Cognitive Views of Learning: Electronic Textbooks

An electronic textbook should be organized much in the same way a traditional hardcover textbook is organized. Attention should be given to textbook fonts and format so that the textbook promotes easy reading and easy navigation through pages when used in a web browser or other computer program. Periodic page breaks should be inserted in order help to make the textbook more organized. For example, long textbook chapters may need to be divided into several web pages so that it can be easy to locate specific material in a chapter. A thirty or forty page chapter would probably be difficult to navigate through if it was all contained in one long scrolling list. As well as being difficult to read, if a chapter were thirty or forty pages long and displayed as one long scrolling text on a single page it may also be difficult for students to return to specific material after they initially read it.

To help the students learn and retrieve materials online textbooks should implement certain options. First the electronic textbook should give students the option to print the material out. Some students will always find it easier to read the material as a printed out hardcopy as opposed to reading the material off of their computer screen. In addition when textbook content is printed on paper students can easily manipulate the material. For example, students can underline, highlight and make notes on the material that they have read.

In addition to allowing students to print textbook material out, electronic textbooks can also make they digital material open to manipulation in the digital world. For instance, a digital version of a textbook can also contain a highlight, underline or notes option. Textbooks could allow for notes to be made on digital material much like Mac users have the option to create “stickies”.

A electronic textbook chapter should contain traditional textbook features such as bolding key words, dividing the chapter into key ideas, summary questions and including real world scenarios which should supplement course material. Electronic textbooks may also include some new digital features that would be exclusive to electronic textbooks such as live web links with in the text, images, videos, audio and perhaps even games that apply to chapter material. The electronic textbook world is almost limitless and may only be limited by the imaginations of the people who create the digital texts.