With the new platform CourseSmart Analytics, professors are able to see the students’ level of engagement – how much of digital texts students have read, whether they highlight passages or took notes and how much time they spent on their readings.

A beta version of CourseSmart is being tested at several universities during the spring semester serving about 4,000 students, and officials hope to roll it out fully by the fall, said spokeswoman Cindy Clark. The goal is to move away from traditional textbooks and methods and help give faculty an insight into their students’ behaviors, she said.

“Only about 55 percent of college students graduate within six years,” Clark said. “This illustrates the demand within higher education for a tool that would help students be more successful in their studies and graduate on time.”