Effects of E‐textbook Instructor Annotations on Learner Performance

With additional features and increasing cost advantages, e-textbooks are becoming a viable alternative to paper textbooks. One important feature offered by enhanced e-textbooks (e-textbooks with interactive functionality) is the ability for instructors to annotate passages with additional insights. This paper describes a pilot study that examines the effects of instructor e-textbook annotations on student learning as measured by multiple-choice and open-ended test items. Fifty-two college students in a business course were randomly assigned either a paper or an electronic version of a textbook chapter. Results show that the e-textbook group outperformed the paper textbook group on the open-ended test item, while both groups performed equally on the multiple-choice subject test. These results suggest that the instructional affordances that an interactive e-textbook provides may lead to higher-level learning

Predicting Student Success Using Digital Textbook Analytics in Online Courses

In the digital era, students are generating and institutions are collecting more data than ever before. With the constant change in technology, new data points are being created. Digital textbooks are becoming more popular, and textbook publishers are shifting more of their efforts to creating digital content. This shift creates new data points that have the potential to show how students are engaging with course material. The purpose of this correlational study is to determine if digital textbook usage data, pages read, number of days, reading sessions, highlights, bookmarks, notes, searches, downloads and prints can predict student success. This study used a multiple regression to determine if digital textbook usage data is a predictor of course or quiz success in five online undergraduate courses at a private liberal arts university. The analysis used digital textbook data from VitalSource and consisted of 1,602 students that were enrolled in an eight-week online course at a private liberal arts university. The analysis showed that there is a significant relationship between digital textbook usage data and total points earned and average quiz grade. This study contributes to the limited knowledge on digital textbook analytics and provides valuable insight into how students engage with digital textbooks in online courses

Business Students’ Learning Engagement as a Function of Reading Assigned E-Textbooks

In this chapter we report findings from a quantitative and qualitative pilot study of students from a single university setting in the northeastern United States. The majority of participants were enrolled in either face-to-face or online sections of a business course in organizational behavior, and the textbook modality included both open (PDF) and proprietary (CourseSmart) digital formats. The key research questions focus on the degree to which students feel satisfied with electronic textbooks (e-textbooks). We also explore correlates of students’ satisfaction and their positive attitudes regarding the functionality of the use of e-textbooks by examining the impact of prior coursework and students’ concurrent use of other Internet sites, e.g., social media networks, while reading e-textbooks. Specifically, we explore the extent to which students’ positive attitudes toward the functionality of e-textbook use is sufficient to result in students’ engagement. Engagement is measured via their intentions to buy additional e-textbooks in the future, their course grades, and their perceptions of comprehension of the material over time. Students’ overall satisfaction with the e-textbook is likewise explored to determine impact on the same measures of engagement

Retrieval-augmented Generation to Improve Math Question-Answering: Trade-offs Between Groundedness and Human Preference

For middle-school math students, interactive question-answering (QA) with tutors is an effective way to learn. The flexibility and emergent capabilities of generative large language models (LLMs) has led to a surge of interest in automating portions of the tutoring process - including interactive QA to support conceptual discussion of mathematical concepts. However, LLM responses to math questions can be incorrect or mismatched to the educational context - such as being misaligned with a school's curriculum. One potential solution is retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), which involves incorporating a vetted external knowledge source in the LLM prompt to increase response quality. In this paper, we designed prompts that retrieve and use content from a high-quality open-source math textbook to generate responses to real student questions. We evaluate the efficacy of this RAG system for middle-school algebra and geometry QA by administering a multi-condition survey, finding that humans prefer responses generated using RAG, but not when responses are too grounded in the textbook content. We argue that while RAG is able to improve response quality, designers of math QA systems must consider trade-offs between generating responses preferred by students and responses closely matched to specific educational resources.Comment: 6 pages, presented at NeurIPS'23 Workshop on Generative AI for Education (GAIED

Antecedents and Consequences of Perceived Fit of an Interactive Digital Textbook

Recent research suggests that the fit between a digital textbook and the learning tasks students perform with the textbook has a significant role in determining the outcomes of usage. An empirical assessment was performed on the impacts of six antecedents on perceived fit and impacts of perceived fit on utilization, satisfaction, and perceived learning performance for an interactive digital textbook used in an introductory information systems course. Analysis of survey data collected from 253 university students indicates that interactivity, reading comfort, ease of use, and searchability contribute to the perceived fit of the digital textbook. The results also confirmed perceived fit to be a significant predictor of utilization, satisfaction, and perceived learning performance. These findings suggest that students value the digital textbook as an interactive, online learning tool. To achieve better learning outcomes, university instructors should select digital textbooks that are interactive, comfortable on the eyes, easy to learn and use, and easy to search

Estimating the Academic Performance of Secondary Education Mathematics Students: A Gain Lift Predictive Model

Several socioeconomic, environmental, ethnic, family, and educational factors influence an individual’s academic performance and can determine their school performance in mathematics. Mathematical competence is one of the skills that allow students to build visions of the future from performance in the present. However, the perception that students have of mathematics, in addition to the teacher–student relationship, the classroom, gender, teaching–learning, and motivation are crucial factors for achieving an optimal academic performance and preventing school failure. The aim of the present study was: (1) to examine which variables of the dimensions “Learning Mathematics” and “School Environment” significantly contribute to the marks in the second quarter and quantify their relative importance; (2) to determine the optimal algorithm model for predicting the maximum gain in students’ marks in the second quarter and quantifying it; and (3) to analyze the maximum gain in terms of gender. A total of 2018 high school students in Melilla were included in this cross-sectional study. Mathematical learning and the school environment were assessed using a validated 14-item questionnaire. Gain lift was employed to quantify the improvement in students’ performance. The role of the classroom and teacher–student relationship had a greater influence on mathematics scores than affinity indicators, teaching, study time, teaching resources used, study aids, and motivation

Educational use cases from a shared exploration of e-books and iPads

E-books and e-book readers are becoming increasingly widely available, particularly for the general reader, and there have been many studies on their adoption. However, less is known about their use for educational and academic purposes. We report here on work carried out on e-books and e-book applications using iPads by academic and teaching staff. After considering pedagogical issues and reporting survey results, we identify a spiral of six key use case areas for e-books. This spiral of use cases moves from basic e-book use, through situational reading, e-books and learning, using multiple learning resources, collaborative/group learning, to e-book production. We discuss each of these use case areas and provide guidelines that will be of interest to practitioners and researchers alike

Make it Real : A Guide to Implementing and Connecting State Madated Classroom-Based Assessments with the National History Day Curriculum at the Middle School Level

This manuscript is intended to provide a framework for teachers to use the National History Day curriculum as a qualifying classroom-based assessment which will be required for all Washington State gth Grade Social Studies classes in 2008. A review of the literature of National History Day as well as classroom-based assessments is included. A plan for a preliminary assessment of available resources is explored, as well as a sequential topic-bytopic plan for implementing National History Day. Possible variations of student-centered activities are included; student roles in the research process and self-assessment are discussed. Alignment with Washington State Essential Academic Learning Requirements is reviewed