CHALLENGES OF E-TEXTBOOKS

E-Textbooks VS Hard copy Textbooks
(Source: Google.com)

An issue was raised up in August 2011 by Capeloto, whereby most of the students these days prefer to educate themselves with printed textbooks compared to the online textbooks or knows as E-textbooks. He continued explaining that it was hard to accept the fact that students are more preferable towards the textbooks than the E-textbooks. This is because the changing of the context of the textbooks are moving at the fast pace in the media world. Hence, the content may be outdated by the time it is updated through online. Students are actually paying less attention towards the online textbooks as they feel that they are just learning PDF ‘replicas’ of print pages. To them, the hard-copy textbooks are more helpful and interactive as they can highlight, scribble and writing short notes on the textbooks itself.

Hard-CopyTextbooks
(Source: Google.com)

According to Michael Hyatt Intentional Leadership (2011) cited from a study by Book Industry Study Group (BISG), it is stated that the percentage of consumers purchasing the E-books at the fourth quarter of 2010 was only 7 percent. There was only an increase of 2 percent from the previous year and they estimated that it would only reach 50 percent only in 2014. That has concluded the slow market of E-books sale. It is also further explained by Shriver (1997) that the online textbooks are more difficult to understand, as they could not visualize the bigger picture of that particular topic in which would make sense to them. Hence, they are too unenthusiastic to learn through online.

E-book
(Source: Google.com)

It was then argued by Sasson (2011) stating that E-books actually give out a lot of advantages compared to the hard-copy textbooks. One of it is that you can get immediate information by downloading E-book. It does not take 24 hours to download on one particular book. Besides that, E-book helps the students to have extra reading on a particular topic as E-books provide links that are related to the topic that you are reading on and you may read it wherever you go. Lastly, E-books are printable and if the students wish to read it in a traditional manner, they are free to print it or they can even choose on a particular chapter to print. This has indirectly save their money, as some of them may only need one chapter of the book as their reference.

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REFERENCE

Capeloto, A. 2011, How e-textbooks, online modules could keep journalism education current, viewed 12 November 2011, <http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2011/08/how-e-textbooks-online-modules-could-keep-journalism-education-current237.html>

Michael Hyatt Intentional Leadership 2011, Four Reasons Why The Sales Growth Of E-Books Will Be Slower Than Industry Executives Think, viewed on 12 November 2011, <http://michaelhyatt.com/four-reasons-why-the-sales-growth-of-e-books-will-be-slower-than-industry-executives-think.html>

Sasson, R 2011, The Benefits and Advantages of E-books, viewed on 12 November 2011, <http://www.successconsciousness.com/ebooks_benefits.htm>

Schriver, K.A 1997, ‘Chapter 6: The interplay of words and pictures’, in Dynamics in document design: Creating texts for readers, pp.361-441, Wiley Computer Pub., New York.