Building the Better Textbook: The Promises and Perils of E-Publication

Several efforts have been made in recent years to alter traditional texts by packing them with CD add-ons that promise to enhance the learning environment. Digital Learning Interactive, founded in Jul 2000, has taken the task of building a better textbook even further by creating the Interactive Learning Resource Network (iLrn), which includes fully electronic "textbooks" in several academic fields. In American history, iLrn offers the appropriately titled "America Unbound," a somewhat fragmented but comprehensive survey stretching from the settlement era through the end of the twentieth century.