Digital Textbook Delivery: Options and Effectiveness

Abstract

In response to textbook cost legislation, and to better prepare current college of education students for the textbooks that they will have to use with their students, a prerequisite course on educational technology integrated an open source digital textbook. Textbooks have, for many students, become large (and expensive) compendiums of material that students seldom read, study from or even enjoy, as evidenced by research showing that student reading of assigned textbooks is in an overall decline from previous years (Burchfield & Sappington 2000, Connor-Greene 2000, Sikorski et al. 2001). The overall goal of this study is to find effective ways to improve the rates of enrichment textbook reading for an undergraduate course. This presentation will described the baseline research findings of a study investigating textbook reading amounts and delivery formats for undergraduates students taking an introductory educational technology course. Initial findings include information concerning digital textbook reading with smart phone, tablet, and ebook reading device, ownership rates, low digital textbook usage outside of the researched course, and student preferences concerning electronic textbook reading features such as highlighting, note taking and portability