If a tree doesn't fall in the forest, online technology could deserve some of the credit.
Officials at Sprott-Shaw Community College estimate their efforts to cut textbooks from a range of business classes have saved 26 trees since last September. Textbooks are now passé in 11 courses at seven of Sprott-Shaw's B.C. campuses, including those in Victoria, Duncan and Nanaimo.
Sprott-Shaw president Dean Duperron said the college is on the leading edge of a move away from textbooks, the so-called "greening" of classes in the post-secondary realm.
It's territory other institutions are also exploring, including the public-education system. The Virtual School Society of B.C., created in 2006, develops distance learning for kindergarten-Grade 12 students through its LearnNowBC website, which is supported by a grant from the Ministry of Education.
Sprott-Shaw put a team together to take a closer look at the idea of going textbook-free about two years ago, researching the availability of material on the Internet.
That was followed by the decision to take a step toward book-less courses, Duperron said.
Sprott-Shaw's Anne Wilkes said her students have adapted well to the approach, which the college is calling Great Green Learning -- or G2 Learning, for short. In fact, student-satisfaction surveys show more than 90 per cent favour the move, Duperron said.
He stressed the online emphasis doesn't translate to having students working from remote locations.
"We're not treating this as distance education -- we're bringing this right into the classroom."
Wilkes said the instructor is still central to the learning process. "What we're doing is we're replacing the textbook, so instead of having one single source to tell the students something, they now have multiple sources."
Beyond the environmental benefits of the program, it should eventually be a cheaper option, as well, Duperron said.
"In the future it will be a money-saver to the students. Right now it's in transition."
So far, Sprott-Shaw has put a few hundred thousand dollars into the changes. That includes the purchase of 200 laptop computers for student use.
Online learning and collaboration are central to studies at Royal Roads University, but class resources don't necessarily exclude texts or other forms of "hard copy."
Barry Anderson, executive director of the Virtual School Society of B.C., said the idea of every student having a computer and getting access to most of his or her learning material online "is not a situation that, 10 years ago, we were getting to in a hurry."
But with computers dropping in price, the economics of online material replacing traditional textbooks are making more sense, he said.
"That said, now you have to come up to each school and imagine how the school is going to function. Do you have the Internet capability to actually have all the kids in a school opening up their computers at one time and looking at an e-book or an exam? And the answer to that is, 'Not yet.'
"That may be 10, 15 years away."
The LearnNowBC website functions as a "virtual" school, which Anderson said offers 2,500 courses, some of them overlapping. About seven to eight per cent of the entire student body in British Columbia is taking at least one online course, he said.
The Sooke school district will be looking more closely at the online world with the formulation of a new technology plan, due to be introduced this month.
"We're going to build on the notion that resources are going to be more electronic, and there will be very few textbooks," said assistant superintendent Ron Warder. "But we have to get enough computers in the system, and we've got to get a lot of staff development done for teachers."
Warder said he foresees an eventual move away from school computer labs to the provision of more laptops in classrooms.
Etraffic Solutions, a Victoria company, is well-established in the field of online learning and provides virtual textbooks and other materials to schools in Canada and the United States. It is also connected with the LearnNowBC website.
jwbell@tc.canwest.com
