The VitalSource Resource

The Bookshelf® team is excited to give our users a very special gift this holiday season: a brand-new Bookshelf Library! Our loyal users have seen the evolution of Bookshelf over the years from a simplistic reader to an interactive study center. As time has passed, the way we interact with websites and apps has evolved. With this in mind, we’ve remodeled our library to mimic new user habits to improve the student learning experience and enable student success. This set of updates is designed to help organize content and reduce overall distractions in the study center to ensure studying is more efficient and students have what they need to ace that test!

As a new year begins, the Bookshelf Online team has been reflecting on our goal of creating the best study center possible for our users. During 2017, we took our reader and added robust study tools going beyond notes and highlights, including: integrations with Wikipedia and Microsoft OneNote, labs geared towards our power-users, simplified sharing of notes and highlights, and a design refresh to make our site more intuitive. All of this was done in an effort to help users learn their content and create the best interactive study center possible.

While we are pleased with the work we did in 2017, we are more excited to continue the upgrades to the student experience in 2018.

VitalSource is committed to day-one success for faculty and students. In an earlier post we wrote about how to set your course up to facilitate this success (and hosted a webinar on the same topic). Today, we go a step further in making your course setup even easier using our Inclusive Access program.

Inclusive Access is a popular content delivery mechanism that VitalSource has supported for more than 10 years that gives your students access to all their digital materials on day one at a reduced rate. Right now, if you have an Inclusive Access program through VitalSource, we work with your campus Bookstore to ensure all adopted books are available in your learning management system (LMS) of “how do I get my content into my specific course shell?”

A common debate over the years has been, what is better: TV or movies?

Of late, TV is soundly winning the debate. Some people say it is because viewers prefer the shorter format. Our minds wander too much for a two-hour movie, but yet we often binge watch multiple episodes, so how much is our mind wandering? Others say it’s the aspect of the cliffhanger, which keeps viewers hungrily coming back for more. However, cliffhangers have been around since soap operas gained popularity in the 50’s. Another argument says it’s the quality of the writing that has grown as TV has begun to be a more respected format. However, what I think is happening is that TV has grown because it is now so social.

What’s the first thing you do when you get a new phone? How about a new computer?

Customize!

Customization and personalization are innate in today’s digital habits. Some people like to use certain shortcuts, install special plug-ins, change their settings.