New technology allows professors to track whether students are reading their textbooks

[enlightenment]

1. Yes, like we have time, energy, or inclination

to play cop to our students. Part of the process of maturity is taking responsibility for your own actions, not relying on an external agent to make you do what you know you should be doing. This "tool" is the antithesis of that concept.

I like CourseSmart's online books - they have made it a lot easier for many of my students to afford or simply use (for example a quadriplegic who can't leave the house, but was able to take on online class because he could use his computer to read the text). I do not like this idea.

But, given that my institution is currently considering a series of draconian measures to "encourage" students not to linger beyond the standard two or four years, I anticipate that they will think this idea is just the ticket and pay oodles of state dollars to CourseSmart for the institutional version of this computerized hall monitor - that we will be expected to use.