Digital Content on the Go: LTS
Experiments with E-Textbooks and iPads
LTS recently launched two projects that offer insight into
how we work with faculty to integrate digital content and
tablet technologies into the campus experience. The goal is
to ease the distribution of, and facilitate interaction
with, course content in order to better meet the needs of a
new generation of tech-savvy Lehigh students.
In concert with multiple faculty, the
E-Textbook Project is being led by librarians Jean
Johnson, Heather Simoneau, and Brian Simboli. Professor Mike
Kuchka started the project in his summer course, BIOS 41:
Cellular and Molecular Biology, in which students were provided the LTS-funded
e-textbook Campbell Biology (published by Pearson).
The
e-textbook is enriched with interactive features such as
bookmarks, self-quizzes, videos, flash cards, glossary, and
audio. This fall, LTS is continuing the project with
Professors Chad Meyerhoffer (Economics), Thomas Hammond
(Education), Roger Simon (History), and Timothy Lomauro
(Psychology).
Teaching
Assistant Abby Aldrich is teaching two sections of ENGL 001:
Composition and Literature. One section is accessing course materials on the NOOK Simple
Reader (a common e-reader device) and another is using print texts, thereby enabling a comparison of
experiences.
Jean Johnson, LTS Team Leader for the College of Education,
commented: “We are curious to learn how faculty view student
engagement with the e-textbook and how reader’s tools such
as highlighting, glossaries, and notes help students master
complex material. The
light-weight portability of the text is an attractive aspect
of e-textbooks. There is a lot of hype about the learning
impact of e-readers in K-12 education. In very preliminary
studies, student excitement has translated into gains on
achievement tests. Whether these effects are sustainable and
if they are observed in higher education is yet to be
studied in depth.”
Survey results of Lehigh’s E-Textbook Project reflect
an ironic yet early conclusion: students who are generally
comfortable in a digital world still prefer print textbooks.
Of the thirty students who answered the exit survey, 24
preferred print, 3 preferred electronic, and 3 liked both
equally (though many reported that the interactive features
were helpful).
Of the
five students who used the textbook on an iPad, two liked
both print and electronic textbook formats, two liked print,
and one liked electronic. These results, while based on a
limited sample, roughly cohere with a study described in a
recent
New York Times article which reports “that while 55
percent of students still prefer print over digital
textbooks, among the 7 percent of students who own tablets
devices like iPads, 73 percent prefer digital textbooks.”
LTS will continue its exploration into e-textbooks
especially as it relates to library licensing, terms of use,
book editing/production platforms, e-reader devices, and
open source and multimedia possibilities. Platforms
investigated to date include
Connexions,
SoftChalk and
FlatWorld Knowledge as well as ones from publishers such
as Pearson, Wiley, and McGraw-Hill.
In a separate but related venture, Greg Reihman, Director of
the Lehigh Lab and Faculty Development, is working with LTS’
Instructional Technology Team on a multi-year study of iPads
at Lehigh. Each semester, iPads will be loaned to faculty
and students in a selected course. The first course in the
project is PHIL 090, "Philosophy and Technology," a seminar
taught this fall by Reihman.
Instructional Technology Team Leader Ilena Key noted, "The
hope is that by working with Greg and his students, we will
develop a good understanding of how to support an iPad-intensive
course. We will also gain a good sense of which apps are the
most promising so we will be prepared to work with other
faculty in the spring."
Said Reihman, "I'm hoping to investigate ways of using the
iPad in a small seminar-style humanities course. In my
courses, students typically start the discussion about the
reading online before class starts and I'm hoping that,
since they will all have iPads when we meet face to face, we
will find it simpler to pick up in class where the online
conversation stopped.
We're also
experimenting with a fully paperless class and so we're
helping students find tools to read and annotate course
materials in a way that is useful during class
conversations, when studying, and when writing papers.
Students will also learn new ways to take class notes,
prepare presentations, and share documents."
Two TRAC Writing Fellows assigned to the course, sophomore
Brionna O'Connor and junior Danielle Impellizeri, also
received iPads for the semester and will be experimenting
with ways to give students feedback on drafts. Greg Skutches,
Director of the Writing Across the Curriculum Program noted
that "we're eager to learn more about the possibilities of
using iPads in getting effective feedback to student
writers."
A call will go out to faculty shortly to invite applications
for the spring iPad Project course. The long-term goal of
the project is to discover and communicate to other faculty
the strengths and limitations of the iPad in our classrooms.
Those interested in monitoring LTS’ progress can visit the
project websites:
E-Textbook Project and
iPad Project.
--Jean
Johnson, Gregory Reihman, Brian Simboli
Article posted October,
2011
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