Science students experiment with iPad in textbook shake up

Forget carting around textbooks, 700 first-year science students from the University of Adelaide were given iPads in a push towards e-learning.

In an article in University World News, Professor Robert Hill, executive dean of science, who was behind the initiative, explained the benefits that the radical move will have on students.

"I believe the iPad will revolutionise the way science is taught at the University of Adelaide," Hill (pictured) said. "We will be the first university in Australia to teach science using iPads to an entire cohort of students in this innovative way – and the first in the world to provide such a large number with an iPad."

Hill counted cost savings as a major incentive to implement the changes. Anyone who has attended university will know that textbooks are not only heavy to carry around, but are also a considerable financial burden.

"Many students, especially those from low socio-economic backgrounds, cannot afford to spend $1,000 buying the five or six science textbooks we set each year and that is wrong," he said. "I'm trying to give everyone out there an equal financial chance to come to university and this is a major project to free us from textbooks as we develop our own material and put it online."