INTRODUCTION

With the rapid advancement of technology today, there have been numerous

developments that completely changed the lives of many. One of these developments

is the digitization of book which is now called an electronic-book. As defined by

Gardiner and Musto (2010), an electronic book (also e-book, eBook, digital book) is a

text- and image-based publication in digital form produced on, published by, and

readable on computers or other digital devices. Digital books are popular these days

because of their accessibility with just the use of internet and e-book readers such as

Kindle, Wattpad, and Google Play Books. E-books also have functions that allow

readers to (1) have full access and availability; (2) search for words or phrases; (3)

bookmark pages; (4) highlight words; (5) change font size; and (6) use various

multimedia effects, such as oral reading, animations, music and sound effects (Zinn &

Langdown, 2011; Korat & Shamir, 2007).

Over time, reading from the screen has become the norm for a number of activities.

The vast majority of people, for example, read and respond to emails without first

printing them. Most adults in the United Kingdom now access newspapers and

magazines online (Sweney, 2013), probably as a result of the uptake of tablet devices

and smartphones. Books and academic journals are also increasingly electronic. In

2014, e-books comprised some 30% of all book sales in the United States (Bercovici,

2014); From January until August 2012, Amazon.co.uk sold 114 Kindle books for

every 100 printed books (Malik, 2012). While evidence suggests the overall

proportion of e-book to printed book purchasing may be stabilizing at about 1:3

(Wallop, 2015), increasing investment in e-books and electronic journal services by

higher education institutions means access to academic titles and articles is

increasingly online.

Because eBooks are relatively new, the research up to this point has been inconclusive

as to whether interactive eBooks truly increase reading achievement and student

interest over that of printed text. Yet despite inconclusive data, schools are in the

process of deciding if interactive eBooks should replace printed text whether in

libraries or in the classroom. (Beimers 2014)

Studies (De Jong and Bus 2004; Jones and Brown 2011; Larson, 2009; Verhallen,

Bus, and De Jong, 2006), have determined that the multimedia features of e-books

have the potential of being beneficial to young children over traditional printed texts;

however, studies have failed to demonstrate that these additional text features increase

reading achievement over traditional printed text.

The proliferation of electronic information available online and through academic

libraries has meant students are increasingly reading from the screen. As a result there

has been much research on the reading of electronic documents in comparison to their

print counterparts. Recent studies suggest that speed and recall differences between

media are insignificant (Yoram Eden & Eshet-Alkalai, 2013; Young, 2014),

Today, as electronic books are becoming evermore ingrained and implanted into our

daily lives, we all find ourselves reading more frequently on screen. Whether it be ti

undertake active reading on a PPC workstation or enjoy a novel on an eReader, the act

of reading is shifting more and more toward the digital, making it an opportune time

to investigate the on-screen reading process (Pearson, Buchanan, & Timbleby 2013).