In today's environment of rising tuition and textbook costs, we surveyed business majors concerning their preferences regarding various text options that are available for their academic studies. Specifically, we surveyed 329 students enrolled in upper-level business courses at a mid-level Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business…

Today's undergraduate student faces many challenges. The challenges include paying for tuition and textbooks and finding a job upon graduation. These students are tech-savvy and seeking better ways to learn and retain material they learn in their classes. In addition, the textbook market is trying to evolve by serving this tech-generation through…

The digital world is expanding the reading palette, offering readers--especially readers who struggle with printed text--new possibilities for to engage in reading via e-text and e-books. This expanded view of text is consistent with the Common Core's vision of a successful 21st century learner who is able to critically read and communicate…

This article describes the results of a survey that gathered data on perceptions and use of e-books from undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and staff. The investigators analyzed the results based on user affiliate status and subject discipline and compared the results with the findings of a similar, smaller-scale study conducted…

The widespread adoption of smartphones and tablet computers have enabled the rapid creation and distribution of innovative American Sign Language (ASL) and written English bilingual ebooks, aimed primarily at deaf and hard-of-hearing children. These sign-print bilingual ebooks are unique in how they take advantage of digital platforms to display…

This study emphasizes an often overlooked avenue of inquiry in the increasingly escalating textbook debate: What is the relationship between the instructor, the students, and the assigned text? And correspondingly, how does one go about analyzing this crucial relationship? Over the past two years, Ryan Swanson gathered data from 549 students in…

Faculty and students are increasingly faced with the opportunity to use electronic versions of textbooks (e-texts). Despite the advantages of e-texts and recent advances in technology, evidence suggests that students are still reluctant to adopt and use e-texts. This situation leads us to investigate two research questions: What factors contribute…

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…

As public funding for higher education decreases and the cost to students to attend college increases, universities are searching for strategies that save students money while also increasing their chances for success. Using free online textbooks is one such strategy, and the OpenStax College initiative at Rice University is one of the most widely…

The technology education movement includes the introduction and application of digital books into science classrooms. These digital books are attractive alternatives to traditional texts because they can be customized for students. This qualitative study examined 35 students as they customized their own digital books. Using a variety of digital…

Writing programs in institutions of higher education work to prepare students for real-world writing within any field of study. The composition of "Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing" offers an open-source text for students, teachers, and policy-makers at all levels. Exposure to an open space for learning encourages access to information,…

Digital textbooks that offer multimedia features, interactive controls, e-annotation and learning process tracking are gaining increasing attention in today's mobile learning era, particularly with the rapid development of mobile learning terminals such as Apple's iPad series and Android-based models. Accordingly, this study explores how…

This study examined the extent to which a range of child characteristics (sex, age, socioeconomic status, reading skill and intrinsic and extrinsic reading motivation) predicted engagement (i.e., time spent) in different reading activities (fiction books, factual books, school textbooks, comics, magazines and digital texts). In total, 791 children…

Researchers have looked extensively into the adoption and satisfaction level of academic electronic textbooks (e-textbooks) by students. The majority of research to date has indicated that either students prefer print textbooks to e-textbooks or the results are inconclusive. In this study a survey consisting of questions related to the use of an…

A new web site called "Teach Astronomy" (http://www.teachastronomy.com) has been created to serve astronomy instructors and their students, amateur astronomers, and members of the public interested in astronomy. The content includes an online textbook of 400,000 words and 1200 images, 40, 000 articles from "Wikipedia," over…