Sarah is signed up for a class that uses a student response unit from eInstruction. I'll be interested to see how well it works, but so far I'm skeptical. First of all there is a $3.75 purchase for the "unit". There is a note that it can be "sold back" to the bookstore (at 50%) at the end of the term... Once you have the unit you simply log in and pay $15.00 to register for your class. So hundreds or thousands of students, having paid tuition to the state, purchased their books form the bookstore, and paid their technology fees to the university they are attending are now asked to pay an additional $15 to a third party so their instructor.
So what do you get for this extra $20 per class? Well, you get the ability to answer questions using a keypad... Answer all the multiple choice questions that someone can throw at you. So you don't have to really learn anything but how to spit back the right choice on a multiple choice quiz or test.
But what else happens? Students are required to give their private information, including credit card information to a third party, not the school, not a store where the student has any choice. Make it easy for the professor to take roll and require that a student give personal information to someone who has no interest in protecting the student's rights.