Running head: WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW

Wiki Literature Review Joseph C. Greene Liberty University

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW Abstract Literature related to the role of digital books as a mechanism for adult learning in traditional classroom settings is reviewed. The history of digital books, with a brief exploration of the

devices used to read them, is examined. Their advantages and disadvantages, student satisfaction levels, and potential future uses are explored. Keywords: adult education, digital book, e-book, mobile learning

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History of digital books The first digital book The first e-book was developed in 1971 by Michael Hart, a freshman at the University of Illinois. Having recently gained access to some of the extremely rare computer space, Mr. Hart took inspiration from a pocket sized insert of the Declaration of Independence and made that the first book to be preserved in digital form (Lebert, 2009). This lead to the beginning of Project Gutenberg, an attempt to create the digital equivalent of the printing press, which would allow for both permanent storage and easy distribution of books via digital devices (Lebert, 2009). The Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Bill of Rights, and The United States Constitution were the first books to be digitized (Lebert, 2009). As the amount of storage, and quality and quantity of sources increased, books began to be turned into e-books much more quickly. While it took 18 years to complete the first 10 books, with the 10th being the King James Bible (1769), the advent of the internet significantly sped the process up and book number 1,000 was completed in August of 1997 (Lebert, 2009). There are now over 36,000 e-books available for free through Project Gutenberg alone (Gutenberg, 2011). Publishers go online National Academy Press (NAP) and MIT press led the way, in 1994 and 1995 respectively, in publishing full texts of books online with authors consent which helped lead to online publishing becoming mainstream as early as 1997 (Lebert, 2009). Debate was centered on the pricing of online books with some choosing to go the route of free access to digital texts. Early returns from both NAP and MIT showed that free online books were leading to increased sales in hard copies of those books by as much as two to three times their previous levels

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW (Lebert, 2009). The reasoning for the sales increase was built on the idea that people would not read an entire electronic book (Lebert, 2009).

In 1997, ASCII was still the primary coding system in use for writing e-books. Unicode, introduced in 1991, allowed for much greater character capacity with over 65,000 unique characters compared to the 256 of ASCII but it did not begin to see substantial use until 1998 (Lebert, 2009). This allowed for the potential to produce e-books in all languages. By 2008, Unicode had gained enough popularity that it was used in the production of 50% of e-books available on the internet (Lebert, 2009). Amazon Amazon entered the marketplace in July 1995 with 10 employees and a catalog of 3 million books which quickly expanded to 7,500 employees, a catalog of 28 million items, 23 million clients and a brand new library of 1,000 e-books in 2000 (Lebert, 2009). In April 2005, they purchased Mobipocket as a developer of e-books and readers which led to the development and release of the Amazon Kindle in November 2007, the first dedicated e-reader (Lebert, 2009). The Kindle had an initial catalog of 80,000 e-books and sold 538,000 units (Lebert, 2009). The Kindle 2 launched in February 2009 with a catalog of 230,000 e-books (Lebert, 2009). A larger version of the Kindle, the Kindle DX was introduced in January 2010 (History & Timeline, 2011). Over the course of 2010, Amazon introduced Kindle apps available for iPad, Android, Blackberry, Mac, and the Web to allow for synchronization along all major platforms (History & Timeline, 2011). In May 2011, Amazon announced that they are now selling more e-books than print books (History & Timeline, 2011). September 2011 saw the introduction of multiple new Kindle reading devices, the Fire, Touch and Touch 3G which provide various features to allow

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW further user choice as well as a program to provide Kindle books to thousands of local libraries (History & Timeline, 2011). Advantages and disadvantages of digital books The cost of education is steadily on the rise. Not only is tuition going up for postsecondary education, so are the costs associated with the materials required for classes. Textbooks are a costly commodity for students, so costly that on August 29, 2011 students

gathered in protest at the University of Marylands College Park campus to rally against the high cost of textbooks (Dwyer, 2011). Allan Hancock College has come up with a textbook rental option that saves students nearly 60% off of new book prices (Wesler, 2011). Another alternative to the costly traditional textbook is the more typically more affordable digital book. As digital readers continue to gain mainstream popularity, more and more publishers have chosen to offer their textbooks in digital form as an affordable option to the traditional textbook. Advantages There are certain advantages to both the instructor and students with the integration of digital textbooks in the classroom. The first advantage over traditional textbooks is the cost. Due to market competition a good quality digital reader can be purchased for around $100.00. There are more expensive tablets that also have the digital reader capabilities, but the additional features on tablets go far beyond what is required for a textbook quality digital reader. The cost for purchasing the textbooks on the digital readers typically is only a fraction of what a traditional textbook would cost. Other advantages to digital books specific to the function of the software include: digital readers allow for the user to enlarge the font, use a highlighting function for important information, built in study guides, bookmarking, the ability to share notes with other students in

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW the class that have the same digital textbook and the ability for the instructor to add his or her own highlights and study notes that will be imbedded into the students textbooks for that particular class. This type of software will provide students with a greater sense of ownership for their education by giving them more tools upfront to be successful. An extremely beneficial

piece of additional software that can be added to the digital reader, if not already on the reader, is text to speech capability. This will allow the reader to listen to the text instead of reading it which can be an advantage to visually impaired students or those with other special needs. There are a few hidden benefits to the use of digital readers in the educational setting. Students that utilize digital textbooks could potentially have better organizational skills. By having an e-reader, it eliminates the need for the student to carry around several large textbooks at one time with papers and sticky notes used as page tags. Students are often able to retrieve information from the textbooks quicker than with traditional textbooks by utilizing the word search imbedded within the textbook. Students can simply type in the word or phrase that they are looking for, hit search, and the reader will show them the page(s) that the particular word or phrase appears on. Perhaps the primary advantage is that more people will have an increased desire to read, due to the ease of access and convenience of e-books ( Kossey & Brown, 2011, 3281). Disadvantages As good as digital readers are portrayed; there are some notable disadvantages in the educational utilization of digital books. Many textbooks are still not available on basic digital reader models. Since textbooks often have colored pictures and various colored graphics, the digital reader would need to have color software. This would eliminate the use of the Nook and Kindle since their basic models do not have color. Basic digital readers also are not backlit.

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW This would require the student to use traditional lighting methods to read the book when in dark or poorly lit areas. Textbooks can now be accessed in mobile form on tablets and now also with

the introduction of the Kindle Fire this past September. These digital books can also be accessed on any traditional desktop or laptop computer. Another potential disadvantage with digital books is the time that it could take students to read the text on the screen. A recent study comparing 24 users of various e-reader devices found that reading on an electronic device was up to 10.7% slower than reading a print book (Tonkery, 2010, 25). For students that have experience with reading off of a digital reader this might not be as big of a slow down, but for students that have never used a digital reader there could be a learning curve for them, especially if the student has not been introduced to this type of technology prior to its utilization in the educational setting. Digital readers do not require that the device be connected to the internet for usage, but the connection would be required if the instructor wanted the students to access a link from the textbook, a graphic from the textbook, or to download a new document or textbook during class. This would require that the school have the appropriate amount of bandwidth to support these activities. If the school did not have the appropriate amount it could cause the system to become overloaded potentially causing anything being done online at the time to crash. This would be more evident in schools that utilize a Blackboard or Moodle model for lecture and testing purposes continuously on campus. Students cannot give their digital textbooks to friends or sell them back to bookstores or used textbook dealers when they are finished with them (Heider, Laverick & Bennett, 2009, 109). Passwords to online books expire, and some publishers, such as McGraw-Hill, use safeguards that prevent more than one user from having access to a downloaded eBook at one

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time (Heider, Laverick & Bennett, 2009, 109). Still, in the eBook market, digital textbooks have the best chance of being successful (Heider, Laverick & Bennett, 2009, 109). Application of digital books in adult education K-12 schools are increasingly seeing technology introduced in the classroom setting. Educational grants from the government are helping to make that possible. In the K-12 educational setting they are focusing their efforts on technologies such as computers in the classrooms, electronic whiteboards, screened projectors, and assistive technologies for special needs students. Many of these technologies are aimed at students in general versus devices that are more individualized for the student. In adult education, students have more of an individual ownership of their educational experience. Instructors do teach to the masses, but there is an expectation that the student has to do more independent work in post-secondary education. Digital books can help accomplish that individuality. If students were given the choice as to if they wanted to utilize the digital textbooks they could decide if this would be a good fit for them. All students learn differently and this would be a way for students to hone in on what would help them to be most successful. E-books provide faculty with innovative tools that help them meet the needs of their students in ways that were never before possible (Heider, Laverick & Bennett, 2009, 110). Student opinions of digital books Student satisfaction with digital books The popularity of digital books is on the rise. Post-secondary students are finding themselves with various options when it comes to textbooks. Universities are still offering the traditional textbooks in the majority of their programs. Some universities have gone to the utilization of digital books and digital bookshelves for various programs. As students gain more

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW control over their learning, they also want to have more control over the tools that guide their learning (Heider, Laverick & Bennett, 2009, 103). In the latest issue of eCampus News, November/December 2011, an article depicting the movement at Indiana University to make

more textbooks available in digital format was highlighted. A student, Joshua Davis, was quoted as saying the eBook system was an efficient way for me to keep my notes organized for class, I was able to access my textbook remotely, both online and offline plus, I didnt have to lug another heavy book around campusI think this transition cant happen soon enough (Carter November/December 2011). Collaborative efforts between publishers and universities have increased to help the schools deliver to the student the best product formatted specifically for their individual programs. Student dissatisfaction with digital books A large study was conducted at the Louisiana State University School of Dentistry as the program was moving away from using traditional textbooks and to digital textbooks. The University began utilizing the VitalSource Bookshelf digital textbook program. Beginning with the first-year class of 2005-2006, each entering class of dental students has been required to purchase the VitalSource Technologies, Inc. Bookshelf instead of printed textbooks (Strother & Bates, 2009, 1361). The bookshelf contains a collection of 60 books, plus additional course listings provided by individual instructors. The school purchased a five-year contract with VitalSource. At the beginning of year three the school administrators wanted documentation of student usage and satisfaction with the product. At the completion of the schools program, students were sent a survey to check student satisfaction with the textbooks, and the exit interviews for graduating seniors also contained a question about textbook satisfaction.

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW 10 Responses to the survey questions and exit interviews indicate that the overwhelming source of criticism for the VitalSource program from LSUSD students was a dislike of reading large portions of text online (Strother & Bates, 2009, 1363). Both the exit interview and student graduation survey showed strong feelings about why they did not like the system. In the survey students were asked to rate the criteria on a scale from strongly satisfied to strongly dissatisfied. During the exit interview they were asked two open-ended questions about the bookshelf. Some of the reasons for student dissatisfaction included the following: (1) students did not like that they had to purchase every book in the library, including instructors additional textbooks that were not deemed required (2) cost, (3) instructor overuse of textbook pictures, and (4) having to read all assignments off of the computer. There were a few positive qualities students liked about the bookshelf amid many of the negative comments. These included: (1) cost, (2) having all textbooks in one library, (3) not having to carry many books around and having access to the books anywhere. Although electronic books have gained popularity for both leisure and academic reading, dental students at LSUSD preferred print over digital textbooks and preferred to read extensive assignments from paper rather than from computer monitors (Strother & Bates, 2009, 1365). At the time of publication of this study, the school has not decided which route they will take with digital books. They will have a tough choice to make; either the students will have paper textbooks or they will all have to enroll in the bookshelf. Future of digital books in traditional education Libraries The digital landscape seems to be affecting the entire educational landscape currently. One area that is left with quite a few unresolved issues is the library. One recent study dealt with

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW 11 the difficulties of the reference aspect of the traditional library (Barnhart & Pierce, 2011). While the primary focus was on staffing, another issue was brought to light. What do we do about lending books in an environment where more and more books are available in a digital format? Do we allow unrestricted access to anyone who has paid some sort of library fee? Can digital books be stocked in the same manner as a physical book and therefore there is a limitation on how many copies are loaned out at any given time? Is setting up some sort of hotspot access so that e-readers can access books while in the library but not outside of the library, similar to the way that Barnes & Noble allows free e-reading for a limited time in their stores (Biggs, 2010), a viable alternative? These issues could have great influence on how educators design their curriculum to incorporate digital books. Campus Another topic when considering digital books is the potential, with the use of e-readers or tablet computers, to add interactive elements that stretch the very understanding and definition of what a book is. A recent study in Taiwan used mobile devices, and a program built for a specific class, to aid in English language learning (Cheng, Hwang, Wu, Shadiev, & Xie, 2010). While the study focused more on speaking in familiar surroundings to gain comfort with a new language, several intriguing possibilities became evident. Can assignments be set up in a manner where GPS identifies a location on campus, the student then downloads the relevant information, and finishes the process by reading what they have downloaded in a more interactive manner than usual? Could the situation be set up so that text, with appropriate audio and video helps, can be retrieved to help learn about a specific campus landmark? One begins to wonder if an introductory study skills course could be developed that leads students to places such as the library, academic advisors offices, professors offices, and other important locations simply by

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW 12 providing clues and then giving access to instructional reading material once they arrive at their destination? Could a forensics course set up a real-life scenario where students move about campus looking for certain scenes and then using their mobile devices to identify the situation and learn the proper steps to handle what theyve been presented? The digital book, and now its portability through increasingly mobile devices, could lead us to redefining what a book is and how, when and where it can be accessed. Off campus trips Pfeiffer, Gemballa, Jarodzka, Scheiter, and Gerjets (2009) delve into the idea of a mobile device replacing a book on a field trip for a university level biology course. The course was run exactly as it had been in previous years with one exception; the students were given mobile devices with audio and video, in addition to text, to replace the textbook with pictures in their attempt to identify several species of fish (Pfeiffer, Gemballa, Jarodzka, Scheiter, & Gerjets, 2009). This brings about the potential for using digital text, instead of physical books and notebooks, for many off campus learning scenarios. Can a program be developed, potentially in conjunction with a nearby museum, where a digital textbook is used to provide supplemental information on the spot? Would a mobile device, or e-reader, be an acceptable way of both retrieving textbook information about a painting at a local art gallery and taking notes on personal observation with the same device? Would it be appropriate and beneficial to insert audio or video into the textbook so that it can be accessed at the location the learning it taking place instead of having a website mentioned in a physical text? There is significant potential to be explored in the use of digital books, and the greater mobility they tend to allow, as a support to the traditional classroom.

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW 13 References Barnhart, F. D., & Pierce, J. E. (2011). Becoming mobile: Reference in the ubiquitous library. Journal of Library Administration, 51, 279-290. DOI:10.1080/01930826.2011.556942 Biggs, J. (2010, April 23). Nook update adds read in store functionality. Retrieved from http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/23/nook-update-adds-read-in-store-functionality/ Carter, D. (2011, Nov/Dec.) University aims to save with eBooks. eCampus News. pp 1, 30. Cheng, S. C., Hwang, W. Y., Wu, S. Y., Shadiev, R., & Xie, C., H. (2010). A mobile device and online system with contextual familiarity and its effects on English learning on campus. Educational Technology & Society, 13(3), 93-109. Dwyer, L. (2011, September 6). Why are college textbooks so expensive? Retrieved from http://www.good.is/post/why-are-college-textbooks-so-expensive/ Heider, K., Laverick, D. & Bennett, B. (2009). Digital Textbooks: The next paradigm shift in higher education? AACE Journal, 17(2), 103-112. History & Timeline. (2011). Retrieved from http://phx.corporateir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=176060&p=irol-corporateTimeline Kossey, J. & Brown, V. (2011). Digital Readers: An Emerging Technology in Education. In M. Koehler & P. Mishra (Eds.), Proceedings of Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference 2011 p. 3280-3283. Lebert, M. (2009). A Short History of EBooks. Toronto: University of Toronto. Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29801 Pfeiffer, V. D. I., Gemballa, S., Jarodzka, H., Scheiter, K., & Gerjets, P. (2009). Situated learning in the mobile age: mobile devices on a field trip to the sea. ALT-J, Research in Learning Technology, 17(3), 187-199. DOI:10.1080/09687760903247666

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW 14 Project Gutenberg. (2011). Retrieved from http://www.gutenberg.org/. Strother, E., Brunet, D., Bates, M., Gallo, J. (2009). Dental students attitudes towards digital textbooks. American Dental Association,73(12), 1361-1365. Tonkery, D. (2010, July-August) Ebooks coming of age as digital sales skyrocket. Information Today. 27(7), 25. Wesler, A. (2011, December 1). Hancock college expands textbook rental program. Retrieved from http://www.ksby.com/news/hancock-college-expands-textbook-rental-program/

WIKI LITERATURE REVIEW 15 Test Questions 1) In what year was the first Amazon Kindle released? A) 2007 B) 2009 C) 2008 D) 2005 2) Compare and contrast the advantages and disadvantages of traditional textbooks versus digital textbooks. 3) From the findings in the study conducted by the Louisiana State University School of Dentistry what was a reason for student dissatisfaction with digital textbooks? A) Fewer books to carry around B) Having to read all assignments off of the computer C) Lack of variety and options in their textbooks D) Difficulty accessing their textbooks 4) Summarize the history of the digital textbook with specific inclusion of the first text converted to a digital format. 5) In what year was the first e-book created? A) 1991 B) 1998 C) 1971 D) 2000