Publishers, which are increasingly investing in digital products for college classrooms, are making a concerted effort to help faculty members adapt to that change. McGraw-Hill for its part employs several hundred consultants who are charged with helping faculty members integrate technology into their classes—even humanities courses that don’t easily lend themselves to the multiple-choice exam format.

Representatives from the publishers are actively reaching out to students to facilitate the integration process, too. McGrath, the Rutgers student, recalled representatives from the publishing company of his economics textbook coming to his class on the first day to explain to them how to use the digital platform and codes.

Proponents of that “disruptive change” say the growing pains pay off: The new digital learning materials, they say, pay dividends for students’ learning. Scott Virkler, an executive who oversees higher-education products for McGraw-Hill, said that students get better grades in digital classes than they do in non-digital classes. He also noted that the platforms are especially beneficial to extremely busy community-college students, who account for 40 percent of the country’s undergraduate population, because they allow people to do homework on their phones.

According to Virkler, another reason the platforms are correlated with better academic performance is because they can help instructors better identify who in a given class needs the most attention or isn’t keeping up. “We can tell instructors if their students have done their homework, whether they are struggling in particular areas, and how much time they spend on task,” Virkler said. “We know that if students wait to do their homework, they won’t do as well as students who do it immediately after the class. We can alert students to get their work done.”

The theoretical value of that data extends beyond the outcomes of individual students: The new materials also provide a trove of previously unavailable data. A publishing company might compare classes within a college and can find, for example, which professor is the most effective. Or it can gather data from multiple colleges to compare students and college outcomes around the country. With thousands of students all taking the same exams at the same time across the country, the publishing industry has unique insight into American higher education.

But this technology and its resulting data collection are so new that few have considered its long-term implications.

With the rising costs of higher education, every dollar spent counts, including that on books and supplies. It’s hard to pin down how much students spend on classroom supplies each year—based on student surveys, NACS estimates that they spent $579 on their required course materials during the 2016-17 school year, while the College Board analyzed school data to conclude that they spend up to $1,400 annually on materials including textbooks, technology, and binders. Regardless, average annual costs have generally remained steady and even dropped slightly in the past year; lots of courses have refrained from adopting the new assessment tools and enable students to use library books and other free source material, offsetting any increases attributed to the access codes.