The COVID-19 pandemic may be remembered as a breakthrough moment for the acceptance of digital course materials. A new survey shows that the share of faculty members who agreed that “students learn better from print materials than they do from digital” has fallen to 33 percent, down from 43 percent just two years ago. Indeed, as college campuses closed across the country and learning went remote, the use of online textbooks and other technologies sharply rose, while the use of traditional print textbooks decreased. By the fall of 2020, spending on digital course materials had risen by 23 percent. Even so, the adoption of digital course materials — and faculty views around their impact — remains mixed.
