Monday, August 26, 2002

Students Complain About Devices for Reading E-Books, Study Finds By SCOTT CARLSON E-book technology needs some improvement before students will be willing to use e-books instead of textbooks, according to a report on a study conducted at Ball State University. The researchers hoped to find out how using e-books compared with using textbooks, and how e-book use affected students' learning. Although the researchers started with the assumption that e-books would be just as easy to use as textbooks, they soon found that students had various complaints about the performance of the e-book devices. But students who used e-books did just as well on quizzes as those who used printed texts. Navigating through digital texts was one of the e-book users' biggest complaints. They found moving from page to page "tedious." They also found it difficult to find specific chapters in texts and to find particular words. With certain e-book devices, students were easily able to change settings, like font size and screen contrasts, but most students didn't find those features terribly useful. The researchers found that the students were most interested in features that let them use the e-books the same way they would use printed volumes -- for instance, an easily used feature that allowed them to highlight text. Richard F. Bellaver, associate director of Ball State's Center for Information and Communication Studies, and Jay Gillette, director of the university's Human Factors Institute, were the lead researchers on the project. The study was supported by a $20-million, four-year grant from the Eli Lilly and Company Foundation. Thomson Multimedia provided hardware for the project, while Gemstar provided software. The report is available online. Mr. Bellaver says that he will convey some of the complaints, along with suggestions and recommendations, to Thomson and Gemstar. He also plans to conduct more studies and hopes to publish the results in User Experience, the journal of the Usability Professionals' Association. He still has high hopes for e-book technology, despite students' complaints. "My feeling is that this is a viable repository," he says. "For a student to be able to store four or five books, along with reference tools, and have them be refreshed every semester -- that could be valuable." Ninety-one Ball State students were involved in the study; 40 of them used textbooks, 24 used black-and-white e-books, and 27 used color e-books. Several students said that they thought the e-books adversely affected the amount of information that they absorbed, and some students switched from e-books to textbooks after they complained of eyestrain. But whatever the complaints about the performance of the devices, there seemed to be little difference between the performance of e-book users and textbook users. Several quizzes were administered during the study, each with a maximum score of 50. The textbook users earned an average of 29 points per quiz, while the black-and-white and color e-book users earned average scores of 28.9 and 28.5, respectively. The researchers also put the e-books through a battery of endurance tests, such as exposing the devices to subzero temperatures and putting them in high-pressure chambers. "It was probably overkill there, but we wanted to see if they would survive a walk across campus in winter or a day on the beach," Mr. Bellaver says. Sooner or later -- sometimes within minutes, sometimes days -- all of the devices worked after they had been returned to a normal environment. "We found that the devices are pretty tough," Mr. Bellaver says. "I told the students, 'Don't break too many.'" But only one device had to be replaced. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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