This Fall semester I am going to teach a new undergraduate course in Business Intelligence. In preparation for this new course I'm currently evaluating potential textbooks. There are many books published for this topic but not all texts follow the same approach, scope, or level of detail I want to use to teach the course. As a result, I need to look through several different options before I will be able to select the text(s) I want to use for the course.
In previous years this evaluation process required me to request an evaluation copy of each text from each of the publishers. The publishers would then pay to ship the book out to me. I would then wait until the textbook arrived before I could evaluate if it would be a good fit for my course. Approximately 80% of the time I found the textbook did not align with what I was looking for and this resulted in wasted time for me and added effort and expense for the publisher.
This year, I am using CourseSmart. This new service works with many publishers to offer electronic copies of the textbooks. I'm able to almost immediately access the textbooks I want to consider. I'm able to page through the e-book to see if the textbook will meet my needs. This new service is saving me a considerable amount of time and it also saves the publishers the hassle and expense of sending out textbooks that may not be adopted.
I am now able to narrow down my textbook options to a select few options and then request evaluation copies of these books. I still feel the need to hold the book to get a better understanding of the content but perhaps, once I feel more comfortable reading from my computer or iPad screen I will be able to complete the entire evaluation through CourseSmart. Until then, I'm very happy with this way of conducting the initial search.
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