Brent Wilson of George Fox University became interested in SafariU after seeing a demo at the Northwest CCSC (Consortium of Computer Science in Colleges) Conference. For him, SafariU met an immediate need by enabling him to create and provide multiple books for his classes without burdening his students with significantly higher textbook prices. Ultimately, his students' reaction to the different approach to the course material was quite positive.

"They thought it was really cool to have a book compiled specifically for their class. They also appreciated the cost savings."

According to Brent, SafariU's custom textbooks made the classes easier to teach, and the end result was a noticeable difference in test scores compared to those of years past.

"I believe that my students benefited more from the compiled books vs. traditional textbooks."

"I truly believe in the mission of SafariU and am planning to utilize it services for years to come. The ability to gather multiple sources of information and compile it into a single text is extremely valuable to me."

Professor Kent Sandoe of Chico State University’s College of Business wanted to produce a textbook on information security in conjunction with his Systems Management course this semester, but at the last minute those plans fell through and he turned to SafariU. We caught up with him to find out the details of how he made SafariU work for him.

"Teaching information technology is a constant challenge, because the content changes so quickly. The available instructional materials are almost always out of date. By the time a textbook makes it into print, it’s basically obsolete. The typical cycle for producing a hardbound textbook is two or three years, and that’s just ludicrous in IT-related disciplines."

"O’Reilly owns a tremendous quantity of well-written, valuable information. The fact
that they’re willing to disaggregate it, allowing a professor to go and re-aggregate the content in a way that is meaningful to students, to a particular audience, to a particular course—that’s revolutionary."