Kirby Karen, Anwar Muhammad N
Department of Computer and Information Sciences, Northumbria University, UK.
Heliyon. 2020 Sep 19;6(9):e04982. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2020.e04982. eCollection 2020 Sep.
The "problem of e-books" is defined as the difficulty improving the adoption rates of e-books by students. The adoption rates of e-books for academic use remain low, and research into the reasons for this have resulted in inconclusive findings. Factors such as student perception, and variations in experimental methodology and technology, contribute to difficulties in generalising findings and establishing conclusive causes for this problem. To better understand the causal factors for low adoption rates and the student's experience with ereaders and digital text, an investigation was conducted by the lead researcher as a student enrolled in a postgraduate course. The experiment was designed using e-book and digital text documents on an ereader for academic study and the results analysed with the framework of Activity Theory. This methodology allowed exploration of the problem within the authentic experience of a student to examine the effects of this social environment on ereader and e-book use. Analysis of the work domain was conducted and a comparative assessment of the observed effect of using the digital documents on an ereader compared with the paper book. Findings show that attempts to apply self-regulation and metacognitive learning techniques within the activity using the ereader were abandoned due to breakdowns in operations, and that this resulted in a perceived lower quality of achievement. The effect on the processes used by the student were extreme and were observed to be highly dependent on the student's use of specific learning strategies. The experimental methodology employed in this investigation enabled identification of the role of the social environment in the use of course documents on an ereader for academic study. The functionality of the ereader was such an extremely poor fit with the observed academic processes that a redesign approach for ereader and e-book technology is proposed as a solution to the low adoption rates of e-books.
“电子书问题”被定义为提高学生对电子书采用率的困难。学术用途电子书的采用率仍然很低，对此原因的研究结果尚无定论。诸如学生认知以及实验方法和技术的差异等因素，导致难以归纳研究结果并确定该问题的确切原因。为了更好地理解采用率低的因果因素以及学生使用电子阅读器和数字文本的体验，首席研究员作为一名研究生课程的学生进行了一项调查。该实验使用电子阅读器上的电子书和数字文本文件进行学术研究设计，并运用活动理论框架对结果进行分析。这种方法能够在学生的真实体验中探究该问题，以检验这种社会环境对电子阅读器和电子书使用的影响。对工作领域进行了分析，并对在电子阅读器上使用数字文档与纸质书的观察效果进行了比较评估。研究结果表明，由于操作出现故障，在使用电子阅读器的活动中应用自我调节和元认知学习技巧的尝试被放弃，这导致了成就感较低的认知。对学生所采用过程的影响非常大，并且观察到高度依赖于学生对特定学习策略的使用。本研究采用的实验方法能够确定社会环境在学术研究中使用电子阅读器上的课程文档方面所起的作用。电子阅读器的功能与观察到的学术过程极不匹配，因此提出对电子阅读器和电子书技术进行重新设计的方法，作为解决电子书采用率低的方案。
