Ebook Is A Digital Technologies For Teaching, Learning And Research

General Words:

E-books are a part of the wider electronic milieu and as such they have been seen as providing special benefits in the classroom. There are several reasons why they are seen as beneficial, including the increase in academic achievement and the decrease in the cost of student textbooks. E-books have generally been seen as improving learning outcomes. They can help students to learn more effectively and teachers to become more efficient in their teaching.

E-texts in the classroom:

As new technologies are attractive to many students, using e-books can  also be motivating. Various features of e-books can provide support for students with print or reading disabilities. Some e-book programs have interactive dictionaries, providing justin-time learning, by allowing users to select a word in the e-book and get an instant definition. They can also have the definition read aloud, or request an instant translation to another language. Features such as these can increase students’ attention and comprehension. A number of researchers have looked at the influence of new technologies on student achievement. However, they are not uniformly positive about their role in academic achievement. One example is a study done by Sheppard, Grace and Koch in 2008. They examined the perceptions and performance of nearly 400 students taking an introductory psychology course. They found that the form of the textbook (electronic or paper) did not have any influence on students’ grades. They said that students using the e-textbooks reported spending less time on course-related reading but nevertheless evaluated the electronic text unfavorably. No student who purchased an electronic text in a prior class chose to purchase one for the introductory psychology course. The authors suggest that it may be premature to abandon paper texts in favour of electronic ones.  Some researchers argue that it is not the technology itself, but how it is applied. Harold Wenglinsky in his study, Does it Compute:

The Relationship between Educational Technology and Student Achievement in Mathematics, found that not all uses of technology were benefi cial. He argues that using software to create simulations had a positive effect on academic achievement, while using computers to teach low-order thinking skills was counter-productive. Clark and Mayer also say that it’s not delivery mediums, but instructional methods that facilitate learning. Their 2003 study shows that when the instructional methods remain essentially the same, so does the learning, no matter how the instruction is delivered.  However, a number of studies have found that technology does have a positive role in academic achievement. The United States Department of Education conducted a meta-survey of studies that contrasted online and face-to-face learning, from 1996 to July 2008. The meta-study confirmed that higher education students in online learning courses generally performed better than those in face-to-face courses.  Charlotte Johnson and William Harroff argue that e-books can be part of the solution to the illiteracy problem. 

They point out thatrather than focusing solely on digitising print text and worrying about redefi ning the term book, publishers of electronic materials should take full advantage of the multimodal learning styles that can be addressed by well-designed electronic publications. The cost of student textbooks is a further concern, and authors such as Charles Hannon say that electronic formats will reduce textbook pricing. The amount of money students have to spend on textbooks is signifi cant. In the United States, for example, students spend up to $1,000 per year on textbooks. A study conducted in 2006 by the United States National Association of College Stores has shown that nearly 60 per cent of students choose not to buy all the course materials. In 2008, the Northwest Missouri State University undertook a study on the feasibility of transitioning from the renting of traditional textbooks to renting e-textbooks. The study involved four faculty members (selection was based mostly on the availability of appropriate e-textbooks for courses). E-textbooks were provided to laptops from several different publisher platforms, including Vital Source and CourseSmart. The survey showed that cost considerations were an important factor in student decision-making with respect to electronic versus print textbooks.  Other  fiendings of this study were that students have a high affinity for handheld electronic devices but that enthusiasm for e-readers quickly wanes in the absence of the desired search and annotation features. Both students and faculty considered keyword searching and annotating as very important features. Students think of e-readers as attentiongetters but not attention-keepers. Students also liked the idea of not having to carry heavy textbooks in their backpacks. The considerations about carrying books have also been raised on the popular blog TechCrunch, where Michael Arrington wrote that carrying print books is ‘as big a pain as it has been for past generations of students’ and that ‘a new large screen Kindle would solve those problems’. In 2009 Princeton University participated in the Amazon Kindle DX pilot program. The majority of students and teachers said they were not pleased with the Kindle’s slow performance and limited features and that the Kindle limits interaction with the text. 

The campus newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, published the following comments:

Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages – not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs. All these things have been lost, and if not lost they’re too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the “features” have been rendered useless. The adoption of e-textbooks is obviously a very complex process, and involves many factors. Kenneth Sherman and Ethel Vesper in their 2009 article, Monetize Hidden Value in eBooks and Other Digital Learning Assets, did a meta-study of 14 articles on the applications and benefi ts of electronic textbooks.

 The authors conclude that ‘transitioning to digital materials impacts not only students, faculty and administrators, but also curriculum development, instructional design, customer service, technical support, academic services and purchasing’. They also say that, to ensure digital transition is completed smoothly, the e-book adoption has to be aligned with the course development process fl ows and procedures. In the context of e-textbooks, there has been an interesting initiative by Macmillan, one of the fi ve largest publishers of trade books and textbooks. Macmillan has launched a new software package called Dynamic Books. This enables lecturers to customize e-textbooks for their individual classes. Instructors can alter particular sentences and paragraphs without consulting the original authors or publisher, and also upload course syllabuses, notes, videos, pictures and graphs. Because these textbooks are going to be so modifi able, the New York Times has called it a kind of ‘Wikipedia of textbooks’.  The research literature indicates that, although student and faculty experiences with e-books have been various, they have been mostly positive. As digital technologies continue to transform the environment for teaching, learning and research, we will continue to see new developments with e-books as well.