Traditional Textbooks vs.

eTextbooks - Pros and Cons

There are advantages and disadvantages to both types of textbooks (traditional and
ebook). The tables below will give you some good comparison information to help you
make the decision as to which would be best for you!*

Traditional Textbooks

Pros Cons
Widely available Heavy, bulky
Found new or used Can be expensive
No electronic equipment needed Can be out of stock
Can write in margins Excessive markings can reduce buyback price
May be able to sell back or lend Difficult to search and find information
May be available in library or tutoring center
With care, can last for many years

eTextbooks

Pros Cons
Never out of stock, no wait for shipping Electronic device (computer, tablet, ereader, phone)
Many books fit on a single computer/tablet/reader needed
Integrated dictionary May not be able to sell back or lend
Easy to search and find information Copying/printing usually restricted
Can electronically highlight or annotate May become outdated - could make book files unavailable
Sometimes annotations can be shared
Can have web or multimedia tie-ins
Some have text-to-speech reader
Environmentally friendly
Books can often be downloaded wirelessly

E-textbooks Effectiveness Studied

 Each new semester begins with a flurry of textbook purchases, price-
comparisons, protests, rentals and returns. Concern for textbook costs has risen as steadily as the prices, but
readers who reach for electronic textbooks to save money could end up costing themselves more time for the same
grade.

Although busy students don’t analyze the effectiveness of their reading habits, psychology professors Drs. David
Daniel and Krisztina Jakobsen know that the medium used for a textbook impacts its effectiveness as a learning tool.
Daniel and Jakobsen were intrigued by the e-textbook trend because despite the hype, it remains unproven as a
suitable replacement for traditional textbooks.

Until recently there were no data to evaluate if students learn as well from e-textbooks, despite the push from
publishers, legislators, and others to adopt them.

So how do students read e-textbooks differently from the familiar paper textbooks? If the new trend in textbooks is
moving them to computer screens, the switch could have negative consequences as many suggest that people skim
more, process more shallowly, and may retain less information when reading online, Daniel said.

To figure out where the differences between monitor and manuscript lie, Daniel and Jakobsen conducted a study last
fall funded by a $10,000 grant from Cengage Learning. By combining his pedagogy research with her analysis of
visual attention, they hoped to explore how students read e-textbooks compared to traditional textbooks.

The most acclaimed feature of e-textbooks is their affordability. For example, a psychology professor teaching an
introductory course could assign the textbook Introduction to Psychology by Rod Plotnik and Haig Kouyoumdjian. At
the time this article was written, a hardcover version of the book on Amazon costs $144 and a used paperback
version is $95, but the Kindle edition sells for $88. The comparison makes e-textbooks a deceptively appealing
choice.

“E-textbooks are good for publishers because they can recoup their investment and maximize profits – no need for
the buyback process or used book sales to feather the nest of campus bookstores either,” Daniel said. “It is
essentially an economic argument, even by legislators.”

This makes lower-income students especially vulnerable to the pitch, he added, because students with less money or
those who have less time to devote to their studies are being encouraged to use inferior products.

Despite these concerns, Daniel’s previously published findings reveal that students do not like e-textbooks and even
when they are offered one for free, they are likely to buy the paper book also. This agrees with a survey conducted in
August 2008 by Student Public Interest Research Groups, in which 75 percent of student respondents said they
preferred a printed textbook to a digital version, and 60 percent said would buy a low-cost print copy even if the digital
book were free.

He also found that students greatly prefer paper textbooks, even if they have had previous experience with e-
textbooks. So why are e-books so popular while e-textbooks aren’t? The readers’ goals are different: Individuals
reading an e-book for enjoyment aren’t required to pass a comprehension-based test afterward. While they found that
learning is possible from both formats, learning from e-textbooks takes longer and requires more effort to reach the
same level of understanding, even in a controlled lab environment. At home, students report taking even more time to
read e-textbooks as well as higher rates of muti-tasking (e.g., Facebook, electronic chat, texting, email, etc.) than do
their peers using printed textbooks. Simply transferring the printed page into PDF format may add a layer of
processing associated with reading from a computer screen as well as be more convenient access to
distractions. Compared to print textbooks, e-textbooks are fairly inefficient.

Daniel’s previous results also showed that students are not likely to use the added multimedia features that make
some-textbooks interactive. The links to these modules are typically imbedded within the text, but students generally
want to finish the reading first. Those reading e-textbooks were more likely to skip embedded multimedia and
hyperlinks than they would if they used a free website connected to the printed textbook.

Beginning in late September the duo and their students employed eye-tracking technology, which shows patterns of
how a reader looks at a page of text and generates heat maps to show how long or often the reader fixates on a
section. To analyze how the book format effects comprehension, the study used student subjects who were taking a
college psychology course for the first time and tested their knowledge after they read chapters from an introductory
psychology textbook, either from a paper book or a from an exact PDF copy on a computer screen.

A camera embedded within the monitor tracked the readers’ pupils as they scanned the pages, calculating where
students looked and for how long, to record a path of where they focused, paused or doubled back while reading. By
watching this movement over the page, “you can measure every eye movement they make,” Jakobsen said,
explaining that she and Daniel could tell if a student read a paragraph or followed instructions in the text to look at a
graph or read a caption. In their preliminary findings, the scanning pattern produced when the student read a textbook
showed consistent reading from line to line down the page. But the scanning pattern from reading on the screen was
less intense.

“Although it takes longer, we found out that students can score the same reading comprehension as with a paper
book, but interact differently than with print,” Jakobsen said. “Some evidence suggests that people skim web pages
while they read, picking out a line then skimming down the page and picking out another in a pattern that reads like a
giant E or F down the page.” This method is ineffective for studying because too much information gets lost, causing
the reader to have to reread sections as they check for understanding. Their results found an interaction between the
page formatting and the way people read, as well as the possibility that reading level is related to different reading
styles. Poorly skilled readers may have an even more difficult time in this medium, but that has yet to be fully
explored.

“Reading and studying are different activities for many students, and we should be designing products that recognize
that,” Jakobsen said. “When they are reading they want to finish reading and when they are studying they go straight
for key words and tutorials because they want to review,” Daniel added.

Daniel and Jakobsen argue that the information dense textbooks characteristic of natural and social science subjects
are not a good fit for current e-textbooks, but there are exceptions for subjects like chemistry and math that include
doing formulas and other activities. The liability, Daniel emphasizes, comes when math and chemistry teachers hope
their students will learn the explanations, not just the formulas, “Students tend to skip the text and go straight to the
formulas, especially if they are graded.”

“Publishers can’t change the way people read online,” Daniel said, “but they can find new ways to format e-textbooks
to make them more effective for how students learn best and prefer to interact with the product. We believe that
science can help guide this process toward the development of more effective learning tools for all students.”

Key Takeaways
 A four-year university-wide study of students' e-textbook practices found that e-
textbook use has increased, particularly among younger students.
 The major barriers — including a student preference for print and unfamiliarity
with e-textbooks — show signs of being alleviated.
 Other factors related to mobile device access and pedagogically effective e-
textbooks show little change over the study period.
 Instructor practices have improved, but there is still room for growth, with
implications for focused professional development.
Textbook affordability is a growing concern in the US higher education context. A study
conducted by the Florida Virtual Campus found that more than 70 percent of student
respondents reported spending at least $300 on textbooks during the spring 2016
term.1Compared to a previous survey,2 there was a decrease in the "$0–$100" cost
category from 9.8 to 8.2 percent, while the "$601 or more" cost category increased from
8.5 to 8.9 percent. To reduce college costs, some students may decide not to purchase
textbooks or to simply take fewer classes.3 A recent survey of our students
at University of Central Florida found that, due to high costs,

 30 percent of respondents said they have opted not to purchase a textbook at least
once,
 41 percent have delayed purchasing a textbook, and
 15 percent have taken fewer courses or decided not take a particular class.

These figures are even more troubling when extrapolating to student performance,
retention, and graduation rates.

Various solutions have been proposed to make textbooks more affordable for college
students. E-textbooks (that is, books available electronically) have been touted as
reducing costs and alleviating the need for students to carry heavy textbooks. 4 In 2009,
Indiana University pioneered the concept of bulk purchasing course materials from
textbook publishers to directly provide books in an electronic format on the first day of a
course.5 This model has been adopted by Unizin, a 22-member consortium of higher
education institutions in the US. Another proposed solution to reduce costs is e-textbook
rentals. The 2016 Florida Virtual Campus survey reported that students shifted away
from purchasing lifetime access and toward renting e-textbooks to save money. Despite
these proposed institutional solutions, however, less expensive digital materials have
not reached mainstream adoption.

A movement, motivated by complex factors, has changed the narrative of e-textbooks

within the academic literature. The focus has swiftly shifted from publisher-produced
printed or electronic format materials to creating and adopting open educational
resources (OERs). At their most basic definition, OERs are materials that are openly
licensed, giving users the legal permission to retain, reuse, revise, remix, and
redistribute the material.6 Examples of OERs range from comprehensive materials such
as curriculum and textbooks to individual videos, syllabi, lecture notes, and
tests.7 Emerging research finds that students using OERs are no worse in course
performance than those using costly materials.8

To better understand this changing landscape, our research team at UCF conducted
three surveys (in 2012, 2014, and 2016) to assess college students' attitudes and
practices concerning e-textbooks. Our research was limited to current practices and
attitudes, since the university's restrictive bookstore agreement did not permit an
institutional-level initiative to broaden the adoption of e-textbooks.

The goal for the initial 2012 survey was to provide a baseline of ownership and use on
which to build future research, while the goal of the 2014 and 2016 surveys was to
gauge changes that had occurred over time.9 In the 2016 survey, we paid particular
attention to e-textbook types and OER.

This article compares our results to previous surveys and addresses three research
questions:

1. What is the rate and types of e-textbook use, and how has this changed over time? Are
demographic factors at play?
2. What are the influential factors to using e-textbooks, and how have they changed over
time?
3. Has instructor integration of e-textbooks changed over time?

Key Issues

Despite the advantages of e-textbooks, including interactive features and accessibility

on mobile devices, several barriers exist regarding implementation in higher education:
the availability of digital alternatives, the questionable effectiveness of the e-textbooks
being used, the inconsistency of state textbook affordability initiatives, and the unclear
role of the instructor in adoption of e-textbooks in courses.

Availability

Although the availability of digital materials is growing in the higher education market,
the concept of the traditional print textbook remains steadfast. In the UCF bookstore, for
instance, digital materials comprise about 3 percent of course material purchases. In the
2016–2017 academic year, approximately 40 percent of required textbooks were also
offered in a digital format.10

Furthermore, instructors required e-textbooks in conjunction with a printed textbook

more often than requiring e-textbooks alone. All of this could be problematic, given that
the majority of incoming students from the K–12 context are likely to be familiar with
digital materials.

Effectiveness

Of the e-textbooks being used, quality is still under investigation. The design of the e-
textbook is an important factor for user acceptance.11 Thomas Chiu found that the
strongest predictor for e-textbook's use was attitude toward the e-textbook; that is,
students must perceive it as useful.12 An article by Ghislaine Gueudet and her
colleagues articulates the process by which instructors worked together to co-author an
e-textbook and pinpointed areas in which e-textbooks noticeably differ from their
traditional counterparts.13 For instance, because of the more nonlinear experience, the
instructors realized they would need to create a "toolkit" more than a "textbook" and
provide students multiple pathways to navigate through the topic areas. Indeed, some
features, such as concept maps and videos, may increase learning outcomes for
readers.14
Affordability

In the US, textbook affordability legislation is inconsistent. States such as California,

Oregon, Georgia, New York, and Virginia have made strategic investments at the higher
education system level to create and promote OERs. At a local level, institutions may
assess a course material fee to provide each student with a digital copy of the textbook.
Using this model reduces the cost to each student by ensuring that all students are
paying for the materials. Further, a Florida statute encourages institutions to explore
bulk purchases or licensing digital course materials and to pursue OER.15 It remains to
be seen how these state and local efforts pay off.

The Role of Instructors

Instructors have an influential role to play in textbook selection. Higher education

instructors tend to have more flexibility in selecting course materials compared to their
K–12 counterparts.16 The K–12 system operates in a top-down approach in comparison
to higher education. Given their power of choice, higher education instructors need to
how to select optimal instructional materials to meet their pedagogical needs at the
lowest cost for students.

Beyond that, instructors continue to need support in determining how to best facilitate a
digital reading experience. For example, Alan Dennis and his colleagues found that
students performed better on open-ended test items when they had access to
instructor-created annotations within e-textbooks than students who did not have this
access.17

Survey Methods

Because of the sparse research on students' e-textbook practices at the time, we

developed a survey questionnaire in 2012 to explore basic usage and attitudes about
e-textbooks.

We defined an "e-textbook" as an electronic version of a print textbook that is typically

divided by chapters on particular subject areas. Our 2014 and 2016 survey questions,
based on the 2012 survey, also contained questions to gain more in-depth information
about instructor behaviors and the types of e-textbooks used. All three surveys were
approved by UCF's Institutional Review Board and tested by survey experts for content
validity.

Our research team contacted all instructors credentialed to teach online at UCF for the
three surveys and sought permission to place a link to the online surveys in online,
blended, and face-to-face sections of their courses.

All three surveys had similar student respondent characteristics, including sex and age
(see table 1). The research team downloaded all survey responses from the online
survey system and calculated frequencies and percentages to measure students' use of
and beliefs about e-textbooks. Chi square statistics were used to detect whether
demographic factors affected students' e-textbook practices. We also compared results
of the 2016 survey to the 2014 and 2012 surveys where appropriate.

Table 1. Characteristics of samples

Characteristics 2012 2014 2016

Courses 84 83 118

Colleges 12 12 12

Undergraduates 809 1,075 1,179

Graduates 133 106 295

Female 69% 68% 63%

Male 31% 32% 37%

Age M = 26 M = 24 M = 24

SD = 8.17 SD = 7.04 SD = 7.09

Survey Results

The survey results that follow are organized according to the three research topics: use,
adoption, and instructor role.

E-Textbook Use

What is the rate and what are the types of e-textbook use, and have either or both
changed over time? How do demographic factors relate to use?

E-textbook use grew in popularity over the four-year period (see figure 1). In 2012, 42
percent of participants reported using an e-textbook at least once in their college
studies. That number rose to 60 percent in 2014, and again to 66 percent in 2016. In
2016, 55 percent of participants who reported using an e-textbook said it was a required
course component, compared to 49 percent in 2014 and 45 percent in 2012. While the
rate of an e-textbook requirement increased over the four years, the rate of overall e-
textbook use among students increased at a more rapid rate.
 Figure 1. Use of e-textbooks 2012–
2016

We found demographic factors to be significant over the three surveys. All three surveys
discovered that undergraduate students were significantly more likely to report using e-
textbooks than graduate students (X2(1, N = 1,306) = 5.83, p = .02). In 2016, age
emerged as an influential factor; younger students were significantly more likely to
report using e-textbooks than older students (r(1,333) = 0.081, p < .01). While males
were more likely to use e-textbooks in 2014, we did not find this in 2012 or 2016,
suggesting a variation in sampling. Similarly, in 2012, full-time students were more likely
to use e-textbooks, but we did not find this in subsequent surveys. Our results suggest
that e-textbook use has flourished across the university, but academic discipline did
emerge as a significant factor. Across the four years, the College of Business was
significantly more likely than other colleges to use e-textbooks (X2(14, N = 1,304) =
34.49, p < .01).

Appreciating the vast differences in e-textbook features, we asked participants in 2014

and 2016 about the types of e-textbooks they had used in their studies (see figure 2).
Curiously, use of all types of e-textbooks decreased from 2014 to 2016.

Figure 2. Types of e-textbooks used,

2014 and 2016
The most commonly used e-textbooks were ones that offered basic features such as
highlighting and annotations; 51 percent of students reported using these in 2016 (down
from 72 percent in 2014). "Flat" PDFs dropped 10 percent to a rate of 37 percent in
2016. The other three categories mentioned (interactive elements, open access, and
instructor-created) also declined slightly in the two-year period. In 2016, only 5 percent
of students reported using an e-textbook created by the instructor; 20 percent reported
using an open online textbook, and 24 percent used e-textbooks with interactive
features (such as embedded quizzes).

A possible explanation for the curious decline from 2014 to 2016 emerged from the
open-ended survey comments. When asked what types of e-textbooks they had used,
students listed products such
as Bookshelf, Yuzu, MyMathLab, Lynda, ALEKS, McGraw Connect, and Google
Books — a true mix of publisher materials, personalized learning software, Web-based
tutorials, and e-reading platforms. It is possible that students' conception of e-textbooks
does not conform to our narrow definition.

Use of devices has changed little over the four-year period. The majority of students in
2016 (82 percent) reported using a computer as the primary way to access e-textbooks
(vs. 83 percent in 2012).

Adoption Factors

What are the most influential factors regarding e-textbook adoption, and have they
changed over time?

In each survey, students were asked what would influence them to use an e-textbook.
Over the period from 2012 to 2016, the factors that typically encouraged students to use
an e-textbook have all decreased (see figure 3).
 Figure 3. Factors that encourage
students to adopt e-textbooks, 2012–2016

While "low cost" is still the most-cited factor across all three surveys, it has decreased.
In 2012, 81 percent of students said that "low cost" would influence them to adopt an e-
textbook; four years later, that figure had dropped to 74 percent. While the benefit of the
"ability to read offline" was 61 percent in 2012, by 2016 it was down to 48 percent. In
2016, only 33 percent said that the ability to print pages would influence them to adopt
an e-textbook; in 2012, 49 percent had cited it as important. These are intriguing results,
given that the actual use of e-textbooks has risen 24 percent during this time period.

Asking students why they have notused e-textbooks provides additional context to
understand these findings (see figure 4).
 Figure 4. Factors that discourage
students from adopting e-textbooks, 2012–2016

In 2012, 38 percent of students said that they chose not to use an e-textbook because
they preferred print. In 2014, the number had actually risen to 42 percent. Two years
later, that number had drastically dropped to just 17 percent. Citing "not familiar with e-
textbooks" has also decreased; in 2012, 30 percent said they chose not to use e-
textbooks because they were not familiar with them. By 2014, the figure was down to 10
percent. In 2016, that figure had dropped to only 6 percent.

Open-ended comments revealed additional themes. Student concerns included e-

textbooks taking up too much memory or running down their battery power; as one
student put it, "e-book devices die." Negative physical effects such as headaches and
eyestrain were also cited, as were other challenges associated with digital reading. One
student shared, "It is difficult for me to go back and locate passages," while another
said, "I prefer to highlight when I read." Interestingly, most e-textbooks have search and
highlighting features, but students might be unaware of that functionality.
An interesting finding is that students' beliefs about their ability to use e-textbooks
effectively actually fell over the study period, even in the face of increasing use. Fewer
students in 2016 felt they had the technical and study skills to effectively use an e-
textbook than in 2012. While in 2012 60 percent of students felt they could learn as
effectively using an e-textbook as using a print textbook, in 2016 only 44 percent of
students said the same.

Role of the Instructor

Has instructor integration changed over time?

After analyzing the 2012 survey results and considering the literature, we recognized
the importance of the instructor's role in successful e-textbook implementation. In 2014
and 2016, we asked students about various factors here, such as whether the e-
textbook was acknowledged in the syllabus, if the instructor provided technical
instructions, and if the instructor modeled the pedagogical use of the e-textbook (see
figure 5).

Figure 5. Instructor role in students using e-textbooks, 2014 and 2016

Each of these categories saw increases in 2016. For instance, 46 percent of students
said it was acknowledged in the syllabus (up from 33 percent in 2014); 44 percent said
the instructor provided technical instructions (up from 36 percent in 2014); and 34
percent said the instructor modeled use of the book (up from 28 percent in 2014).

The most positive finding related to whether the instructor actively used features of the
e-textbook, such as note-taking or highlighting. Although 77 percent of students in 2014
said the instructor never used the features, only 48 percent said the same in 2016.
Given how critical instructors are to the success of e-textbook implementation,18 these
numbers are promising.

Discussion

Our study findings have implications in several key areas: (1) use and efficacy, (2)
instructor support, (3) institutional activities, and (4) maximizing the e-textbook
experience.
Use and Efficacy

At UCF, students are using e-textbooks at an increasing rate. However, the factors
typically cited as reasons to adopt them (lower cost and the ability to print) appear to be
less influential in 2016 than in previous years.

Undergraduates, particularly those on the young side of the spectrum, consistently use
e-textbooks at a higher rate than graduate students. This is not surprising, given the
proliferation of digital materials throughout the K–12 school system. We predict that the
rate of e-textbooks will continue to increase because of the skills and familiarity with
them of the incoming student population. However, a troubling issue is that students in
2016 reported lower self-efficacy than those in 2012 concerning e-textbook technical
and study skills, and less than half felt that they could learn as effectively with an e-
textbook as with a print textbook. And yet: more students are using e-textbooks than
ever. These findings have implications at the student, instructor, university, and state
levels.

Over the span of 2012–2016, our survey found a 24 percent increase in use of e-
textbooks. Perhaps students responding to the 2016 survey were more aware of their
abilities concerning e-textbook-related activities because exposure has increased.
Being more familiar with the digital reading experience might actually explain the
decreasing perceptions about learning effectiveness.19 This is a potential line of
research for others to explore to tease out student patterns.

Instructor Support

Instructors will need state and institutional support to choose high-quality, low-cost
materials to support student learning. To exercise this top-down influence, states need
to invest in creating effective, sustainable e-textbooks, as well as in incentivizing
instructors to co-create digital materials, create and promote open repositories, and
engage in professional development. Adopting existing OERs should be considered, but
instructors will likely need guidance in choosing and adapting them. In some cases, they
might need support in building their own digital materials. As detailed in previous
articles,20collaborative writing of e-textbooks is complex. Facilitation is also key; to be
truly effective, instructors need to model and think aloud, allowing student readers to
see the strategies that work and thereby become more immersed in the reading
experience.21

Institutional Activities

For a university, a course material fee model could expand access to traditional
publisher e-textbooks. It is advantageous for each student to have access from the first
day for a reduced cost. However, it remains important to select a platform that offers a
valuable reading experience. The diverse expertise of librarians, instructional designers,
and technical specialists can assist instructors in this pursuit. It is therefore essential
that institutions provide resources dedicated to the selection, creation, and
implementation of digital resources. Universities can also collect data on low-cost e-
textbooks and OER adoption and use across all courses. Further, universities can track
students longitudinally to evaluate the impact on retention and graduation rates.

Realizing the Digital Promise

Despite the increase in e-textbook use, we do not see a corresponding increase in e-

textbooks that offer advantageous features, such as instructor annotations or interactive
quizzes. This suggests that, while students are more familiar with digital versions, they
might not be experiencing anything beyond a digital version of print material. The digital
promise is to take advantage of the Internet, to take it on the go, and to be easily
accessible to all. At the time of this writing, this promise is not being fully realized.

Authors and publishers must focus beyond simply offering digital versions of print
materials and instead consider the digital advantages that can be embedded. Natalie
Gerhart, Daniel Peak, and Victor R. Prybutok identified three antecedents for e-textbook
use that explain the majority of the variance: perceived usefulness, habit, and hedonic
motivation.22 They suggest publishers focus on these three areas; e-textbooks should
be useful, as well as employ components that are only available digitally (such as
multimedia and real-time collaboration).

Conclusions

Distributing the same survey three times across a four-year period has been quite
telling, and it allows us to appreciate both the dramatic and subtle changes in the e-
textbook landscape. It is interesting to reflect on the action items identified in our
previous article's conclusion.23 There, we predicted a shift in student expectations from a
"print book first" to a "digital first" mentality when purchasing course materials. While
perhaps not yet at "digital first," we see clear signs that digital is being considered at
higher rates than in the past.

Our previous article also mentioned a collaboration of librarians and instructional

designers that we formed to promote access to lower-cost and open e-textbooks.
Through this collaboration, we worked with several instructors to create and adopt
digital resources that have the potential to save approximately $100,000 for students
across campus. We also offered a professional development opportunity, in which a
cohort of instructors learned strategies to find, reuse, remix, create, and share OERs
with an emphasis on active learning. This "bottom-up" approach is a crucial component
within the higher education landscape.

Considering the longitudinal data collected and the successes realized so far, our future
plans have shifted from encouraging awareness of e-textbooks to scalable adoption of
effective e-textbooks at the university level. Our action items include the following:

 Establish a university-wide task force on textbook affordability, with a special focus on

adoption of digital materials
  Focus efforts on general education courses to experience the highest impact
 Track the experiences of instructors who are currently creating their own digital
resources and promote them as champions for incentive
 Expand professional development to include student support and pedagogical
strategies, such as careful e-textbook selection and active instructor modeling
 Explore the option of bulk licensing/infrastructure in the upcoming bookstore contract
 Fund dedicated resources (for instance, an OER librarian)
 Relate survey data to institutional effectiveness and performance-based funding metrics

This survey research has its limitations; the sample included undergraduate and
graduate students at only one university located in the southeastern US. Future
research could focus on varied contexts or samples, such as adults or students of other
ages, undergraduates only, or various regions or countries.

Also, while the survey provides data regarding e-textbook use, it does not speak to the
effectiveness of this instructional delivery method. Further experimental research,
properly designed and conducted, could explore the effectiveness of e-textbooks or
certain facilitation techniques within e-textbooks; it could also help us better understand
why students' original reasons to adopt e-textbooks have declined while their use
continues to rise. A qualitative approach to understanding how students conceive and
experience e-textbooks would be ideal. These lines of research will help us understand
e-textbook patterns at individual universities and beyond.

Key Takeaways
 This case study of Indiana University's e-text initiative reports on students' actual
use of and engagement with digital textbooks.
 In a typical semester, students read more in the first four weeks and less in later
weeks except during major assessment times; in a typical week, most reading
occurs between 5:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m. from Monday to Thursday, indicating
that students use e-texts mainly as a self-study resource.
 Highlighting was the markup feature most used by students, whereas use of the
other interactive markup features (shared notes, questions, and answers) was
minimal, perhaps because of students' lack of awareness of these features.
 Research found that higher engagement with e-texts (reading and highlighting)
correlated with higher course grades.

Although cost savings is often cited as a key advantage of electronic textbooks (aka, e-
textbooks or simply e-texts), e-texts also provide powerful markup and interaction tools.
For these tools to improve student learning, however, their adoption is critically
important.1 This article focuses on the adoption and use of these tools and actual
student reading data, which we consider understudied.2 Examination of actual reading
data as well as markup use might help identify effective study practices that improve
learning. In addition, adoption and use data might provide better measures to test the
effectiveness of interactive e-texts as learning support tools. For example, previous
research found that use of bookmarking, total number of pages read, and total number
of days spent reading predict final course grade.3

Indiana University, as one of the few higher education institutions in the United States
with a university-wide e-textbook adoption initiative, has also been studying adoption
and use of e-textbooks by instructors and students.4 In our previous EDUCAUSE
Review article5 we presented IU's e-texts program based on pilot data and some
insights from faculty use of e-texts. In this article, we present findings based on actual
use data on the e-text reading platform by IU students and instructors over multiple
semesters.

The Indiana University e-texts program, which began in 2009, has four primary goals:

1. Drive down the cost of materials for students

2. Provide high-quality materials of choice
3. Enable new tools for teaching and learning
4. Shape the terms of sustainable models that work for students, faculty, and authors
These goals have served us well. The program has continued to grow every year, and
we now have agreements with more than 25 publishers at substantially discounted
prices. As shown in table 1, the numbers — across calendar years from 2012 (when the
program went into production) through 2016 — show strong growth. Now that we are
more than five years into the full implementation of the e-text program, we are in a
position to assess the progress we have made in addressing key concerns raised by
instructors and students regarding e-text adoption.

Table 1. E-text adoption at Indiana University (2012–2016)

2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Course Sections 328 679 1,166 1,714 2,279

Adoptions* 690 1,167 1,751 1,912 2,590

Students 12,251 24,290 32,923 48,814 67,327

*"Adoptions" refers to a single course item (e.g., digital book, and a section may have
one or more).

Costs

As noted, our agreements with publishers provide substantial cost savings for students.
The formal calculation of the savings is the actual difference between the "print list
price" and the negotiated IU e-text price for the publisher content. To date, student
savings on textbooks amount to $21,673,338. However, we recognize that many
students do not pay the full list price for paper textbooks when they purchase online,
buy used copies, or recoup some of their costs when they resell their texts after the
semester is over. In fact, an article from the New York Times highlights that actual
student spending on course materials, including textbooks, was about half the actual
cost of the textbooks and related course materials.6 Therefore, we divide the calculated
savings by two and report that total as a more accurate representation of student
savings. Consequently, we claim that students have saved about $11 million since IU's
e-texts program started in spring 2012.

Printing

IU's e-texts program allows unlimited printing of textbook pages — up to 50 pages at a

time, using the university's reading platform (Unizin Engage). According to page view
records between the spring 2012 and spring 2016 semesters, 3,224 students from 251
courses (745 separate sections) printed over 130,000 pages of e-text (excluding
multiple prints of the same page). In comparison, records show over 11 million distinct
page view over the same time period. Therefore, paper-based reading constitutes only
one percent of the total reading activity at IU. By comparison, there were 56,824 unique
students in the system during this period. Thus, only five percent of the students chose
to print from their e-texts.

In addition to printing through the e-text platform, students can purchase a print-on-
demand (PoD) copy of an e-text for an additional fee. From fall 2012 until the end of
spring 2016, our records show that 461 different students submitted 510 separate PoD
requests, which varied from selected chapters of a book to a single complete book to
multiple books or reading packages in one request. Some students requested paper
copies more than once or requested multiple books at once, clearly having a strong
preference for paper copies. Nevertheless, these students represent less than one
percent of the total number of unique students (n = 52,763) active on the Engage
platform during the same time period.

Limited Access

One downside of e-texts is that students lease their textbook for a limited time instead of
owning it. This lease generally lasts a semester or six months, and students lose their
access afterwards. However, with IU's e-text model, students get access to the textbook
before the first day of class and maintain their access until they graduate from Indiana
University. That is, students can go back to the e-texts after their course to review or
reference the content in the book. This could be especially important if the e-text course
is a prerequisite for another course.

Between spring 2012 and spring 2016, page view records show that a total of 7,167
distinct students viewed 312,119 pages of their textbooks after their courses finished.
This corresponds to 13 percent of distinct students for all semesters combined, while it
makes up only 1.6 percent of the total page views. Of the post-term reading, 60 percent
occurred in the two weeks following the official last day of the semester, whereas the
remaining 40 percent happened after the two-week period, even into the next semester
or later. Overall, summer semesters have a higher volume of post-term reading
(summer 2014 had the highest at 43,615 page views) than spring or fall semesters,
even though fewer e-text course sections are held and fewer students attend summer
semesters. Most of these post-term readings (95 percent) were affiliated with 100-, 200-
, and 300-level courses as opposed to 400-level undergraduate courses.

Access on Multiple Devices and Offline Reading

With the browser-based e-text reading platform, students can access their e-texts from
any device — desktop computer, laptop, tablet, or smartphone. In addition, students can
choose to download an e-text to their devices for offline reading, which keeps the local
copy on the device for two weeks and then syncs reading activity to their records when
they go back online. Although the Engage database does not track the type of device
used, it marks pages as having been accessed offline when synced.
Between the spring 2012 and spring 2016 semesters, a total of 4,343 distinct students
accessed about 37,000 pages, which makes up less than 0.2 percent of the total page
views in this time span. We conclude that offline reading features are barely used by
students. Such a low volume of offline reading could result partially from a lack of
awareness of this feature, as student responses to a recent survey revealed (discussed
later).

Student Use of the E-Text Platform

The e-texts program at Indiana University has been available to all courses — online
and traditional, undergraduate and graduate — during all semesters. Because student
profiles and studying habits differ between graduate and undergraduate courses (not to
mention between online and traditional courses), we have limited our following report to
undergraduate courses offered in face-to-face settings in fall and spring semesters only.
We also excluded data from spring and fall 2012 semesters, as the first two semesters
of the program's implementation do not reflect the full-adoption patterns. As a result, the
sections below present data between the spring 2013 and spring 2016 semesters,
broken down by distinct courses, sections, e-text titles, and students (table 2).