Question: ANGEL and Course Packs

I often hear the question from faculty: What warnings or concerns would you offer to faculty who are considering the use of a Publisher ePack or Course Pack? Here's a collection of responses from technical support staff who work with me at JCCC.

• Don’t unzip or install in a production course, instead use a source course. Often when unzipped, before you can trim out content you don’t want or need, the ePack will “make a mess of one's course.” Trim, delete, or eliminate what you don’t need (after importing into your source course) and then copy the pieces you want to the places in your course where you want the content.
• Many ePacks contain the same materials as appear in the textbook, you, as the instructor need to determine if that’s good reinforcement, superficial, or unnecessary. You may want to reference the materials in the textbook rather than have the textbook content be repeated in an online course, but that’s your call.
• Quiz questions in an ePack may be set up in units, with instructions for the first question applying to the entire set of questions, which means that the questions can't be rearranged without some revisions to the questions. Use question sets for these instances.
• You may find that some questions are not well-written and should be reviewed before being used in an exam. If you use a test bank, our suggestion is that you need to review all the questions and all content before use. Many JCCC faculty members handpick questions that are appropriate to their specific course objectives rather than using the test bank in its entirety.
• Be aware that some ePacks require the student to purchase an access code (either online or through the bookstore). If the ePack simply duplicates the textbook and requires the purchase of an access code, you may want to consider the added cost for your students. Further, access codes typically are good for one usage (one semester) and cannot be resold with the textbook. That may result in students buying used textbook without an access code and then the student cannot access the course materials. Once you use materials protected by an access code, you cannot legally or technically cease using the access code in subsequent semesters without stripping out all content from the ePack. If this occurs, you may find it easier to rebuild your course from scratch, rather than trying to strip out the ePack materials.