In the spirit of modernization and to a certain extent convenience in the academics field, Thomas Edison State College, in Trenton, New Jersey has opted for a new way of providing their students with the appropriate information on their course. The system of delivery the college has gone with is via portable USB drives. The drives will contain all the relevant data that the students would require for a particular course, complete with associated applications to assist them. This will enable students to easily work online and offline. The term the college was using for the initial off-line method of the same system was called FlashTrack courses, which was a pilot program for just about 100 students which are now being resized to suit all of the colleges 17,000 students. With a huge two-year $250,000 federal grant, the college can now offer the better version of the system for the students who could find attending class and holding jobs simultaneously an issue or for those studying under the Distant Education banner perhaps.

For the Improvement of Postsecondary Education (FIPSE) the college is now aiming to develop 40 courses over the next two years that will be delivered entirely via this flash drive system. The only time students will actually need an internet connection is for sending assignments across to the faculty for grading purposes or to participate in online discussions much like forums. Students who wish to avail themselves of this system will be charged a small fee for the drives.
[ComputerWorld]