Back in March, we covered the University of Virginia Darden School of Business’s experiments with trying out the Kindle DX to see how well it could replace textbooks. At the time, the preliminary results suggested that most students found it simply didn’t work.
Now, with the trial almost over, Darden has posted a detailed article summing up the results. Surveyed at mid-term on how satisfied they were with the Kindle, the students concluded that the device was simply too slow and clunky at moving between pages to keep up in the fast-paced classroom environment—but almost all the 62 students participating in the program would recommend it as a personal reading device.
“What that says to me is that Amazon created a very well-designed consumer device for purchasing and reading digital books, magazines and newspapers,’’ says [Michael Koenig, Darden’s director of MBA operations]. “It’s not yet ready for prime time in the highly engaged Darden business school classroom.’’
A handful of “power users” were able to make the Kindle work for them both in class and out, however.
It will be interesting to see how the iPad stacks up in the schools that have started issuing those to students. As a faster device with considerable versatility, perhaps it can succeed where the Kindle DX failed.
