens solved the challenge of viewing heavily illustrated eTextbooks versus using eReading devices like the Amazon Kindle or Barnes & Noble Nook that use the black & white E Ink technology.

Academic Technologies is also assisting faculty develop their own eBooks which have the potential to create more dynamic and engaging learning experiences. We helped Dr. Elliott Visconsi develop Shakespeare’s The Tempest for iPad, which is an iPad app designed for social reading, listening, annotating, authoring, and sharing. We collaborated with a student developer working for the Institute for Latino Studies create Day of the Dead – Experience the Tradition, which is an iOS app providing readers an interactive way to learn about the Day of the Dead (Día de los Muertos) through many beautiful multimedia elements. And we are currently supporting Assistant Professor Andre Murnieks who teaches graphic design to help him use iBooks Author to develop a textbook which demonstrates the interactive design principles he teaches.  Apple has also requested that we create interactive iBooks and iTunes U courses that will include materials from the University of Notre Dame OpenCourseWare courses created by faculty with assistance from the Kaneb Center for Teaching & Learning.

Our current work to support faculty exploring ePublishing, eTextbook authoring and iOS application development is a small part of a broader multi-year effort to examine how the University of Notre Dame can create an mobile elearning ecosystem to support the creation, distribution, and consumption of eBooks and eTextbooks on different eReading devices.