Education Tech Research Dev (2012) 60:703–722

DOI 10.1007/s11423-012-9237-6

SPECIAL ISSUE ON PERSONALIZED LEARNING

Empowering personalized learning with an interactive

e-book learning system for elementary school students

Yueh-Min Huang • Tsung-Ho Liang •

Yen-Ning Su • Nian-Shing Chen

Published online: 5 April 2012

Ó Association for Educational Communications and Technology 2012

Abstract Today various types of tablet computers are used, including iPad and Android
Tablets. These individual portable digital devices can be used as e-book readers to support
mobile personalized learning. Though many studies have investigated e-books by targeting
undergraduate students, yet less attention has been paid to children. Therefore, an Inter-
active E-book Learning System (IELS) was developed for elementary school students in
this study. The interactive principles in multimedia learning were adopted to empower
students’ personalized learning experiences with e-books. Meanwhile, in order to meet
student’s learning needs, a group of in-service teachers were consulted for acquiring their
domain expertise. Personalized learning functions, such as e-annotation and bookmarks,
content searching, and learning process tracking, were designed to reinforce student
learning. Two investigations were conducted for evaluation of the developed system. The
first investigation was conducted with 166 elementary school students to evaluate the
usability and functionality of the developed system and the feedback from the students. It
was found that the usability and functionality of the developed system were well-suited for
most of the students. The second investigation was to evaluate the learning effect of the
developed system. The results showed that using an e-book or printed book made no

Y.-M. Huang
T.-H. Liang
Y.-N. Su

Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan, No. 1,
University Road, Tainan City 701, Taiwan, ROC
e-mail: huang@mail.ncku.edu.tw
T.-H. Liang
e-mail: protnmike@gmail.com
Y.-N. Su
e-mail: yenning@mail.tn.edu.tw

Y.-M. Huang
Department of Applied Geoinformatics, Chia Nan University of Pharmacy and Science,
Taiwan, No. 60, Sec. 1, Erren Rd., Rende Dist, Tainan City 717, Taiwan, ROC

N.-S. Chen (&)

Department of Information Management, National Sun Yat-sen University,
No. 70, Lien-Hai Rd., Kaohsiung 80424, Taiwan, ROC
e-mail: nschen@mis.nsysu.edu.tw

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significant difference to the students’ reading accuracy; however, the learning process
tracking technique of IELS can provide detailed logs about the actual learning processes
which can be used by the system to provide further assistance to individual learner. This
study concludes that such a tailor-made e-book learning system could achieve a better
personalized learning experience for elementary school students.

Keywords Personalized learning
E-book learning system
Usability
Functionality

Elementary school

Introduction

Since the young generation has grown up with new technology, they are likely to have
different expectations and behaviors towards the use of digital media. Whether ICT could
create engaged, relevant, and personalized learning experiences for this digital native
group has become a real challenge for educators and researchers (U.S. Department of
Education 2010). Nowadays the tablet computer, such as the iPad and Android Pad,
equipped with a high-resolution color display has become a popular personal digital
device. E-books seem to have greater flexibility and accessibility than paper-based texts,
not to mention the multimedia-enriched visual appeal that has the potential to integrate
various supportive materials for personalized learning. With that being said, it is still
essential to evaluate all manner of using e-books as learning tools before adopting them as
a substitute for printed textbooks, that is to say the sound methods of carrying out such
evaluations still require more study (Woody et al. 2010).
Coyle (2008) pointed out the present e-book industry is aimed primarily at how to
digitize printed works rather than how to develop and use the new technology to support
learning. Thus, more and more researchers (Berg et al. 2010; Bierman et al. 2010; Lam
et al. 2009; Pattuelli and Rabina 2010; Woody et al. 2010) have examined how to integrate
e-books into academic learning. However, the results have shown that both teachers and
students believe that current e-books are not readily used as printed books. However,
Woody et al. (2010) suggested that the design of an e-book may need to differ from that of
a printed book to make for a more constructive user experience. Users usually want to
interact with resources and have functionality to which they have become accustomed in
their e-book experiences (Bierman et al. 2010). The issues of usability and functionality
thus seem crucial for wider adoption of e-books, especially in academic contexts (Berg
et al. 2010).
In 2009, the Taiwanese government approved a reading plan known as ‘Happy Reading
101’ for elementary and junior high schools, in order to improve reading education and
expand the facilities and content of elementary and junior high school libraries (Ministry of
Education, Republic of China 2010). Subsequently, the government has made a commit-
ment to promote this industry by allocating over US$60 million budget to its development.
Furthermore, the authority has approved the ‘‘Digital Publishing Industry Development
Strategy and Action Plan’’, which provides an open structure combining resources from the
industry, government, educational and research institutes to accelerate the integration of
the entire supply chain for promoting the e-book industry. Companies in Taiwan have also
already developed a complete hardware supply chain, which has been successfully shaping
Taiwan into the leading supplier of electrophoretic displays and e-book reading devices
(TCA 2009).

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Most of the previous research was done with undergraduate students, to our best
knowledge, but few studies have investigated the use of e-books for elementary school
students. Thus, this study, mainly supported by the Taiwanese Ministry of Education, was
aimed to provide empirical data on the actual effectiveness of e-books system for a better
personalized learning experience. Specifically, the purpose of this paper is to present the
development of an e-book learning system for elementary school students and investigate
their students’ perceptions and reading accuracy with regard to its usability and functionality.
It is hoped that based on the results drawn here, educators may have a better insight into
students’ learning, and then develop appropriate teaching strategies accordingly. On the
other hand, once the e-book learning systems are shown to support personalized learning
for elementary school students, whether e-books are suitable to replace printed books could
be objectively assessed in the future.

The use of e-books in education

E-book reading and emergent literacy

Korat et al. conducted a series of studies with regard to e-book reading and emergent
literacy of young children. These findings revealed that all the students’ emergent literacy,
including vocabulary, word recognition, and phonological awareness, were improved by
reading with e-books (Korat 2010; Korat and Shamir 2007, 2008; Segal-Drori et al. 2010;
Shamir et al. 2008). Grimshaw et al. (2007) also found that the main benefits to children’s
reading with e-books were the provision of e-book narration along with animated pictures
and sound effects, and the improvement to the children’s reading comprehension.
These studies claimed that reading with e-books facilitates children’s emergent literacy,
and thus we wondered how young children actually use e-books compared to the use of
traditional printed books, and whether the results were same as those findings that focused
on undergraduates (Bierman et al. 2010; Woody et al. 2010).

E-books versus printed books

Many studies have examined how to use e-books to substitute printed books, for example,
Berg et al. (2010) argued that the current e-books may not in fact offer the same conve-
nience or usability as e-journals as the limited anecdotal evidence showed. They thus
investigated how the undergraduate students used e-books compared to printed books
because they are expected to be heavy users of e-books, and the results showed that
students did not intuitively know how to navigate and use e-books effectively. It is sug-
gested that researchers should consider how students’ experiences with printed materials
would affect their usage of e-books. Woody et al. (2010) also revealed that despite the
ability to easily access supplemental content with e-books, students were more likely to do
so in printed books, a result being similar to the findings in Shepperd et al. (2008) and Berg
et al. (2010). These studies concluded that students still preferred printed books and more
research is needed to identify the differences of e-book usage (Bierman et al. 2010;
Shepperd et al. 2008; Woody et al. 2010). Research has also found that most of current
e-books are designed to resemble printed books, although this is perhaps not the optimal
form (Berg et al. 2010). In general, while both teachers and students have a positive
attitude toward adopting e-book in education, the future of e-book development is still
vague. More investigations are thus required in order to better understand the users’

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interaction behaviors with e-books (Berg et al. 2010), and how to design e-books for
optimal usage can be a challenge (Woody et al. 2010).
Nevertheless, for the emergent literacy of young children, some researchers (Korat
2010; Korat and Shamir 2007, 2008; Segal-Drori et al. 2010; Shamir et al. 2008) suggested
that reading with e-book could improve children’s reading comprehension and enjoyment
by the added visual and audio representations. On this standpoint, we assumed that
adaptive instruction with e-books has a number of potential benefits in supporting chil-
dren’s reading skills and literacy. However, according to previous research (Bierman et al.
2010; Shepperd et al. 2008; Woody et al. 2010), the current e-books might not be able to
reach the goals. Yet, designing specific functionality of e-books with respect to different
individual learning requirement becomes crucial to the development of e-books (Hourcade
et al. 2003; Revelle et al. 2002). With certain easy-to-use functionalities embedded in
e-books, it is believed that the possibility is still there.

E-book design for children

There were some issues faced at the initial stage of e-book design for children. For
example, Hourcade et al. (2003) unveiled that commercial e-books are likely to be
insufficient to satisfy the children’s diverse needs, just as de Jong and Bus (2003) con-
cluded that the use of e-books to support literacy had problems with the lack of choice.
Hourcade et al. (2003) claimed that many young children seem unable to distinguish
between the left and right mouse buttons, and they also suggested that young children
require larger visual targets in graphical User Interface (UI). In addition, the features of
e-book functionality that could support children’s literacy development and provide them
with access to stories, including book processing, multimedia additions, the interactivity of
the story and legibility might be beyond their reading level (de Jong 2003). A well-suited
UI and functional design for e-books is a critical step for academic learning, especially for
young children. For the purpose, Hourcade et al. (2003) designed three kinds of e-book UI,
and found that different users would prefer different e-book UIs under different contexts.
Revelle et al. (2002) also developed a visual search interface to support children in data
searching with a hierarchical information structure. With the support of a visual query
interface and scaffolding for Boolean concepts, children were able to perform searches and
construct search queries that surpassed their previous search techniques.
Moreover, some researchers (Kerawalla et al. 2008; Yuill et al. 2009) examined a series
of new user interface paradigms, which worked to mediate the collaborative learning
among children, with a socio-cultural. The results suggested that the additional features are
still needed to improve the content of the collaborative conversations that support joint
understanding and individual comprehension development. In addition, Tung and Deng’s
(2006) ‘‘the computers are social actors’’ paradigm asserted that human-to-computer
interactions are fundamentally social responses, and they suggested that enhancing the
interactivity of an e-learning environment can stimulate the presence of social actors,
which can promote a child’s learning experience and increase their motivation. Consid-
ering the social constructivism in learning with e-books, Larson (2009) investigated how
the collaborative online learning communities featured in e-book reading can provide
students with equitable opportunities to share their thoughts and voice their opinions about
literature. The findings suggested that the students’ engagement in online literature dis-
cussions promoted socially constructed learning, and that the students’ skillful and in-depth
communications reflected their prior experiences in both real and virtual environments.
These studies revealed that social interactivity and scaffolding instruction are both crucial

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for learning with e-books, just as Blewitt et al. (2009) argued that the shared book reading
and scaffolding procedure could enhance children’s vocabulary learning. Thus, it is
essential that the functionality for supporting both social interactivity and scaffolding
should be embedded in an e-book learning system.
UI designs and functionality seem to influence children’s learning process, and even
affect their learning performance. Many researchers (Bierman et al. 2010; de Jong 2003;
Hourcade et al. 2003; Lam et al. 2009; Shepperd et al. 2008; Woody et al. 2010) thus
suggested that the e-book UI and functionality should be developed to better meet the
specific users’ learning needs. In addition, social interactivity and e-learning environment
are other issues that arise when learning with e-books (Kerawalla et al. 2006, 2008; Yuill
et al. 2009).
Many related works toward e-book reading, learning, and design issues revealed that the
current e-books might not take the advantages in supporting personalized learning. In other
words, the potential benefits with e-books should be further explored for developing
e-books in academic learning. Therefore, the major work of this study is to develop an
e-book learning system that is better suited for children in the learning with e-book
environment. To this end, various personal assisted techniques should be developed in
order to provide a clear understanding of individual learning process in contrast with the
summative results by most prior studies conducted in a printed text learning context.
According to the suggestions of Berg et al. (2010), we adopted the e-book usability and
functionality as the key factors to be examined for the developed e-book learning system.

System development

Following the Rapid Application Development (RAD) process, this study followed the
principles of analysis, design and evaluation to develop an e-book learning system for
elementary school students using the procedure shown in Fig. 1. The research procedure
was divided into three stages as follows.

Stage one (analysis): the e-book learning system components

In stage one, this study surveyed a number of e-book related studies, including those on
e-learning environment implementation (Domagk et al. 2010; Straker et al. 2009), UI and
functionality for elementary school students (Kerawalla et al. 2008; Spink et al. 2010;
Tung and Deng 2006; Yuill et al. 2009), e-book design issues (de Jong and Bus 2002;
Hourcade et al. 2003; Revelle et al. 2002), e-book and e-reader usage (Berg et al. 2010;
Bierman et al. 2010; Lam et al. 2009; Pattuelli and Rabina 2010; Woody et al. 2010),

Design & Evaluation

Analysis
Implementation

Experiment1:
Students’
grade 1-6
perceptions
The evaluation (n=166)
E-book Teacher Interactive
of usability and
learning focus System e-book
functionality
system group development Reading learning
toward the
components interviews Experiment2: accuracy and system
system
grade 6 learning
(n=12) process
tracking

Fig. 1 Outline of the research procedure

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e-book reading and emergent literacy (de Jong and Bus 2002; Grimshaw et al. 2007; Korat
2010; Korat and Shamir 2007, 2008; Segal-Drori et al. 2010; Shamir et al. 2008), reading
instruction and evaluation (Blewitt et al. 2009; Hindman et al. 2008; Larson 2009; Mol
et al. 2008, 2009), and reading processes (Nielsen 2006; Qayyum 2008). Meanwhile, in
order to consider multimedia learning theory in an e-book system, this study adopted the
integrated model of multimedia interactivity (INTERACT) as this can help inform
research, discussion, and design decisions related to interactive multimedia instruction
(Domagk et al. 2010).
The research team then cooperated with 12 in-service teachers to construct the e-book
learning framework based on a literature review and analysis, as well as focus group
discussions (2 h per week, for a total of 8 weeks). In the focus group interviews, the
researchers and teachers adopted a brainstorming method to develop creative solutions to
problems and cooperated to construct the required learning components for the next stage
of system design and development. The first column in Table 1 shows the three main
components of the system, which are contextualization, personalization, and externaliza-
tion, while the second column gives the definitions and examples of the function of each
component. The third column shows the references used for each component.
Figure 2 shows these components mapped to the INTERACT model. Just as Grimshaw
et al. (2007) emphasized that ‘‘interactive learning fails reading,’’ it seems critical that a
clear distinction should be made between the different types in terms of the degree of
interaction and animation to which the e-books offer, and whether these features are
supplementary or incidental to the content. Indeed, this study proposes that these com-
ponents should follow the interactive principles in multimedia learning.
For the contextualization component, we aimed to apply the multimedia and interactive
controls design for scaffolding and enhancing students’ reading comprehension based on
the particular context with regard to the students’ learning needs. From the perspective of

Table 1 The e-book learning system components

Components Definitions and examples References

Contextualization In order to scaffold and enhance students’ de Jong (2003), de Jong and Bus (2002),
reading comprehension, the multimedia Grimshaw et al. (2007), Hourcade et al.
and interactive controls are developed (2003), Korat (2010), Korat and Shamir
based on the particular context with (2008), Pattuelli and Rabina (2010),
regard to the students’ needs (e.g., Segal-Drori et al. (2010), Shamir et al.
embedded multimedia, spoken text, (2008)
hotspots, and user control interactivity)
Personalization The students can make personal records Berg et al. (2010), Bierman et al. (2010),
during the learning process in order to Lam et al. (2009), Qayyum (2008),
meet their individual requirements, and Revelle et al. (2002), Woody et al.
these records are context dependent and (2010)
integrated with the e-book (e.g.,
e-annotation and bookmarks, content
searching, and learning process
tracking)
Externalization The students are able to give external form Larson (2009), Pattuelli and Rabina
to what they are thinking and feeling (2010), Qayyum (2008)
while learning ubiquitously, in order to
extend their social interactivity (e.g.,
notes sharing, home-school links,
portability, and ubiquity)

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E-book Learning INTERACT Model

System Components
Learning
Environment

Contextualization Behavioral Emotion/

Activity Motivation

Cognitive/
Personalization Metacognitive
Learner
Activity
Variables

Externalization
Mental
Model

Fig. 2 The mapping of three e-book learning components and the INTERACT model

INTERACT, the learning environment integrates the feedback loops connecting the
learning system, behavioral processes, and cognitive processes, which could activate
students’ learning motivation and involves them in cognitive activity. For example, the
system could provide the functionality such as the embedded multimedia, spoken text,
hotspots, and user control interactivity that improves the feedback loops toward learning
with e-books.
The INTERACT model suggests that a system should consider behavioral activity as a
separate element that facilitates investigation of the implications of behavior for cog-
nition, such as a systematical method to analyze learner behaviors and utilize learner
characteristics for group composition (Huang and Wu 2011; Wu et al. in press). In the
personalization component, the students are able to make personal records during the
learning process for their individual requirements, and these records are context
dependent and integrated with the e-book. For example, the system could provide the
functionality such as e-annotation, bookmarks, and learning process tracking, which
assist the personal behavior and cognitive activity through the learning process. More-
over, the learning process tracking technique is a particular design for the investigation
of individual learning behavior for cognition that is difficult to achieve in a printed book
learning setting.
In order to address the learners’ mental model, which the critical component of the
interactivity loop in the INTERACT model, the externalization component is designed
to enable the students for being able to extend this interactivity loop to what they are
thinking and feeling while learning ubiquitously according to the Vygotsky’s social
constructivism theory. Moreover, a ubiquitous learning context thus was formed with
e-book reader portability, in which students may gain authentic knowledge by inter-
acting with learning material and the real environment and further achieve meaningful
learning (Huang et al. 2011, 2012). For example, the system could provide the functions
of shared notes and home-school links as suggested by Tung and Deng’s (2006) ‘‘the
computers are social actors’’, and these externalized interactive learning functions are
aiming at reinforcing the students’ learning connection with their peers in the social
community.

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Stage two (design and implementation): the e-book learning system

Based on the e-book learning components, the research team developed an e-book learning
system over a period of 4 months. In order to enhance system usability, the researchers and
teachers regularly discussed the system functionality during this stage (2 h per month, for a
total of 4 months).
The system was developed using the Microsoft Windows Presentation Foundation
(WPF) technique, which is a graphical subsystem for rendering user interfaces in Win-
dows-based applications. WPF employs Extensible Application Markup Language
(XAML), a derivative of Extensible Markup Language (XML), to define and link various
UI elements. The WPF allows the building of interfaces that incorporate documents,
multimedia elements, two- and three-dimensional graphics, animations, and web-like
characteristics (Chappell 2006). This technique is suitable for achieving the criterion that
e-books should integrate multimedia features to support literacy development (de Jong
2003) and provide a flexible UI for students.
Based on the components summarized in Table 1, we developed an Interactive E-book
Learning System (IELS) as shown in Figs. 3, 4, and 5. When a user logs into the system,
the e-book shelf appears on the screen (Fig. 3a), and the system will load an e-book
automatically when it has been selected. In order to be compatible with the different screen
resolutions available on various e-reader devices, this study made the e-books using
Microsoft flow documents. A flow document is designed to ‘‘reflow content’’ depending on
window size, device resolution, and other environment variables. In addition, flow docu-
ments have a number of built in features, including a search tool (Fig. 4c), dynamic
viewing modes (Fig. 3d) that optimize readability and the ability to change the size and
appearance of fonts. Flow documents are best utilized when ease of reading is the primary
document consumption aim (MSDN 2011). The e-books developed in this study consist of
multimedia content (Fig. 3b) and interactive components (Fig. 3c) to support the users’
reading comprehension.
The system provides two modes of sticky note (typed text and handwritten notes) and
highlighting tools for personal annotations (Fig. 4a). In addition, the users are able to
record their voice notes by using the bookmark with the voice recording function (Fig. 4b).
The default Find dialog box (Fig. 4c) includes a field for searching text, as well as buttons
such as find next, find previous, and options. The Find options are provided as the default,
including match whole word only, match case, match diacritic, match kashida, and match
alef hamza (MSDN 2010). In addition, the system tracks the users’ learning process
automatically, and then presents the results in real-time while the students are using IELS
(Fig. 4d). These personal assisted functions can be used to monitor and collect the outcome
of learning process, and then the teacher could harness the results in and direct adaptive
guidance for personalized learning.
As Fig. 5 shows, in order to extend user’s social interactivity, the system provides a
notes sharing function for enabling users to share their notes with their learning community
including peers, teachers, and parents for broadening the individual mental model of what
they are thinking and feeling while learning ubiquitously by a portable e-book reader.

Stage three (evaluation): student perceptions and reading accuracy

The system usability and functionality were the main issues that needed to be verified by
users in the evaluation stage. Thus, we conducted two investigations to examine the users’
perceptions and the reading accuracy in order to address the usability of the developed

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Video clip

E-books

(a) E-book shelf (b) Embedded multimedia video clip

Calligraphy writing

Dynamic viewing modes

(c) Interactivity: calligraphy (d) Dynamic viewing modes

Fig. 3 Contextualization: the e-book shelf, content elements, and viewing modes

system. The first investigation was to investigate the students’ general perceptions toward
using the IELS compared to their prior experiences of using printed books. The second
investigation was to further verify how the system functionality affects students’ reading
accuracy with the e-book compared to that with a traditional printed book in order to
examine whether the e-book learning functionality is better than learning with the printed
book. Besides, this study also analyzed the data from learning process tracking to examine
whether the system was well functioned.

Investigation one: students’ perceptions toward the usability of the system

The first investigation was aimed at collecting student perceptions from six selected classes
(one class per grade in a technology-rich elementary school), and all the participants
performed about 80 min of system evaluation. To ensure if the system follows the essential
usability characteristics, the study adopted Holzinger’s test methods (2005), including
thinking aloud, field observation, and questionnaire survey, in this investigation. The first
evaluation process began with a system introduction (20 min) in which a thinking aloud
method was carried out by the researcher. Subsequently, a system operation procedure with
a field observation method (paired group evaluation, 40 min, as shown in Fig. 6a) was
conducted for evaluating the system usability by pairs of students, and any interactive
discussion was encouraged. To this end, this study re-typeset six e-books (one book per
grade) according to the content of classical Chinese poetry in printed books that are
currently used in the school. Finally, a questionnaire survey (20 min, as shown in Fig. 6b)

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Annotation
Bookmark
Recording
Highlight

(a) Annotation & highlight (b) Bookmarking

Reading rates
Search tool

(c) Content searching (d) Learning process tracking

Fig. 4 Personalization: the functions of annotation, bookmarking, content searching, and learning process
tracking

Teacher’s notes

Fig. 5 Externalization: the function of notes sharing

was administered to elicit each student’s perceptions towards the system usability. In this
procedure, we further reminded the students that they could compare the system usability
with printed books according to their learning experiences. All the students’ perceptions, as
collected from the questionnaire survey, were analyzed in order to better understand the
usability of the system.

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Empowering personalized learning with an interactive e-book learning system 713

(a) Investigation 1: paired group students were evaluating (b) Investigation 1: questionnaire survey.
the system.

(c) Investigation 2: the reading (printed book) accuracy (d) Investigation 2: the reading (e-book) accuracy test.
test, one student paired with a rater.

Fig. 6 The investigations in the evaluation procedure

The questionnaire consisting of 48 questions was designed to access the students’

perceptions of the usability of the system. The first part of the questionnaire consisted of 30
questions on system usability, which were adopted from Lund’s USE Questionnaire (Lund
2001) and translated into Chinese by the researcher. The second part of the questionnaire
consisted of 15 questions on perceptions of the system’s functionality, which was designed
by the researcher. All the questions in the first and second parts used a five-point Likert
scale. The third part of the questionnaire consisted of three open-ended questions which
asked the students to briefly describe the advantages and disadvantages of the system; and
any suggestions if there is one.
To assess the validity of the questionnaire, it was examined by four e-book researchers.
We further determined the associations between questionnaire scores and the two global
indicators by factor analysis in order to examine construct validity. According to the results
of factor analysis (v2 = 5148.462, df = 990, p = 0.000 \ 0.001), the construct validity of
the questionnaire was confirmed. Moreover, the internal consistency and reliability were
tested by means of the Cronbach’s alpha coefficient, and the result for the sample as a
whole was 0.96. For the various domains, the coefficient ranged from 0.86 to 0.91 (Use-
fulness = 0.88, Ease of use = 0.86, Ease of learning = 0.88, Satisfaction = 0.87, Func-
tionality = 0.91), indicating the questionnaire was acceptable with good internal
consistency and reliability. One-way ANOVA was then used to analyze if there was any
significant differences in the five dimensions in terms of grade and gender.

Investigation two: the system functionality in support of reading accuracy

Just as Holzinger et al. (2011) emphasized that the speed and accuracy of visual perfor-
mance have been identified as sensitive measurements for the different display quality in

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different media. The second investigation focused on the reading rate and the reading
accuracy (percentage of words recognized correctly) in different media in order to examine
whether the e-book system was able to achieve the same results as the printed book.
Meanwhile, as shown in Fig. 4d, we also examined the function of tracking learning
process to verify whether the system functionality in operation can adequately reflect the
student’s learning behaviors in this study.
Rasinski (1999) claimed that readers with good word recognition accuracy tended to
read fluently, and reading accuracy can be used to determine a reader’s frustration,
instructional, and independent reading levels. It is what must be done to retain the infor-
mation in their working memory and short-term memory (Ecker et al. 2010; Nation and
Cocksey 2009; Swanson and Howell 2001) at various levels of comprehension. However,
since children still have to learn many new words, their emergent literacy would affect
their reading accuracy and comprehension.
For example, Gillett and Temple (1986) adopted word recognition accuracy rates of
97% or better as an indicator for independent reading level, 90–96% for instructional
reading level, and less than 90% for frustration reading level. Similarly, Johnson et al.
(1987) recommend 99% or better as the criterion for independent level reading,
95–98% for instructional, and 90% or less for frustration. This study adopted the
criteria that Johnson et al. proposed, and then examined whether the students’ reading
accuracy when using an e-book with IELS or a printed book had any significant
difference. In determining reading accuracy, we referred to Rasinski’s error word
counting rules, in which word substitutions, insertions, omissions, reversals, and words
pronounced by the rater after a prolonged hesitation (count of five) were counted as
errors.
There were 12 sixth-grade students (seven males and five females) participating in
investigation two. The books read by the students (an e-book and a printed book) were
general science reports written in Chinese. The e-book consisted of 20 topics, with a
total 3,640 words, the average words per sentence was 15 words, and the word frequency
was 99.09% within the 5,021 Chinese common words which have been reported in an
elementary school survey of common words (Ministry of Education, Republic of China
2000). The printed book consisted of 17 topics, with a total 3,633 words, the average
words per sentence was 15 words, and the word frequency was 99.48% within the same
set of common words. The topics in both books were representing some important
themes in science which would not affect the student’s reading. The use of an above
level text was to ensure that students would orally read such a text within their word
recognition ability, thus preventing a ceiling effect in word recognition for less or better
readers.
In the first round, as shown in Fig. 6c, the participants were asked to orally read the
printed book at a static rate of 120 wpm (words per minutes) during 15 min. Two
days later, as shown in Fig. 6d, the participants returned for session two to complete
the e-book oral reading task with IELS, and the reading procedure was the same as
that for the printed book. Every student was paired with a rater in a separate room,
and all the investigation processes were recorded with a camcorder. Finally, the
participant videos were analyzed independently and distributed to three raters in order
to count the error words, and then all the counting results were confirmed by a
researcher. Any difference in counting between raters and the researcher was discussed
until a consensus was reached. An independent samples t-test method was adopted to
determine if there is a significant difference in reading accuracy between the printed
book and the e-book.

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Empowering personalized learning with an interactive e-book learning system 715

Results and discussion

Student’s perceptions

The original participants in this investigation were 174 students, however eight individuals,
who either had a learning disability or did not finish the evaluation procedure, were
eliminated. The final effective sample size was thus 166, with 85 males and 81 females.
The questionnaire results are shown in Tables 2 and 3.
As shown in Table 2, the students’ perceptions with regard to the system’s usefulness
and ease of use, and satisfaction dimensions were significantly different among the grades.
Although, the mean values were above 3.77, which indicates that the students’ comments
about the IELS were positive within grades. In Table 3, the perceptions with regard to
gender differences were only significantly different in the satisfaction dimension, but the
feedback was positive among both males (M = 3.98) and females (M = 4.17). In general,
all of the students made very positive comments about the IELS. Not surprisingly, the
results are more robust than those in Lam et al. (2009) in term of the students’ perceptions
of the value of reading e-books. The digital natives are already confronted with a high-
technological environment, and their acceptance of technology seems plausible higher than
the elderly (Holzinger et al. 2011).
In general, the findings were quite different from those in Berg et al. (2010). Their study
concluded that the undergraduate students preferred browsing, scanning, and skipping
around the text, suggesting a non-linear approach toward using e-books, with this being
seen as aiding practical learning tasks. In this study, the elementary school students were
only evaluating the system and comparing it with the printed book in terms of users’
experience, and thus we cannot assert that ‘‘elementary students prefer e-books’’. In
addition, differences between the studied age group might be another factor to explain the
different results of this work and Berg et al. (2010).
In the open-ended questions, the results of the students’ feedback were similar to the
findings shown in Table 2. Specifically, 25% of the students ‘‘emphasized again’’ that the
IELS was very convenient, enjoyable (8%), and easy to use (5%). However, 15% men-
tioned the colors available for highlighting were too few, and even suggested that they
could be improved by utilizing the palette function in Microsoft Paint. Moreover, 13%
commented that the system was slow, and 8% expected more functions in IELS to be
further developed. All these suggestions call for further studies in the future.
With regard to the advantages, 14% of students mentioned that the IELS seems very
convenient for learning, 4% found it enjoyable, and 2% think it makes learning easier.
Regarding the disadvantages, 14% of the students were worried about eye fatigue after a
long period of use, 10% were distracted, and 3% were afraid to damage the device. As
noted in the previous studies (Berg et al. 2010; Shepperd et al. 2008; Woody et al. 2010),
these issues should be addressed in the future work.

Reading accuracy

Table 4 shows the oral reading and accuracy rate results of the printed book and the
e-book, and no significant differences were found in the second investigation. The accu-
racy rates were close to 98% (printed book = 97.86% and e-book = 98.12%). According
to Johnson et al.’s classification (1987) such accuracy rates correspond to the instructional
level (95–98%), and we thus concluded that the e-book reading functionality of IELS has
the same reading accuracy rate as a printed book.

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 716

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Table 2 Mean scores of student’s perceptions of the five dimensions in the six grades
Dimensions Grade 1 (n = 25) Grade 2 (n = 27) Grade 3 (n = 25) Grade 4 (n = 30) Grade 5 (n = 31) Grade 6 (n = 28) Total (n = 166) ANOVA

M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD M SD F g2

Usefulness 4.60 0.47 4.56 0.46 4.00 0.80 4.05 0.60 3.95 0.86 4.13 1.02 4.20 0.77 4.14** 0.11
Ease of use 4.25 0.65 4.45 0.52 3.87 0.87 3.77 0.67 4.05 0.72 4.08 0.84 4.07 0.75 3.31** 0.09
Ease of learning 4.31 0.86 4.44 0.57 3.78 1.34 4.01 0.96 4.37 0.78 4.25 0.97 4.20 0.95 1.88 0.06
Satisfaction 4.69 0.55 4.54 0.50 4.22 0.78 4.30 0.54 4.11 0.80 4.22 0.92 4.34 0.72 2.68* 0.08
Functionality 4.50 0.65 4.60 0.49 4.12 0.84 4.22 0.68 4.14 0.55 4.25 0.89 4.30 0.71 2.26 0.07
* p \ 0.05, ** p \ 0.01. g2 means the effect size
Y.-M. Huang et al.
Empowering personalized learning with an interactive e-book learning system 717

Table 3 Mean scores of student’s perceptions of the five dimensions between genders
Dimensions Male Female ANOVA
(n = 85) (n = 81)

M SD M SD F g2

Usefulness 4.18 0.79 4.23 0.75 0.16 0.00

Ease of use 3.98 0.77 4.17 0.71 2.58 0.02
Ease of learning 4.19 0.87 4.21 1.03 0.03 0.00
Satisfaction 4.20 0.75 4.48 0.66 6.56* 0.04
Functionality 4.20 0.72 4.41 0.68 3.83 0.02
* p \ 0.05. g2 means the effect size

Table 4 Oral reading and accuracy rate differences between students who read a printed book and an
e-book
Measure Printed book (n = 12) E-book (n = 12) df t

M SD M SD

Oral reading (words) 2471.83 433.62 2335.08 294.00 22 0.904

Accuracy rate (%) 97.86 1.00 98.12 0.86 22 -.687

Although many researchers (Korat 2010; Korat and Shamir 2007, 2008; Segal-Drori
et al. 2010; Shamir et al. 2008) claimed that e-book reading could advance the children’s
reading comprehension and enjoyment as such materials are able to offer more visual and
audio appeal. This study only examined the learning context with text-based material not
including the multimedia learning effects. This might obscure the potential benefits the
e-book can offer for children in our findings. Moreover, we are also aware of a limitation
that the number of participants was small. Future studies should include more students
within the context of actual courses when learning with IELS.
Furthermore, measuring the students’ word recognition accuracy may allow for a more
sensitive diagnosis of possible reading difficulties, as a good accuracy may suggest that a
reader has achieved adequate word recognition, and vice versa (Rasinski 1999). In this
study, the accuracy rates meant that the students achieved a good word recognition level
when they orally read both the printed book and the e-book in IELS. Good e-book reading
functionality should consider the user’s reading behavior, just as the developed IELS
which adopted the INTERACT for structuring the system components related to interactive
multimedia instruction. The system UI and functionality were also considered and
developed in cooperation with a group of in-service teachers in order to acquire the
student’s real learning needs. These moves achieved adaptive readability for the students
using IELS to read an e-book, and this system may be used as a basis for future devel-
opments of using e-books in academic learning.

Learning process tracking

In order to evaluate the operation of the system functionality, this study collected a total of
150 reading rate records from the learning process tracking function that automatically
activated and recorded individual student’s learning statuses while they were learning in

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718 Y.-M. Huang et al.

Fig. 7 The reading rate All

transformations in the learning
250
Male
process
Female

Reading rate (wpm)

200

150

100

50

0
3 6 9 12 15
Time (minutes)

IELS. The current learning statuses include reading rate, reading path, and personalized
notes; more parameters will be explored in the future. Meanwhile, for better understanding
the reading rate transformations, we further examined the reading rate growth in an interval
of 3 min within these records.
As shown in Fig. 7, we found the reading rates were adjustable and ranged from an
initial rate of 107.78 wpm, and then gradually increased to 182.89 wpm. Both male and
female students’ transformations were close to the trend of the mean value. Moreover, the
average reading rate of the e-book learning process was 149.64 wpm, indicating that the
students’ optimal oral reading rate is actually higher than 120 wpm as requested. We argue
that they need to reduce their individual optimal oral reading speed in order to keep up with
the reading speed of the whole class in practice.
Our findings were supported by many researchers (Carver 1977, 1983, 1990; Duggan
and Payne 2009; Dyson and Haselgrove 2000; Fraser 2007; McLay 2007; Rasinski 1999,
2000; Stroud and Henderson 1943) who have concluded that a child’s reading rate is
approximately constant, but adjustable across the reading materials through the whole
reading process. Thus, we were convinced that IELS was well functioning, in which, a
learning process tracking technique properly reflected a student’s actual learning behavior.
By this and other personalized learning functions designed in IELS such as learning
process tracking and integrating more context-aware and sensor techniques in the future
(Bloice et al. 2010), we can timely examine individual learning differences among students
through mining their personalized learning portfolios (Huang and Wu 2011; Wu et al. in
press), and then guide their learning properly during the learning process according to the
results of adaptive testing (Huang et al. 2009; Lin et al. 2010) or individual learning
attitude (Huang et al. 2012). Aligned with the perspective of INTERACT, the learning
environment should connect the feedback loops between the instructional events, behav-
ioral processes and the cognitive processes, which could activate students’ learning
motivation and involves them in cognitive learning activity (Domagk et al. 2010).

Conclusions

Little is known about the use of e-books among children, especially the digital natives. We
speculate that the preferences of digital natives might be greatly different from those of

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Empowering personalized learning with an interactive e-book learning system 719

adults. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of an Interactive E-book
Learning System (IELS) for elementary school students and their perceptions of the IELS
with an emphasis on personalized learning. The IELS was structured, designed, and
implemented not only by the research team but also an in-service teacher group, presenting
the more realistic functionality to match the student’s learning needs. The analysis, design,
implementation, and evaluation procedure of the developed system were elaborated in
details in this paper.
The results of the evaluation of the system’s usability and functionality by 166 ele-
mentary school students were quite positive. The e-book was found to be more acceptable
than the printed book based on our findings. Although no significant difference was found
in reading accuracy between reading e-book and printed book; however, the learning
process tracking technique proposed in this study can provide detailed and visible learning
process which a printed book cannot offer. With the technique, an individual learning
activity can be recorded to establish a link between instructors and parents. The recorded
information can be further used to tailor an intelligent personalized learning environment
by adopting some state-of-the-art computer technologies.
Based on Korat et al.’s claim that the young children’s emergent literacy would benefit
their reading on e-books, we are now more convinced that the development of appropriate
e-books can support children’s learning and may largely substitute printed books in the
future. To this end, an interactive e-book learning system supporting personalized learning
for digital natives to cultivate their learning seems on demand.

Acknowledgments This work was supported by the National Science Council (NSC) and Ministry of
Education, Taiwan, ROC, under Contracts No. NSC 99-2631-S-011-002, NSC 99-2631-S-006-001, NSC
100-2631-S-006-002, NSC 100-2511-S-006-015-MY3, NSC 100-2511-S-006-014-MY3 and the MOE
99-ICT innovative school plan.

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Yueh-Min Huang is a distinguished professor in the Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng-
Kung University, Taiwan. His research interests include multimedia communications, wireless networks,
artificial intelligence, and e-learning.

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Tsung-Ho Liang is a doctoral student of the Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng-Kung
University, Taiwan. His current research interests include how ICT may be used as a learning tool to
improve teaching and learning, student modelling, and e-books.

Yen-Ning Su is a doctoral student of the Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng-Kung

University, Taiwan. His current research interests include ICT application in Chinese language teaching and
learning, data mining, and e-books.

Nian-Shing Chen is a distinguished professor with the Department of Information Management, the
National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan. His research interests include online synchronous teaching &
learning, mobile & ubiquitous learning, joyful & game-based learning.

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