More from a Professor's Perspective

So, I contacted my friend Kathleen McCullough who is an Assistant Professor at Florida State University. I have helped her students many times over the years, serving as an industry expert to which they can go for information. I thought she could provide me with additional insight for my part of the wire frames. She first had to give me crap about pursuing the online program with BU instead of FSU (she is one of the online professors).

Her first comment when I told her the scope of our project was, "Why would I want to buy a textbook from your Web site when the publishers provide them for free?" Good point! I spent about 30 minutes on the phone with her "picking her brain." She explained how the publishers now let professors customize their textbooks. This is really cool. The professors log in on the Web site, pick the chapters they want, and the publisher soft-binds it. The professor gets their copy for free, and the students buy theirs at a fraction of the cost of the entire hardback textbook. Interesting!

The one thing that I learned from her that I think we should go with is that we should make other books available. She referred to them as "quasi-textbooks." This would be like the Managing Virtual Projects book we purchased. Dr. McCullough teaches insurance and risk management. She says she has about 15 books on her shelf from which she requires supplemental reading assignments. If the publisher is associated with a textbook publishing house, she can get the book for free. Otherwise, she has to buy it. She typically uses Amazon.

As far as search features are concerned, she said she would first want to see it by Category (like Finance, Insurance, Risk Management, etc), then a search by author. She agreed with my cousin's comment that the ability to preview the first chapter or selected chapters would certainly help.

She also mentioned the book swaps that are gaining in popularity. Regarding eBooks, she said that most have restrictions - like it can only be downloaded to one computer or you can only print a few pages at a time -- stuff like that.

OK, so that completes my research on this -- now, on to the page design. Oh, back to work (I'm on my lunch break). Page design will have to wait until this evening. Catch up with you later.

Oh -- let me know if anyone wants to see the links for the eBooks or customize your own textbook Web sites.