It's not just me!

The first couple of modules I completed with the OU provided printed materials - both for the study guide and some of the core texts.  For the most recent and current modules all the material has been on line.

I have really struggled with this.  Maybe an age related thing?  Options I have tried include:

• Printing out the course materials.  Fine until the page count mounts to over a hundred pages.  My home printer really can't cope with big print jobs and isn't sophisticated enough to print booklet style to save paper.
• Reading the material on line on the web page.  Really was a non starter.  One, I've never worked out how to highlight, comment and markup a web page to be able to refer back.  Also I do a lot of studying (not currently because of Covid-19) when travelling.  Trying to read a web page on a plane or overnight ferry was never going to work for me.
• Downloading as a pdf.  Sort of works but depends on how the OU makes the download available.  M815 provides a pdf for a block so there is one integrated file.  But one of the MBA modules provided the pdf as one per section:  this meant I ended up with multiple pdfs (each about 3 pages with an individual title page) which I then needed to edit together to get a topic.  One of the advantages of a downloaded file is that I can word search - 20x3page files makes this impossible.  Also - the links quite often don't work in the downloaded pdf so I have to keep going back to the website - or scanning in advance to check what files are referenced and download them too.  Also - when referencing in assignments you can't reference the downloaded pdf so have to go back to the web-page to reference the on line version.  However, at least with a downloaded pdf I can annotate it and make notes - and with the wonders of OneDrive I can access from laptop and tablet and synchronise between the all my devices.

Its never something that's been raised as an issue by anyone on the module forums so I assumed it was just me until I joined a WhatsApp group for my current module and discovered that many other struggle with this.  There was a long thread on this and it was noticeable how many people had looked at options to get 'hard copies' of the materials and various recommendations for printers.  The comment which particularly struck me was from one student who commented that she can read on line but not study on line.  This did lead to a question on the forum of the current module and one of the tutors commented that when doing detailed work she prints out papers so she can mark up and make notes on.

If its so common that people want hard copies why doesn't the OU offer a printed version as an option?