Digital Textbooks For Students

An infographic gives readers an easy to interpret overview, breaking down statistics and facts into more digestible and memorable parts. Interactive infographics and maps can get students engaging directly with the content, helping them to stay interested and retain more information. YouTube and other online streaming sites are home to hundreds of thousands of educational videos that can be accessed and shared for free. Including a few of the best, most entertaining videos can give students a break from heavy reading and reel in their focus.
A company called Chegg launched the first major online textbook rental service in 2007; Amazon followed suit in 2012. In fact, the market has spent the last ebook is decade in something of an unvirtuous circle. As students flock to more affordable options, textbook prices have skyrocketed to make up for the lost revenue.

Meanwhile, another seismic shift was beginning to happen in education. Academic courses, and then whole degree programs, became available online at universities before such technology-driven offerings percolated down through the lower grades. Such attitudes support research that finds when students are allowed to choose how much time to spend reading a passage, many speed more quickly through the digital version — and do worse on the comprehension test.
Margolin, Driscoll, Toland, and Kegler studied 90 college students using paper, computer , and e-reader formats to determine comprehension differences. Mayes, Sims, and Koonce found no difference in comprehension between screen and text, but did find a significant difference in perceived workload and comprehension. Those using the screen format indicated a perception of greater workload. Sidi, Ophir, and Ackerman investigated whether the inferiority in comprehension generally found with screen presentation would continue if the tasks were brief.
As with all books, there are various types of e-Books available to suit students’ knowledge, characteristics, abilities, and interests. The paper provides some insight on what an e-Books is, and its advantages, limitations, strategies and framework of using it as a text book in classrooms. Choosing the right style of textbook depends entirely on your needs, learning style, and study habits.

You can carry a digital textbook around and read it anytime you want. If you want to go through the book while traveling or at home, you can easily do so. Over the years, the e-books vs. textbooks for college education debate has been a heated one.
Many institutions are experimenting with “open source” online books in an attempt to address many of the issues that the inclusive access programs do, but at no cost. OpenStax, a nonprofit group at Rice University, says more than half of colleges and universities in the United States offer its free, peer-reviewed digital textbooks. OpenStax also offers a list of questions for instructors to consider before offering inclusive access courses. The electronic books, or e-Books, offer students, teachers and schools an additional medium or tool of instructions that can support or enhance the learning process. All this while, the use of e-Books is limited to college students. Using e-Books as text books in the classroom at schools is a new paradigm especially in developing countries.

For instance, 46 percent of students said it was acknowledged in the syllabus ; 44 percent said the instructor provided technical instructions ; and 34 percent said the instructor modeled use of the book . All three surveys had similar student respondent characteristics, including sex and age . The research team downloaded all survey responses from the online survey system and calculated frequencies and percentages to measure students' use of and beliefs about e-textbooks.
Not only do digital textbooks solve some of the many problems print copies have, but digital versions have some extra features as well. For example, digital textbooks have the added advantage of a search function, which allows students to navigate the textbooks more easily and find key terms that they might have missed with a physical index. This is sorely needed, since the cost of a few textbooks can add up incredibly fast. They may offer lower costs, make it easier to monitor student progress, and are easier and cheaper to update when needed. Open source e-textbooks may offer the opportunity to create free, modifiable textbooks for basic subjects, or give individual teachers the opportunity to create e-texts for their own classrooms.
Much more critical to an effective and engaging learning environment than the format of the textbook is the instructor’s pedagogical approach and relationships with students. However, e-textbooks are associated with a number of potential small benefits that may render them useful in some contexts. For example, McGraw-Hill offers “SmartBook,” which personalizes the content students see using data analytics. Interactive course content is often proprietary to the publisher and can include resources such as online homework assignments, quizzes, and instructor presentations. While schools try to stock the appropriate amount of college textbooks for their students, learners may find getting regular textbooks challenging — especially for large, popular classes.

The content available on the internet is always at a risk of piracy. Digital Rights Management for eBooks allows only authorized users to make changes or download the content. These factors help in determining the engagement level of each student as well as the overall class, allowing teachers to change their teaching approach or redesign the course module, whichever seems necessary. To address their learning styles and needs, an e-textbook is usually designed with features that will help them learn better and engage more with the learning material. Yes, there are some publishers out there who are yet to make the shift from print to digital. The global portal is designed according to AA accessibility guidelines and includes links to information on the subject on the internet.