E-Textbooks with CourseWare and VitalSource

In this article:

1. E-Textbooks Overview
2. Accessing Your E-Textbook
3. Opting Out of e-Textbooks

E-Textbooks Overview

E-Textbooks are a great way to access your course textbook without having to worry about losing it, hauling it around, or marking in the book. With e-textbooks, students and instructors can bookmark their spot, print off chapters/images/etc., and gain access to tons of study resources. Additionally, students have the option to opt-out of using e-textbooks as well. See the video below for a brief overview of using e-textbooks:

Accessing Your E-Textbook

If you are teaching or taking a course that is using e-textbooks, this article will show how to access those materials in BlueQuill. 

1. Navigate to your course's home page within BlueQuill.
2. From the course page, if your course uses an e-textbook, then you will see an object with your course's textbook name and/or the author on it, like so:
   
   
   
   • Your course e-textbook will most likely be found in the "Syllabus" section of the course. If the course designer didn't add any content to the learning object, the e-textbook will open in a new tab automatically when opening the object.
     
     
3. After clicking on the course's e-textbook object, you will see the object's page. From this page, click the "Open" button to open up your e-textbook in another tab.
   
    
   
   
4. If it is your first time opening your textbook, then you will see the welcome page in Vital Source. If you are using Courseware (or another textbook vendor) the process is very similar.
5. From the welcome page, you have the option to add your email address:
   • Highly recommended - Adding your email address allows you to read your book from different devices, share notes/highlights with others, and access the textbook for 3 years. 
6. After this step, you will now have full access to your course's e-textbook.

Vital Source offers a number of tutorials and videos on how to navigate, highlight, and make notes to your e-textbook here: https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/en-us 

For videos on how to navigate your e-textbook, go here: http://downloads.vitalbook.com/tutorials/publish/index.html?did=generic#video/online_3_navigating_library

Opting Out of e-Textbooks

If you are not wanting to use an e-textbook for your course, then you have the option to opt-out of purchasing your book this way. For more information on how to do this, visit our article Opting Out of E-Textbooks.