By Jenna Haines, News Correspondent

Some students taking Calculus 1 do not have to lug around a traditional textbook this semester. Mathematics professor David Massey has published an e-textbook covering the material.
Massey founded the Worldwide Center for Mathematics (WCM) in 2008 to provide a low-cost textbook option for students with a tight budget. ‘Worldwide Differential Calculus’ contains a print text, an online version in PDF form, a DVD of prerecorded lectures about the material, and an additional study guide and solution manual. All of these features can be purchased independently, the textbook for between $40 and $50, and the DVD for $12.50, said Elgin Stallard, a 1999 Northeastern alumnus and business manager of WCM.
Students can buy only what they need and at prices almost 50 percent lower’ than conventional textbooks, Stallard said.’
‘Our goal is to give a better learning platform and provide better pricing,’ Stallard says. ‘We want to give students an option so they are not forced to buy what they don’t need.’
Professor Robert Case, who teaches Calculus 1 for Science and Engineering, has incorporated the textbook into his curriculum, using it as a supplementary text mostly for his honors section.
While Case said that he sees benefits to this text, he said there are also some drawbacks of electronic texts.’
‘The technology can be helpful in many ways, as was Gutenberg’s printing technology, especially in the form of creating access of many more people to knowledge,’ Case wrote in an e-mail. ‘But we haven’t yet begun to understand how to use this in a truly wise way yet.’
Elgin Stallard said other universities in the area are also using this book as a reference for students.
The textbook is designed so professors can customize it to fit their teaching style and even record their own lectures to make available for students. This offers a new tool for professors.
The e-book is the company’s first publication. Three additional mathematics texts will be released in the future including multi-variable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations. Stallard said that he thinks e-textbooks will be available for all subjects. But he said his company plans to stay in the science and mathematics field.’
Students and professors are skeptical about relying on the Internet as the primary medium for textbooks.
‘I think [electronic textbooks] provide a lot of opportunities for interactive learning that hard copy texts do not. On the other hand, faculty often distrust a new technology, so we may be slow in replacing our familiar hard copy textbooks,’ math Professor Robert McOwen wrote in an e-mail to The News.
David Hoch, a freshman industrial engineering in Case’s class, said ‘it’s easier to have the book open’ when studying.’
Brandon Poulin, also a freshman mechanical engineering in Case’s class wrote in an e-mail that he had ‘mixed feelings’ about the new e-textbooks.’
‘Most of its convenience comes from being able to paste information into word documents and the ability to print out specific pages,’ he said. ‘At the same time, it is sometimes time consuming having to go on the computer every time I have to access the book. Overall, I would stick with the regular books. They should also be offered online so we can access them without taking our books everywhere or if we just want to print out one or two pages from the text.’