In a move towards Digital Education, SPJIMR replaces textbooks with Amazon Kindles

SP Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai has partnered with Amazon, Harvard Business School Publishing, and Pearson India Education Services Pvt Ltd to introduce the use of Amazon Kindle e-Book readers for studies instead of paper textbooks for the students of its PGDM course.

The students of the PGDM batch of 2017-2019 would have over 50% of their textbooks available in a digital Kindle edition which would not only reduce the load of carrying and maintaining textbooks but is also an environment- friendly measure which could save tons of paper. The major advantages of a Kindle over paper textbooks are its portability, ease of handling and availability of reading material at any time.

Moreover, An E-Book reader like Kindle makes note-making hassle free. Highlighting could be done easily by just using your finger to select the important text and searching for definitions and meaning of words in the textbooks could be done just by long- pressing a particular word. Moreover, using the sync feature with the Amazon account, students can read their e-books across multiple devices such as Android Smartphones and PC’s using the Kindle App.

Another Advantage is the fact that the students get to use and keep the Kindle device as their own property even after graduation. Since the device is their own property, they get to add their own selection of books to the collection. Kindle also allows the user to make custom collections of books for sorting books of different types in the desired order.

Some of the textbooks included in the PGDM course at SPJIMR are already available in the Kindle digital format (.AZW3), and SPJIMR has partnered with Pearson India Education Services to convert few more textbooks in the Kindle format. Along with that, SPJIMR has also been granted permission by the Harvard Business School Publishing for the distribution of teaching cases in the digital form.

Talking about the move, the Associate Programme Head and Head for Admissions of PGDM Dr. Bindu Kulkarni said, “The idea of giving each and every PGDM participant a Kindle reader was to align their need and comfort with digital media. We have observed a generational shift in reading habits and we wanted to keep pace with the changing needs of this generation.”

The move towards digital textbooks benefits all the sides involved in the partnership. It would be easier for the publishing companies to issue books in digital form rather than on printed paper, at the same time it would also benefit Amazon in advertisement and promotion of their e-book platform. This move is a leap forward towards complete digitization of academic study materials, which would probably be how students in the future would study. In the current world where storing and maintaining study materials made of physical paper is getting difficult with each day, textbooks accessible through digital devices would open new ways for students to be able to learn anywhere anytime.

Recently, the Indian Government had also launched a number of Digital Education initiatives such as Swayam, Swayam Prabha, and National Digital Library at the National Convention on Digital Initiatives for Higher Education.