Elsevier Launches Next-Generation Digital Learning Platform to Provide Health Professions Students 24/7 Access to eContent and Advanced Collaboration Tools

PHILADELPHIA, January 26 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --

- Designed for the Way Health Professions Students Learn, Pageburst Goes Beyond Typical E-Book Platforms by Adding Integrated Multimedia, Text-To-Speech, an Instructor Grade Book and Other Features

Elsevier, (http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/homepage.cws_home) the leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information, today announced the launch of Pageburst(TM) (http://www.pageburst.com), an interactive digital learning platform for Elsevier health science education content. Pageburst surpasses existing e-Book platforms because it is designed for the way students learn, with features such as integrated multimedia, text-to-speech, social networking tools and an integrated instructor grade book. The Pageburst platform is designed specifically for nursing and health professions students in North America who require anytime/anywhere access to course material and utilize texts as reference guides throughout their careers.

"With Pageburst, we can unlock higher levels of performance by engaging students with interactive and immersive course materials in a variety of formats," said John King, Ed.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer at Lincoln Educational Services. "Students can now spend class and exam prep times more efficiently and easily organize course materials to match their program's curriculum with integrated searchable content from a robust collection of the most current Elsevier titles."

Pageburst is built upon easy-to-use and recognizable software tools that allow painless implementation and support for health science educators, students and practitioners seeking superior teaching, learning and clinical outcomes. The platform enables users to master course content quickly and easily by working with their entire collection of Elsevier health science titles in text, video and audio formats and by collaborating online with faculty and classmates within the context of the content.

"Moving from print to digital will improve engagement, increase learning and enhance the value of the content to help students succeed throughout their careers as health professionals," said Sally Schrefer, Managing Director, Nursing and Health Professions, Elsevier Health Sciences. "We listened to our customers and created a breakthrough solution that meets their unique education needs and surpasses their expectations of what digital textbook platforms can deliver."

Designed for How Today's Students Learn and Study

Accessible offline or online through Elsevier's market-leading Evolve portal, Pageburst is Elsevier's new platform for accessing a much wider array of features and functionality for its digital textbooks. Pageburst is easy for faculty and students to access and use and is delivered through the device most college students already have - a computer.

Elsevier's community of health education experts designed Pageburst to enhance the way health professions students think, learn, and study. For example, students will be able to create personalized study guides and instantly link content within the text to expert definitions and descriptions in dictionaries and other Elsevier reference works. They will also be able to view a video or animation within the context of applicable textbook content to help clarify complex concepts. Additionally, students can increase retention and easily learn terms that look alike, sound alike or are hard to pronounce by clicking a button to hear the correct pronunciation and meaning.

Fully integrated collaboration tools within Pageburst will help students gain and share knowledge through personal learning networks that connect students, instructors, and user groups directly from within the content. Both students and instructors can embed notes and links directly into textbook content. Additional features include interactive quizzes and activities that can be submitted to an instructor's virtual grade book.

Pageburst is web-based, so it can be accessed anytime, on any device with a supported web browser. Students can also download their content to their desktop or laptop computers to study offline. Unlike other e-Book platforms, Pageburst is at one time: (1) interactive, (2) with book content available both on-and-offline that (3) will be available to the student over the course of their lives after a single purchase. Students can also download an iTunes application that syncs highlighted material along with accompanying notes with their iPhone or iPod Touch, enabling quick, anytime access to the information they need most.

Student to Save Money by Using Pageburst vs. Print Textbooks

Unlike the average undergraduate student seeking deeply discounted content for one semester, health professions students are more likely to retain their textbooks for future classes and to reference in professional practice. Still, Pageburst users will save up to 20 percent off the print price on each title, plus benefit from the suite of electronic enhancements. The nation's approximate 1.2 million nursing and health professions students often purchase several books per semester, and on average more than half of those books are Elsevier titles. With the digital textbooks on Pageburst, that means students can not only save substantial dollars, but also benefit by cross-referencing multiple books on one integrated platform. Titles purchased on Pageburst do not expire; they can be downloaded to a user's hard drive and accessed indefinitely.

More than 550 of Elsevier's most-used book titles are available on the platform, including Potter's Fundamentals of Nursing, Chabner's Language of Medicine, and Lewis's Medical Surgical Nursing.

ABOUT ELSEVIER

Elsevier is a world-leading publisher of scientific, technical and medical information products and services. The company works in partnership with the global science and health communities to publish more than 2,000 journals, including The Lancet (http://www.thelancet.com) and Cell (http://www.cell.com), and close to 20,000 book titles, including major reference works from Mosby and Saunders. Elsevier's online solutions include ScienceDirect (http://www.sciencedirect.com), Scopus (http://www.scopus.com), Reaxys (http://www.reaxys.com), MD Consult (http://www.mdconsult.com) and Nursing Consult (http://www.nursingconsult.com), which enhance the productivity of science and health professionals, and the SciVal suite (http://www.scival.com) and MEDai's Pinpoint Review (http://www.medai.com), which help research and health care institutions deliver better outcomes more cost-effectively.

A global business headquartered in Amsterdam, Elsevier (http://www.elsevier.com) employs 7,000 people worldwide. The company is part of Reed Elsevier Group PLC (http://www.reedelsevier.com), a world-leading publisher and information provider, which is jointly owned by Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV. The ticker symbols are REN (Euronext Amsterdam), REL (London Stock Exchange), RUK and ENL (New York Stock Exchange).

    Tom Reller, Vice President,
    Global Corporate Relations
    +1-215-239-3508
    [email protected]

SOURCE Elsevier