All Hail the Humble Course Pack

You wrote:
I quickly combined the readings into one PDF, sent it to the print shop, and distributed my course packs on the first day of classes.

Who paid for the cost of having the course packs printed by the print shop. If you gave them out to students the first day of class – which is great for the students – I’m assuming the students didn’t pay for them.

While this may not work for courses that do require some copyrighted content, those instructors could check with the library about doing some selecting chapter scanning that would fall within the guidelines for fair use.

My own experience is that some students do better with hardcopy, others are just fine with digital versions. Seems reasonable to offer both and let the students choose what works for them. If they are competent in using the digital versions it should be fairly easy to have everyone on the same page in the classroom.