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Shelving our Student Access Issues
November 17, 2021

Shelving our Student Access Issues

John Bayerl | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with RedShelf

RedShelf is primarily serving as a way for students to access their online textbook for a course, retrieve the access code for another online platform, and serve as a license key for other online platforms. Students access it via our learning management system (LMS), Brightspace, and a link is embedded within their individual course sites to allow them to access materials for that site. Because of this, we've been able to use RedShelf to implement a program we call "Direct Digital". This means that students don't need to go out and find/purchase the materials for the course, we actually just add them on as a fee onto the course. This allows students to easily use financial aid and other financial assistance to pay for those materials, and it ensures that all students have access to what they need to complete the course. Once the course is live, they will then just access all their course materials right within Brightspace, which ultimately just makes the process easier/simpler for students.
  • Online Textbooks
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Access
  • Consistency in User Experience
  • More apparent/Better messaging when being used as a key (when materials aren't accessed in RedShelf)
  • Textbook Access
  • Accessibility
  • Better Student Experience
  • Expanded Student Access
I don't believe I'd used many products that are similar to RedShelf.

Do you think RedShelf delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with RedShelf's feature set?

Yes

Did RedShelf live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of RedShelf go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy RedShelf again?

Yes

RedShelf has been great in a higher ed environment to help connect students to textbook and publisher materials. It has helped make the process of purchasing/accessing those materials so much easier for students. I am at an institution now where we don't have RedShelf, and the faculty and students are regularly frustrated with this process, so I'll be looking to get us a license here soon.

RedShelf is particularly useful if instructors are using various different types of materials from different publishers. However, if an institution was only using Cengage Unlimited for example (that is a service where students will just pay for access to that site and all the books/materials for all of their courses would be accessible on there), that would be a time where I would think RedShelf wouldn't provide you with as much benefit.

That being said, we may be using RedShelf in a very specific manner, and it may be able to provide us more ability/features that we haven't taken full advantage of.