​Hello and welcome to your one stop destination on all that you need to know about buying textbooks in college!
This video was created by Kasey Schock to summarize this website.
The transition into college is already hard enough. Most freshman come to college not knowing what to expect. They do not know much about the classes that they are going to take, how difficult the classes are going to be, who they are going to sit with in these classes, and they do not really know what materials they are going to need for these classes. Then, as they are becoming stressed about all these unanswered questions, they become happy when a professor actually gives them an answer. This answer is usually, “All students need to purchase a printed textbook for this class” or “All students need to purchase an online textbook or otherwise known as an eBook for this class.” Usually, most professors favor one over the other for their class but there are some that leave the decision up to their students. They let their students decide on their own if they would want to purchase an eBook or if they would rather purchase a printed textbook for their class. Then, these particular students are left with no idea on which format to choose and if you are one of those particular students then this website is for you!
This website was made to be a guide on how to buy college textbooks. All the creators of this website are college students that have been in the same position as you. We came to college uncertain of which format would be the best for us when we were faced with this same decision to make. Throughout that years that we have attended The University of Kentucky, we all have used both eBooks and printed textbooks. Therefore, each of us have personally experienced the eBooks verses printed textbooks debate. Both of the formats have been used by each of us in a trial and error way. Eventually, by using both formats, we were able to decide which format is best for us. This led us to the creation of this website. We all agreed that it would have been much easier to make our decision if we had a guide on how to go about making our decision. Since we have all used both formats and formulated our own opinions about each one, we decided to make our own guide on how to buy college textbooks and share it with you. This guide is all about how to choose which format is best for you as a student and what format will help you succeed in all of your college classes.
The content of this website consists of our own personal experiences, research from other universities, studies that were conducted on this debate, and feedback from students that also attend the University of Kentucky. All of these different aspects were put together and placed in three separate sections. These separate sections will take you through the different steps that go along with deciding which format is best for you.
First, the pros and cons of eBooks and printed textbooks are laid out for you. This section describes in detail what the pros of eBooks are and then what the pros of having a printed textbook are. Then, the cons of eBooks and the cons of printed textbooks are given. This will help you determine what exactly you are looking for to use for your specific class that you are buying a book for. With the pros and cons laid out, you will be able to visualize all of the differences that each format entails.
From here, you can move onto the second section of the website.
This section could be the most important for college students since
it is all about the money of this debate. Most college students pay
for their own textbooks and what ever format is cheaper than the
other could be the main factor that helps you make your final decision.
In this section, the prices of different eBooks and printed textbooks
are compared. Through this detailed comparison, you can see what
format will fit better with the other expenses that college comes along
with and what format will be able to fit into the budget that you have
set aside to buy textbooks.
Once you have looked over all the pros and cons of both eBooks and
printed textbooks. You can move on to the last section of our website.
This last section is all the feedback that we gathered from asking fellow
college students at the University of Kentucky how they felt towards the
question, “which is better, eBooks or printed textbooks?” The data for
this section was collected by sending out a survey on the University of
Kentucky’s main campus. This survey was sent to other students in our classes, friends that attend our school, and to our friends in our sororities and/or fraternities. We wanted to gather information from a wide range of students to develop diversity among the data received and collected. We did not want all of the information on our website to just consist of our own personal experiences. We wanted to include personal experiences from other college students outside of the group that created this website and we wanted to place their opinions with our own to make it more credible.
After reading other students opinions, going over the feedback that was collected from other students, looking over the expenses that each format entails, and reading about the pros and cons of each one, we hope that you were able to make your decision! Our goal is to make buying college textbooks easy. If we had a guide to follow when we were in your position, we would not have had to go through all of the trial and error processes to figure out what format is best for us. We want nothing more than to take the stress away that comes along with making this decision and we want to make your transition into college as smooth as possible.