Ebook Course Management

Summary of Achievements Link to heading

  • Initiated and built a new course management product for universities and institutions. Our first customer was Stanford University and we added 6 new institutional clients over the next year (with more in the pipeline)
  • Worked with local and remote employees to improve the product based on customer pain points. Collaborated with a LTI specialist from the US to allow SSO from Moodle and Canvas Learning Management Systems. Recruited and worked with a technical writer from Sydney to develop promotional and instructional material.
  • Automated the invoicing and reporting components of the system to minimise time spent on it by internal staff

Ebooks for Course Instructors Link to heading

Steps for Course Instructors

In 2019, Stanford Business School approached us asking if we could provide ebooks for their students. Although this was possible using bulk purchases through our retail eCommerce site, the amount of hands-on work required by the course instructors was prohibitive. Problems included:

  • Instructors had to manage emailing the voucher codes to students
  • Each voucher code generated is for only one title
  • Instructors were often left with unused vouchers, due to participants dropping out or never accessing the content

I proposed a solution that took into multiple stakeholders interests (book publishers, course instructors and internal staff) and worked with them over the coming months to develop the first version of the product. The requirements for the system were:

  • Allow students to access content with just their email address or a unique fulfillment URL (no voucher codes)
  • Access to all books in the course via a single redemption
  • Multiple administrators or teachers per course
  • Multiple groups per course, allowing you to split students into cohorts
  • Straight-forward invoicing
  • Students own their ebooks forever

By collaborating with Stanford using emails, mockups, and Zoom screen sharing, we developed a suitable product within 2 months and have iterated continuously to improve it since then.

Ebooks.com has been a fantastic partner, building out an easy-to-use platform for us to distribute books to hundreds of our students each academic term. Not only is the interface user-friendly, but the redemption process for students is streamlined and gets ebooks into their hands quickly and efficiently. We run a program that enrolls 1000+ students per year, from 65 countries, so the ability to utilize a single platform to distribute books to students all over the world is invaluable. Not to mention Ebooks.com’s phenomenal customer service, responsiveness to our questions and concerns, and willingness to go above and beyond what one might expect in a professional partnership makes working with them a dream.

Megan Pearse, Associate Director – Executive Education Online Courses, Stanford University