Textbook publishers try hard to get professors to adopt whole packages that include the book, online assignments, quizzes, and other features. These occasionally require additional plugins to be added to D2L (by ITS or COLI administrators.) While they sound great, you need to investigate their reliability, integrity, and friendliness as far as support for you and your students. Consider the following:
Once your students are working in a publisher's site or system, neither COLI nor ITS are much help, since they are not paid for or administered by Canisius College.
Canisius College does not have the labor resources to provide support for many different publisher packages. Plus, the College has no formal relationship with educational publishing companies.
- Does the publisher supply step-by-step text instructions with image examples, or even tutorial videos, for instructors?
- Does the publisher supply a number to call, email address, or a fillable web form to contact instructor support services?
- How and where will students get personal assistance, troubleshooting help, and tutorial documentation to use the content?
There are student privacy and record-keeping considerations:
- How and where will students enroll, if enrollment is required beyond D2L, to access the content?
- How will the provider handle any student-specific or -generated data that is stored in their system? What security measures do they have in place to ensure the security of this federally-protected data?
- When may instructors access or obtain any student-specific or generated data, and when does that access end?
- How might instructors download and store student-specific or generated data, for record-keeping purposes? In what file formats will that data be available to download?
- Some content package providers enable instructors to upload their own content to use in conjunction with publisher content. What stipulations does the publisher make concerning the intellectual property rights of the instructor who uploads her or his own content?