It's probably shouldn't be a surprise that students aren’t flocking to electronic textbooks. After all, most have been
handed print textbooks at the beginning of every school year for most of their
academic lives. Besides, they are consumers who tend to look for low price
first, and e-textbooks don’t always offer much savings.
Now, Daniel
Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, weighs in
on the subject on his blog.
He observes that while popular e-books are written in a narrative style and are
read for pleasure, textbooks deal with difficult material that is being read to
learn and remember.
Willingham points
to research which shows that while all the videos and hyperlinks that e-texts
are able to provide can certainly be an advantage to students, they can also be
a distractions that actually limit understanding.
He’s not trying
to suggest there’s no reason to replace the printed format. He’s just asking
what the rush is.
