Skip to main content

eTextbook Use


According to the survey results in the UK, students generally had positive responses about their etextbook experiences. The authors go on to state the differences and key factors that influenced the student's engagement included: training, integration into the curriculum and functionality.

"Sixty-one percent of surveyed students said they used eTextbooks during their university studies. The majority of students borrowed one from the library (65 percent) or received one through their institution (55 percent), while 35 percent purchased a copy for themselves."

"All participants own at least one portable digital device, most commonly a smartphone, followed by a laptop. More significantly, 89 percent take their devices to lectures. "
The first Kindle, released in November 2007.


What I'm taking from this are a few things. First, there is the integration of the tools that students are using already and prefer, such as their phone or other portable devices. These are the tools that students are used to and use continually in their daily life. Recently watching my nephew, who just graduated from college, I noted that he spent over three hours each day communicating on his phone with his friends. So today, this kind of tool, the smart phone, has become a common reading tool used by college students. As they have gotten more used to reading from such a screen, it will no longer seem like a stretch to read their assigned reading from it either. Next is the mere-exposure effect. Along with how much they already do, they have now been exposed to "text" reading from devices for a good amount of time. The first Kindle Reader was released over nine years ago, so reading devices for freshman college students have been around as common items since they were in the third grade. So following the exposure effect, each repeated exposure to the "novel" stimulus will cause less fear, and after repeated exposure, the individual will begin to react fondly to the once novel stimulus. So, after so many years of digital reading, students kind of like it.


How is eTextbook use shaping up across the globe?
eCampus News
A recent survey gauges student satisfaction with the digital programs, focusing specifically on eTextbook programs, offered by universities 

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Auto Summarization

In dealing with textbooks and students with disabilities, one of the most common things that we would do is to get the textbook in a digital format, as an ebook. By doing this we were able to use a number of tools based on the need of the student. I've had students who could not lift their physical printed textbook, but would be able to access though a laptop installed in their electronic wheelchair, for students with vision issues we could boost the font size or use a text-to-speech tool to have the book read aloud to them. One tool that I used with a number of my students who had issues was the Auto Summarize tool in Word. The tool works well with textbook, but wouldn't work for other texts, such as novels.  I used this to reduce the amount of text that they had to read, the "cognitive load" of the text, but would still enable be able to get the information. Word did a great job, and depending on the student I would reduce the text to about 66% for facts and support...
7 comments
Read more

Ebooks as Textbooks - Part 2 - Highlighting

Highlighting can be a very effective tool in reading and learning no matter the kind of text being read: from novels to textbooks. Most textbooks or other forms of information text will usually used text features along with graphics to help organize information presented in the text.  These elements are done to help focus attention on important or key concepts and provide additional information. The text organization itself can include structural elements such as heading, subheading, index, glossary, paragraph spacing, bulleted or numbered lists, sidebars or side boxes, italics, underlines or bold for words or even sections. Graphic content can include the use of symbols, colors, illustrations, pictures, diagrams, charts, and graphs. Poor highlighting design - too much text has been highlighted.  The act of highlighting is less time consuming and much easier than note-taking ( to be discussed in an upcoming posting). To be ...
1 comment
Read more

StoryBots - free for early childhood teachers

Pre-K and Kindergarten teachers can have free access to StoryBots from  http://www.storybots.com/educate  . StoryBots Classroom offers an expansive new suite of classroom-ready activities and resources,including: Math Skills – Common Core-aligned kindergarten-level math games  Learning Videos – a library of 110+ animated musical videos that explore a wide range of topics  Starring You® and Learning Books – 90+ eBooks that help kids practice reading  Starring You® Videos – offering fun, quick and personalized reward for the classroom and can be used for brain breaks  Activity Sheets – 20 printable books and 350+ sheets for teachers to use in their classrooms  Teacher Tools – including Class Roster, Lesson Planner, Group Builder — to help educators manage their classroom and create custom plans.
Post a Comment
Read more