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By Paul Biba

chem.jpgBruce Wilson sent us this email. As the article referred to is subscription only, I decide to publish the entire email from Bruce:

This news is a week old, but might be pertinent. An article in Chemical and Engineering News (C&ENews, 27 July 2009, Vol. 80, pp. 54-57), Digital Textbooks, by Sophie L. Rovner, http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/87/i30/html/8730sci2.html, is about the move to give students chemistry textbooks in digital format. I’ve included some quotes from the article. The article might not be viewable to everyone. Here is a link to the blog discussion of the article: http://cenblog.org/2009/07/27/digital-textbooks-bane-or-boon/

Quotations from the article:

In the recent past, students and professors might have been put off by the perception that “an e-textbook was just a scanned PDF of the original book,” Barreto says. But now, he explains, “people are starting to realize there are all these other features incorporated into the e-book that add value.”

Handheld readers such as Amazon’s Kindle or Sony’s Reader Digital Book might make consumers more comfortable with the concept of using a digital book, but such devices are best suited to reading something like a novel, Barreto says.

For reading a digital textbook, his company has learned that the best device is a personal desktop computer or a laptop. Students have told MBS they would otherwise need to have multiple Kindles on hand so they could refer to more than one book at once. And a computer is more useful for students who want to use a word-processing program or search the Web at the same time they’re using an e-textbook. Furthermore, PCs render color, and the Kindle and Sony’s e-book reader don’t.

“We’re finding that the use of hardbound text is on the wane,” he adds. But that trend doesn’t necessarily imply that students are transitioning to the electronic edition. In fact, many “students are not purchasing the textbook” at all, Ellenson says. “Even if they do, they often are not reading the material.” He attributes that neglect to students’ short attention spans and their lack of an environment conducive to reading quietly and focusing on the material. Ellenson says he’s heard similar stories about a decline in textbook usage from faculty at many other institutions.

For now, publishers and educators believe that digital and print options will coexist for a while.

“The most important thing is for educators to get a handle on how to teach the students of the 21st century,” NCCU’s Ellenson says. “For some people you’ve got to have books; for some people the e-books are going to work better. No single solution, in my mind, is appropriate for the diversity that is present in our classrooms today.”

 
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