From Carolyn Haynes, Associate Provost:

I am writing to you about a new and voluntary textbook initiative that could result in significant cost savings to your students as well as ensure that your students have their texts prior to the beginning of the semester or term.

Miami University recently secured a contract for the Unizin Engage platform. The Unizin Engage e-textbook platform allows students to gain easy access to the text via the faculty member’s Canvas Course site. Because Unizin has a partnership with Canvas, the textbook is integrated into the course site for easy viewing and access by students and faculty from day one of the course.

Students in the course will be sent an email informing them of the course text and how to access it via the Canvas course site. Unless students opt out of using this e-textbook, they will be billed via their Bursar account once the semester or term begins.

Students have the ability to highlight and annotate the text as well as download the full textbook and print out the entire book or portions of it on a copy machine. The faculty member will also be able to annotate the text and use the platform’s analytics feature to identify whether students are reading the text.

As part of the Unizin contract, Miami will join a consortium with other institutions using the platform such as the University of Michigan, Indiana University, Ohio State University and the entire Florida and Nebraska systems. The sheer size of this consortium enables Unizin to negotiate with all of the major textbook publishers to secure significant cost savings (60% on average) for students.

We are seeking faculty on the Oxford campus who would be willing to pilot the Unizin Engage e-textbook platform in the spring 2020 semester. Interested faculty should contact Caroyln directly (haynesca@miamioh.edu).