There is significant interest among institutions of higher education in the potential of digital textbooks to enhance student learning and to address issues arising from textbook affordability. Innovations in digital textbook design and delivery infrastructure and the emergence of exemplary practices from early adopters signal that digital reading…

Using data collected from peer reviews for Open Textbook Library titles, this paper explores questions about rating the quality of open textbooks. The five research questions addressed the relationship between textbook and reviewer characteristics and ratings. Although reviewers gave textbooks high ratings generally, reviewers identified…

Assigning open textbooks in college and university courses can help students save money on increasingly expensive commercial textbooks, and recent research shows that this savings can often be achieved with little to no sacrifice in textbook quality or student learning outcomes. We add to this body of research by examining the use of an open…

The increase in the cost of college textbooks together with the proliferation of digital content and devices has inspired the development of open textbooks, open educational resources that are free, openly licensed, and often peer-reviewed. Although several published studies have investigated the impact of open textbook adoption on educational…

Because they are believed to be able to lower the costs of an education, e-books have been factored into the technology plans for community colleges and CEGEPs during the current decade. But adoption is a function of perceptions, which this study explored: (1) General perceptions of the CEGEP (collège d'enseignement général et professionnel, a…

Unrelenting increases in the price of college textbooks have prompted the development and adoption of open textbooks, educational resources that are openly licensed and available to students free of cost. Although several studies have investigated U.S. students' perceptions and use of open textbooks, there are no published studies of this kind in…

The high cost of tuition and textbooks can have a negative impact on potential students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Open Educational Resources (OER) offers students a way to save educational costs while utilizing high-quality open textbooks. Up until now, there have been few studies focused on a specific provider of open textbooks. This…

This article briefly reviews the history of assistive technologies in American and Canadian postsecondary education starting in the 1990s, discusses the accessibility of e-learning and information and communication technologies (ICTs) currently popular in postsecondary education, and highlights emerging trends. Increasing use of universal design…

As digital devices play a more critical role in daily life than ever, more opportunities arise for innovative learning technologies--a trend on full display in the "Educational Media and Technology Yearbook for 2012." This latest edition, volume 37, from the Association for Education, Communication, and Technology (AECT) notes the most…

This article describes the concurrent development of paper-based and e-book versions of a textbook and related instructional material used in an introductory-level financial accounting course. Break-even analysis is used to compare costs of the two media. A study conducted with 109 students is also used to evaluate the two media with respect to…

These proceedings contain the papers of the International Conference e-Learning 2014, which was organised by the International Association for Development of the Information Society and is part of the Multi Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (Lisbon, Portugal July 15-19, 2014). The e-Learning 2014 conference aims to address the…