E-Readers in the Classroom

When considering the impact that e-readers from the point of view of academics, the question that should be asked before all others is: Should we even bother?

If e-readers do not provide any distinct academic advantages to the students or the institutions over paper books, then time and resources should not be wasted with attempting to adapt them to classroom use.  Along these lines, studies have been performed at Penn State University during the 2008 - 2009 academic year, and at Princeton University in the fall of 2009.

The Penn State study used 100 of the Sony PRS-505, and did not focused exclusively on their use in the classroom.  Due to the licencing model of the Sony reader, which was designed so that the "e-library" on a computer can be synced with at most five individual readers, the study's administrators had to get a bit creative to run their 100 readers on less than 20 machines.  They did in fact solve this problem using two computers, nine virtual machines, and separate log-in information for each e-library.  The readers were loaded with leisure reading as well as the required materials for classes.  The study was run in both English and library studies classes.

The reactions of the students pointed out several known issues with the readers, but also gave some new insight with regards to their usefulness for classroom purposes.  According to the study, most students used the readers only in their dorm rooms despite the fact that it is a mobile device.  It was speculated from the students' comments that this was due to an inability to make in-text notations or easily navigate pages.  The students felt that the readers needed more multimedia functionality and wireless capability, and that it should have been easier to interact with the text.

The students felt, generally, more immersed in their texts when read on the readers.  In the English class, many of the students were not majoring in the humanities, and the overall feeling was that the Sony reader would not lend itself well to the hard sciences.  They did not want to commit to buying an e-reader in the near future as they were unsure if they would use it outside of the classroom assignments, and due to the fact that they felt it was probable that they'd have to buy paper books as well.

The article I viewed did not provide much in the way of statistics, and I would be interested in going over those.  Also, many of the issues that the students in the Penn State study had seemed specific to the Sony reader.

The Princeton study used the Amazon Kindle DX (which was not available at the time of the Penn State study) in conjunction with 3 faculty members and 51 students.  It focused on the effects of the e-readers on printing habits, and on overall classroom experience.

The study found that the use of the Kindle did, in fact, reduce the amount of printing by the students.  The average paper use of Kindle users was around half that of non-Kindle users, when compared to previous semester figures.

When asked to compare reading on the Kindle to reading out of a book, most students in the study felt that the experiences were about the same.  Most wished that more course readings were available on the Kindle, though they were not sure if more courses would use e-reader technology.  Several complaints about the difficulty of navigation were brought up as well.  The students liked having all of their course readings on one device and the ability to search on the Kindle.  They would have liked to have seen more compatibility with PDF files, better annotation tools, and the ability to organize documents into folders.

Overall, the consensus seemed to be that, though the students enjoyed reading on the Kindle, printed off less paper, and were happy to have all of their readings on one device, the Kindle left a lot to be desired in terms of note-taking.

Looking at these two studies, it seems to me that e-readers in their current form cannot supplant books in the classroom.  Though reading on them is convenient, they are designed with leisure reading in mind, not academics.  If e-readers were to be a viable option on college campuses, it is my opinion that the e-reader would have to be designed with specifically that purpose in mind.  Most importantly, making notations on the documents themselves and general navigation would need to be made easier.

I have wondered how much of our opinions on e-readers are shaped solely by the fact that we have been using books for so long, and going over these studies gives me something a bit more concrete to consider.  There are some essentials that are much, much easier to do on paper right now and, until e-readers provide a similar experience, they will always be deficient in the classroom.

The Penn State and Princeton studies can be found below:

americanlibrariesmagazine.org/features/09242009/e-readers-action

www.princeton.edu/ereaderpilot/

Michael S. Hart, 1947-2011

As an individual with a background in history, I believe that it is important to understand where eBooks came from in order to understand where they are going. Whatever future lies ahead for the eBook and eReader revolution, it's worth noting that the world has recently lost an individual whose role in the development of eBooks cannot possibly be understated. At a time when the Arpanet consisted of barely more than a dozen mainframe computers, well before computers that could easily fit on one's desktop (or in one's hands), a young student at the University of Illinois who had been granted access to their hulking mainframe sat down and manually entered the text of the Declaration of Independence on a Teletype terminal on to punched paper tape (Schofield, para. 4).

Michael S. Hart's goal was a simple one, "to break down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy". It was forty years ago this past July that Hart began to manually enter the text of various books and documents that had fallen into the public domain. His goals were lofty, to make ten thousand of the most consulted books available to the public at little to no cost by the end of the twentieth century ("Project Gutenberg", para. 3). Hart called his endeavor "Project Gutenberg" after the inventor whose invention had revolutionized the written word. Over the next seventeen years, Hart managed to input 313 books on his own. After enlisting the help of volunteers, that number grew exponentially and has only continued to grow as time has gone on (Schofield, para. 5-6).

A few months back, Hart declared 2011 to be the year of the eBook and I, for one, would have to agree. Though I personally find solace in my ink and paper books, I am more than aware that the eBook and eReader revolution is underway and their impact can only going to grow from here. I'm also aware that the various texts that I've downloaded from Project Gutenberg over the past few years would probably be easier to read if I had them on an eReader. Michael S. Hart died this past September 6 in Urbana, Illinois. From obsolete books on CD-ROM to the development of software for the earliest eReaders to the development of Microsoft Reader (itself soon to become obsolete) to all of the various eReaders of today, the revolution was infinitely assisted by a man who is now gone.

We can argue that what Michael Hart did was not to create the eBook, that the texts that he inputted were merely precursors to proper eBooks but there's no denying Hart's impact. For every revolution, there has to be a few first steps and if Michael Hart's steps weren't the first, they were certainly among the first. From here, this blog will focus on a variety of issues concerning the effects of eBooks and eReaders on the library profession. For a brief preface to our group's discussion, though, this unfortunate passing is sadly all too apt.

Sources: Schofield, Jack (2011, September, 13). Michael Hart obituary. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/13/michael-hart-obituary?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487

Project Gutenberg. (2001). Retrieved September 16, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Gutenberg