Тaditionally highly-demanded textbooks now available online

Ahead of the new academic year, the Methodology Department of the Yerevan Basic Medical College came up with a long-awaited development – two-volume “Inorganic Chemistry” (ISBN 978-99941-71-19-4) and “Analytical Chemistry” (ISBN 978-9939-815-19-0) textbooks authored by Rima Khachatryan, an Honoured Pedagogue of the Republic of Armenia, are now available online as well.

Printing of textbooks, especially high-quality print, is quite costly and time-consuming. Moreover, hard-copy textbooks have a short shelf life and become worn-out over a time. Reprinting requires another sizeable investment of time and money. And, students are the ones who suffer the most in the result of this vicious cycle.

Therefore, the Methodology Department has made a decision to post all the required textbooks online, and went ahead with posting the ones that are traditionally highly demanded by the students. The college library has analysed the country-wide textbooks collection turnover rate, based on which the most circulated textbooks were identified.

Rima Khachatryan’s “Inorganic Chemistry” and “Analytical Chemistry” have been written in accordance with the requirements of the state curriculum for medical colleges and are intended for the students of these colleges. For about one-and-a-half decades both textbooks have been the core learning resources for various medical colleges, including Yerevan Basic Medical College, the state medical colleges of Vanadzor, Kapan, Gyumri, Hrazdan and Gavar, as well as other medical colleges around the country.

“Our next step is making the online textbooks interactive. For instance, it will become possible to complete the practice tests and quizzes in the textbooks online. By answering the quiz questions, or completing an assignment from the textbook, students will be able to get immediate feedback: they will learn right at the spot if they have answered correctly, and if not, what was the right answer”, notes Naira Nersisyan, Director of the Yerevan Basic Medical College.