iPad & ebooks

Here's the scoop on the etexts, WGU uses a number of different providers (CourseSmart, VitalSource, Pearson, SkillSoft, etc.) to give you online access to different books.  When you click on a link to a book in PocketWGU (or the normal web-based student portal), it redirects to the website of the specific provider and displays the page (HTML and Javascript) that provider sends.   The key facts here are that each provider sends a different page "structure" and that neither the student portal or PocketWGU can modify this structure, we can only try to display it.

I'm guessing that the problem you are seeing comes from viewing a book from the "VitalSource" provider.  They send book "pages" in a fairly complex structure of HTML/JavaScript.  The web browser on your desktop/laptop is usually very up-to-date and far more powerful than those on a mobile device, so it can usually handle that complexity and display the page properly.  The browser on a mobile device is usually older (the one in iOS 5.1 on your iPad is a 2+ years old) and the mobile device is far less powerful, so these devices can't always handle complex pages perfectly.  Plus, when PocketWGU wants to display a web page, it only has access to a subset of the features of whatever moblile browser is standard on a given device.  The short version is:  PocketWGU is doing the best it can.  :-)

But I have noticed something that helps when viewing a VitalSource book on the 1st-gen iPad (this is what I have too!).  When you view a VitalSource book, there is usually a vertical grey bar on the left-side that separates the table of contents from the page content.  If you click this bar it should open / close the table of contents.  I've found that if you open and then close the ToC this often fixes the display of left/right arrows in the page itself.  You may want to give this a try.  

Also, VitalSource makes a native iOS app (called VitalSource BookShelf, free in the app store) that will allow you to download the full book and read it even when you are offline.  PocketWGU can't link to this app, but you will probably find that using the VitalSource app for reading their books is much easier.  I do recommend giving that a try.

Thanks,