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Chandalynn Helm, a junior at Northwest Missouri State University, works on her university-issued laptop Wednesday afternoon at the student union. Ms. Helm says she wouldn’t really care for e-books because she can take notes and highlight items in her current textbooks.

As students across the nation scramble to find cheap textbooks for their spring semester classes, others simply download.

Northwest Missouri State University began a pilot program last year that replaced traditional textbooks in some classes with electronic versions. The school expanded the program recently as it considers going completely paperless.

Beginning last fall, about 200 students carried a small e-reader that stored a portion of their textbooks in electronic form. The program more than doubled this year to include 10 academic departments and about 500 students. Some students will continue to use the e-reader, but most students in the program will download their textbooks to their laptop computers, which are issued to every student at Northwest.

The school is already unique in that students pay a fee for textbook rentals. When they arrive at the beginning of the semester, their books are already bagged and waiting. Northwest officials tout the program as a cost-saver for students, often overlooked when comparing price among competitors.

Six publishing companies supply electronic textbooks to Northwest for the program.

Paul Klute, assistant to President Dr. Dean Hubbard, said last fall’s trial period with the Sony e-readers showed that the device, while useful for leisure reading, isn’t designed with students in mind. Students tend to jump from page to page and often make notes in their books.

Northwest officials recently met with Sony to discuss their findings from the fall semester pilot program. Sony is developing a prototype that apparently tackles some of the issues the students encountered, but the school is going ahead with a laptop/notebook format for the spring semester, which begins today.

McGraw-Hill, a leading higher education textbook company, offers nearly all of its products in electronic form. But not everyone is ready to go paperless. Jeffrey Ho, a product manager for the company, said the only real drawback to e-books is that students are still in the dark about them or have experienced an antiquated version of what’s being offered.

Mr. Ho said the publishing trade initiated the move to e-books in the late 1990s. The focus on digital products is growing at a “breathtaking rate for us.” McGraw-Hill has spent the last year analyzing students’ learning behaviors and has found that they are drawn to “search” functions while looking for references, Mr. Ho said, which will find its way into e-books.

Perhaps the biggest perk in going paperless is that students could pay half as much for their books, Mr. Ho said (The national average is around $700 a year for traditional books).

Northwest, which was the first electronic campus in the U.S., also is among the first public four-year institutions considering going fully electronic with its textbooks. Mr. Ho said an accounting department at the University of Texas-Austin has gone electronic, but he hasn’t encountered a four-year public school considering electronic books across the entire curriculum.

“Northwest is certainly among the leaders,” he said.

As for the future of traditional ink-and-paper hardbacks, McGraw-Hill’s director of communications, Tom Stanton, said e-books and print books will occupy the higher education markets together “for years.”

“E-books are another way we can provide a lower-cost, high-value option,” he said.

Mr. Ho said the “market wants choices,” and print will continue to be “the thing” for some institutions.

Mr. Klute said after many months of study, the enthusiasm for the program remains high — only a handful of faculty were needed for the pilot program. More than 50 expressed interest.

Jimmy Myers can be reached

at jimmym@npgco.com.