The following advice is based on the “Briefing paper on eTextbooks and third party eLearning products and their implications for Australian universitylibraries“, written by Dr Gillian Hallam and commissioned by the Council of Australian University Librarians in September 2012.
Q. Can we require students to buy the textbook and with it access to the online quiz?
No, if the textbooks content and the quiz are essential for the completion of the course.
The Higher Education Support Act 2003 (HESA), states that university students must be given the choice of being able to complete the requirements of their course of study without being charged fees that are additional to student contribution amounts or tuition fees.
Australian universities widely interpret this as meaning:
- That students cannot be required to purchase texts or e-texts that are essential for the completion of their course, and that the institutions must provide students with alternative access to this content. This usually takes the form of lending copies of prescribed and recommended books or e-books being made available by the Library.
- That assessment that is essential for the completion of the course cannot be embedded in a textbook or e-textbook, unless that same assessment is offered in an alternative way outside the text/etext.
The common practice of the Library offering lending copies of prescribed texts is challenged when these are e-texts, as most academic publishers do not offer a library purchase model for e-texts (in order to protect their student-purchase market).
Some publishers will supply electronic files of a piece of assessment for use outside the e-text, but this would require a title-by-title negotiation between the academic and the publisher.
Q. Can we set as course assessment a quiz managed by an external organisation such as an educational publisher, so that the publisher holds assessment records?
Under Victorian Privacy legislation we must not pass any confidential student information to a third party, except in certain circumstances.
The Library has two web pages for academics and teachers, giving advice about e-texts and publisher building blocks: