July 20th 2009 - The importance of the book store and print center

Author: Craig Schoen

For the past 60 years every university has had a bookstore and copy centre handle the distribution and custom creation of course content, we strongly believe this should not change.

What is important about this is the model, professor requests textbook or course pack and the bookstore and copy centre works in a key supporting role to ensure the professors materials are there on time. This becomes more important when you think of knowledge as the Universities core asset that needs to be manage and protected.

So what does the future hold? There are a lot of signs pointing to knowledge distribution becoming more digital. Simply paper is outdated. This may lead some to say that then all course ware should be offered over an Internet based distribution, but where does this leave printing services and the book store. They lose there control of distribution and some cases price. Interestingly this is one of the main issues that publishers have with the kindle, without controlling the distribution and price it becomes harder to operate, and they lose some of their value. Printing services and Bookstores are too important, they are the boots on the ground actually procuring and creating the content, and even in the digital model they need to be able to control price and distribution to survive.

The good news is that UCoursePack is designed with this specifically in mind. Our system is comprised of three modules that will work with any university set up and ensure there sustainability in the emerging digital publishing movement.

The first module is our course pack builder where print centres can scan right to the builder, organize pages, record and clear copyrights, set the price , and with one click produce a digital, fully searchable course pack that is ready for sale and can be edited to at any time.

The second module is our point of sale software allows the distribution and sale of course packs through the book store, or the print shop itself. It is a desktop application that can find a requested course pack and write it to a usb drive in under 25 seconds. The student pays the cashier and walks away with their course pack on a secure copy proof usb drive. No user names , no access codes, UCoursePack ensures your operation will be able to offer digital courseware to keep up with, while continuing with a place based model, in this way we keep business as usual for the school and at the same time offer a digital learning model that makes sense.

The third module is the actual digital learning platform in which the student accesses to learn with their course pack. It is a fully virtual system that works on both mac and pc and requires no installation. Once the student puts the usb drive in the computer is automatically opens the course pack in under 3 seconds. Using our platform students can search through the course pack by keyword, highlight, draw and underline, view in full colour, zoom in, and unique to Ucoursepack is our course connect collaboration tool. It works similar to twitter in that it allows quick information sharing through notes made on a course pack page. These notes are student or professor observations and insights regarding the content on that page. This answers the question, 'what are you thinking about this course topic', course connect is also a less gated method of communicating: you can share information with classmates and professors that you wouldn't normally exchange email, have in a study group, or instant messenger or text with, opening the academic discussion to the entire course directly through their courseware, everything students need to learn and share will be in one place.

Ucoursepack ensures printing centres and bookstores can continue to operate business as usual in a completely digital learning environment using their existing resources and staff. No upfront cost, long term licensing, we charge per page and can easily be worked into any cost structure.

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