Digital textbook

Abstract: This study reports findings from a year-long pilot study during which 991 students in 9 core courses in the Virginia State University School of Business replaced traditional textbooks with openly licensed books and other digital content. The university made a deliberate decision to use open textbooks that were copyrighted under the Creative Commons license. This decision was based on the accessibility and flexibility in the delivery of course content provided by open textbooks. More students accessed digital open textbooks than had previously purchased hard copies of textbooks. Higher grades were correlated with courses that used open textbooks.

Abstract: Over the next 5 years, digital textbook sales in the United States will surpass 25% of combined new textbook sales for the Higher Education and Career Education markets. Moreover, we expect digital to be the dominant form factor in Higher Education textbooks inside of 7 years. This growth in digital textbooks will boost revenues in excess of $1.5 billion within 5 years (Private: Digital Textbooks Reach the Tipping Point in the US Higher Education—A Revised 5-Year Projection). This growth will also create avenues for new digital product models, allow new content publishers to enter the textbook market, lead to fundamental shifts in purchasing patterns around learning materials, and expedite the formal adoption of open educational resources to augment premium digital content.

Abstract: There has been little research on student use and perception of open educational resources that are used to replace traditional textbooks/e-textbooks. The creation of the Kansas State University Human Nutrition Flexbook, and online and campus students' perceptions and usage of the flexbook, have been reported previously based survey results from a single semester. Results from multiple online and campus semesters are reported in this paper. Both online and campus students rated the flexbook favorably, but online students used the flexbook more frequently, liked the idea of the flexbook more, and rated it as being of higher quality. Online students also liked and used the animations, videos, and links more and liked the appearance and flexibility of the flexbook more than campus students. The majority of students used an electronic flexbook format and more than one flexbook format. The Portable Document Format version, followed by the Google Docs version, were the most commonly used primary formats. Overall, responses across multiple semesters confirm the authors' original findings that students like using the flexbook instead of a traditional textbook.