Paper is still the choice on campuses.
According to the sales statistics of Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon, everybody loves e-books. The economically-priced readers; the ability to store and transport an entire library effortlessly and less expensively; the added benefits of highlighting, annotation, simplified note-taking, searchable text, and inserted ancillary materials. It’s no wonder e-books are popular. With the rapidly growing domination of e-books for casual reading, there’s every reason to believe the suggestion that e-books are the future and will inevitably replace printed text. Yet on university campuses, one of the locations where e-books were expected to not just thrive but to dominate the market, their introduction has been a sales and educational disappointment, with numerous studies showing up to 85 percent student resistance in some areas to their introduction and use. All of this begs the question, if e-books are cheaper than paper books, let alone more useful for allowing students to access them at will and have the added benefits of searchable text with other ancillaries, why is it that students not only don’t want them, but are going to some lengths to actively avoid them?
The answer seems to be that just possibly, at least in the case of education, the good old paper book retains several advantages over e-books that continue to make them a better tool for education. Despite the initial higher price paper books are seen as a better value for students.
Joanne McNeish, Mary Foster, Anthony Francescucci, and Bettina West of Canada’s Ryerson University have published “The Surprising Foil to Online Education: Why Students Won’t Give Up Paper Textbooks”, the results of a study looking into the continuing resistance toward e-texts in the fall 2012 issue of the Journal for Advancement of Marketing Education. Their study indicates that despite the supposed advantages of e-books, a large majority of students participating in the study found paper texts preferable for studying. For the technology minded, the claims made by the study participants might seem counter-intuitive, yet the results consistently had subjects stating that paper texts were superior for highlighting, adding notes, bookmarking, and most surprisingly, search, which are all functions that e-books tout as reasons the platform is superior.
Another surprising finding is that the vast majority of subjects stated that the use of e-text was inconvenient compared to paper. Claiming that they felt constrained by the requirements for a specific brand of reader, the need for special software, and mentioned most often, the need for a power source, students consistently stated they felt that they had more control over their learning experience with paper then they did with e-text.
The Ryerson study also supports the conclusions of several other recent reports on the use of e-texts including Sheila O’Hare and Andrew Smith’s 2012 study for the Kansas Library Association of College and University Libraries, “The Customer is Always Right? Resistance from College Students to E-Books as Textbooks”. O’Hare and Smith’s studies indicates that the brain processes how we read and learn from paper differently than we do for e-text. Research shows that in the case of paper, students tend to completely read a page, while in the case of e-text, the text is read more sporadically, with the student “dipping” into the text instead of full immersion.
Students are using e-text starting in kindergarten.
Functional issues with e-texts aside, all of the quoted the studies agree that one of the major reasons students reject e-texts for paper is simple economics. Publishers consistently advertise that e-texts are a much better economic deal for students because the books are sold without the added cost of paper, production, and shipping. However, despite the lower initial cost, O’Hare and Smith’s study suggests students resent that they aren’t purchasing an item they own. Normally sold as a license for specific college courses, these texts are available to the student for a limited period of time. With many students wishing to retain textbooks for future reference, having a textbook that expires is a definite disadvantage.
On the other side of the coin, there are the students who don’t want to hold onto their textbooks. As an electronic text can’t be resold by students, they lose the ability to recoup some of the cost of the textbook by selling it to the secondhand market. Without the money the used textbook market generates, students actually pay more for the e-texts than they would with the higher price paper version.
When I’m not writing for Techcitement, I’m a textbook buyer for a school. Despite almost 35 years selling books, I’m not one of those aging luddites who believes anything with a battery is evil or the only way to get a good education is to walk barefoot in the snow five miles every day. In the case of textbooks, I’ve long believed that, more often than not, the electronic format is superior to paper, especially in regard to ancillaries. When the university first introduced e-books, I was certain that sales would be huge with e-texts being something students would jump all over. Yet, after several years of hard sell and classroom integration, our e-book sales make up less than a quarter of overall book purchases; in those situations where the student can choose standard text or electronic, despite the e-text costing normally about 30 percent less, 79 percent of my students consistently choose paper. One anecdotal note I’d like to throw in is that since the introduction of e-books at my school, our student printers have seen an increase in usage of more than 4000 percent, which I ‘m certain is because students use these machines to print off as much of their e-texts as they can.
The future is right around the corner.
I admit to finding a certain amount of smug satisfaction in having studies to back paper books as being superior to electronic. But really, it’s a hollow satisfaction. Right now, there is a new generation of kids, going into what fifth grade who have had e-readers their entire lives. These children who have used e-texts their entire lives are only a few years away from higher education, and it’s at that point where I expect to see the current situation completely reverse. Even if paper books were to somehow conclusively be proven as superior, the reality is that e-texts are simply far too profitable for book publishers to ever allow the clock to turn back. The savings on materials, shipping and personnel, let alone the destruction of the hated secondary market, make e-texts the only sensible choice for a company that wants to be profitable in the twenty-first century.
This movement towards e-texts is inevitable. Hopefully, the needs of educational publishers can find a solid middle ground with the educational needs of the student.
I find eBooks very convenient but not as satisfying to read. Definitely harder to impossible if they contain diagrams and photos. That’s where I try to draw the line. Unfortuntely, hard copy books are very expensive to ship to Israel. And, did I mention storage in tiny Israeli appartments?
My feeling is that’s largely a psychological perception. The generation in College right now is one of the last, if not the last, to view electronic text as in any way ephemeral while viewing printed matter with greater reverence and lending greater credence even when both contain the same information. A few generations from now the balance will have fully swung in favor of the electronic and printed books will be for old fogeys and weirdo collectors.
Realistically there is little difference between a printed book and the same book on a Kindle. eBooks, even from major publishers, are more likely to have typos and formatting errors, but that’s changing as eBooks are taken more seriously. It may be hard for some older people to lend eBooks anywhere near the credence they do printed matter, but change is hard for the old, easy for the young. The sentimental attachment to printed matter may largely cease to exist even within our lifetimes. Not saying that’s good or bad, but it’s what’s coming.
Speaking as someone who creates ebooks and works on writing and implementing ebook standard, the reasons there hasn’t been huge growth in etextbooks (yet) are 1. the big retailers now (amazon, b&n, apple in US) each have their own devices. AMZN uses proprietary format, and the others have fragmented an international standard (EPUB) through application of DRM and devices – it’s like browser battles of 90s. So, we can’t create books that “look like textbooks” without making separate files for each retailer 2. sharing/annotations/highlighting is not standardized. Students want to use their books, not just read them. This is being worked on, but it will be a while before there is broad adoption, longer before there is uniform adoption. When etextbooks can do what print does and more, there will be a shift. Print is not dying any time soon. Also, ebooks are cheaper to print. They are not cheaper to create – still need to write, edit, code. Now we need JS experts too.