A new educational paradigm "ubiquitous learning" has been introduced in recent years, providing students with access to digital learning content without limitation upon either time or place. This trend seems to be further accelerated by the fact that...
A new educational paradigm "ubiquitous learning" has been introduced in recent years, providing students with access to digital learning content without limitation upon either time or place. This trend seems to be further accelerated by the fact that paper textbooks have their own limits in terms of the number of the text and images they can carry in a volume, while digital textbooks can provide a wide variety of learning resources and personalized interaction. To facilitate student learning progress, researchers and in-service teachers are working together on the construction of digital textbooks; consequently, the number of digital textbooks is increasing steadily.
The research on digital textbooks was initiated in Korea in the late 1990s, and digital textbooks have been adopted at pilot schools since 2000 to investigate the possibility of commercialization in the Korean educational context. As the expectation toward digital textbook increases, so does the concern about whether or not digital textbooks are better media in real classroom settings for raising student academic achievement than the conventional paper textbooks are. As such, there is an urgent need for research to identify the more effective medium in teaching and learning, to compare the level of academic achievement between paper textbook students group and digital textbook students group, and to examine the relationship among factors affecting students' academic achievement. Since the textbooks―other than other teaching tools―have been used as the dominant instructional medium in school classrooms over a long period of time, it is necessary to examine the long-term effectiveness of digital textbooks and to predict the approximate amount of time students need to adapt themselves to the new learning environment.
Hence, the purpose of this study is to compare the difference in learning effectiveness between paper textbooks and digital textbooks according to the different duration of time spent on a specific type of textbook. To this end, this study compared differences in the level of academic achievement between paper textbook group and digital textbook group after utilizing the textbook for one year and for two years, respectively. This study also explored the relationships among the variables related to academic achievement in paper textbook group and in digital textbook group. This study, therefore, tried to address the following research questions:
1. Are there differences in the level of academic achievement between paper textbook group and digital textbook group after utilizing the textbook for one year and for two years?
2. Are there differences in the structural relationships among gender, prior knowledge, self-directed learning ability, learning attitude, and academic achievement between digital textbook group and paper textbook group after utilizing the textbook for one year?
3. Are there differences in the structural relationships among gender, prior knowledge, self-directed learning ability, learning attitude, and academic achievement between digital textbook group and paper textbook group after utilizing the textbook for two years?
For this study, a survey was conducted on fifth and sixth graders in the years of 2008 and 2009 at ten research schools. Out of the total of 505 learners, 231 of them were placed in the experimental group using the digital textbook for their social studies class, and the remaining 271 were placed in the control group using the paper textbook for the same subject. To answer the first research question, descriptive statistics and repeated measures analysis of covariance were conducted; for the second and third research questions, descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and multiple group analysis were applied.
The major findings of the current study were as follows: First, the academic achievement level of digital textbook group after one year was not higher than that of paper textbook group. However, the academic achievement level of digital textbook group after two years was significantly higher than that of paper textbook group, indicating that long-term use of digital textbook might positively affect student academic achievement.
Second, there were differences in the structural relationships among gender, prior knowledge, self-directed learning ability, learning attitude, and academic achievement between digital textbook group and paper textbook group after utilizing the textbook for one year. Prior knowledge had a significant influence on self-directed learning ability and academic achievement in both paper and digital textbook groups. However, learning attitude had an influence on academic achievement only in digital textbook group. There were no significant differences in the structural path coefficients and the level of academic achievement between the groups.
Third, there were differences in the structural relationships among gender, prior knowledge, self-directed learning ability, learning attitude, and academic achievement between digital textbook group and paper textbook group after utilizing the textbook for two years. Prior knowledge had a significant influence on self-directed learning ability and academic achievement in both paper and digital textbook groups. Self-directed learning ability also had significant influence on learning attitude in both groups. In digital textbook group, learning attitude had a significant influence on academic achievement, but not in paper textbook group. These results were consistent with those obtained after using the textbook for one year. Gender played a significant influence on academic achievement in digital textbook group, but not in paper textbook group. This result, however, was valid only when digital textbook group used the digital textbook for two years; that is, there was no gender difference with respect to the level of academic achievement when the students used the digital textbook for a relatively short period of time―one year. Among these structural path coefficients, the path values of prior knowledge and the academic achievement were significantly different by the groups. The academic achievement level of digital textbook group who used it for two years was significantly higher than that of paper textbook group. To be specific, the academic achievement level of low prior knowledge learners in digital textbook group was significantly higher than that of paper textbook group, which indicates that digital textbook can be more effective than the paper textbook in enhancing the level of academic achievement of low prior knowledge learners.
The significance of the findings of this study is as follows: First, this study would provide implications for future research and development of textbook as it assessed the differences in the learning effectiveness of groups of students between paper textbooks and digital textbooks. Second, the analyzed relationships among factors that affect academic achievement could be used as a basis for the development of digital textbooks and for the improvement of teaching and learning strategies to obtain maximal effectiveness.