Latest smartphones enable interaction with their users, which even toddlers these days are well acquainted with, which makes them attracted to use of the mobile phones.

Instead of a mobile phone, if an interactive digital book is made available (say a storybook), students are bound to get much attracted towards it. Educational Institutions have understood the potential of emerging digital technologies by realising that smartphones and tablets are being put into use for educational purposes too, which made the eBooks (digital textbooks) to surface to the mainstream, which has been made as a part of the curriculum, for better engagements with the students and learning outcomes.

Rise of Digital Textbooks:

eTextbooks enhance the learning experience to bridge the gap between traditional education and optimize learning to produce maximum output for progressive learning paths, thus facilitating to provide the best quality education with quality educational resources in the form of learning materials and content.

Learners from K to 12th grades and higher education institutions have become tech savvy and have become native to the technology around them as there is absolutely no point in keeping digital devices away from students.

Publishers are leveraging this digital technology advances to their advantage, in delivering interactive educational content with digital rich media in varied content forms, on smart devices (especially on laptop and tablets).

Digital Textbooks act as holistic learning devices and have become the next big thing in the learning ecospace, given the scope of features and enhancements that can possibly be incorporated into the eTextbook to make it more engaging and immersive for students.

Digital Textbooks have the following advantages:

• Access to the content anytime and anywhere
• Vast content repository with edits as when required
• Facilitates Interactive Learning
• Promotes Personalized Learning to Students (learners)
• Repurpose of Content, if need be
• Low-cost than traditional print textbooks
• Being stored in cloud-based, enables to be updated anytime as per the requirements

Here are a few standout features of eTextbooks that enforce them to make as preferred choice for both students (learners) and teachers (instructors):

1) Improves Motivation:

Students are given scoring points based on completing quizzes/assignments/projects on time on par with the gamification techniques, which are thought-provoking and enhance the logical ability of the learners.

Applying Gamification principles to the content motivates students to score higher thus increasing their performance, thus also assisting the learning methodologies.

2) Enhances Learning Experiences through Simulation Models:

Simulation experiences during the learning process on par with the real-world scenarios online, adds fun and makes it much more interactive, for better learning outcomes. Students are offered a chance to reset and re-do with more than one choice to arrive at the desired result, with simulation practices.

This also helps students to learn from their mistakes and inculcate logical thinking and progressive decision making skills.

3) Learning Resources:

Publishers mostly do offer a content repository (digital content library), consisting of interactive learning content in the form of audio/video/animations and graphics, that students can learn at ease in a much more understanding manner. Concept learning is made easy in this way.

Videos (serving as additional learning resources)  are an effective means of learning and can be customized based on the grades for making students understand the concept in an effective way (usually prepared by subject matter experts).

4) AR/VR Offers Immersive Learning Experiences:

Incorporation of AR/VR in education takes learning to the next level as it blends real environment with the digital world, making learning more interactive and immersive for students.

AR facilitates in-depth understanding as it represents an enhanced view of the concept which is in abstract form.

5) Provides Enhanced Analytics:

eTextbooks have in-built Analytics which enables them to track the performance of the users. For effective learning outcomes, teachers can have detailed insights of students’ performance.

Analytics gives out micro results based on entity basis, say lesson/chapter wise, average time spent, student wise, class wise etc,. with multiple options, to assist teachers to measure the level of the engagement.

6) Facilitates Multi-Sensory Learning Experiences:

Read Aloud Option lets students listen to the content. It helps students to learn pronunciations and improve diction, especially for students with dyslexia, visual impairments and reading challenges.

7) Interactive Features of eTextbooks:

eTextbooks lets students highlight texts, make notes for future references, book mark and annotate for recall purposes.

8) Search Option:

Digital Textbooks also come with a Search Feature, to reduce the manual intervention, making it easy for the students to search on a topic, for effective learning purposes.

9) Online Dictionary:

Students have a choice to learn meanings of certain words by looking them up on the online dictionary for better learning outcomes.

10) Interactive Quizzes:

Quizzes for Students are a measure for their learning and gauze their knowledge. Teachers can set up quizzes per student basis or after the end of the lesson for the entire class, evaluate the performance and share results online, for improving performance of each individual student and the entire class.

11) Night Reading Mode:

eTextbooks have the facility to be changed as per the personal preference of their end user, apart from the option to switch to night reading mode where the ebook can be read at nights, without staring their eyes.

12) Promote Interactive Learning:

eTextbooks have become vital and are more popular because they allow you to add videos and animation to the content unlike a word document or a PDF. Learning through videos facilitates more personalized and interactive learning.

13) Digital Books are cost-effective and cheaper:

Due to the process involved in being online, where edits are quick and instant, reusability capability, eTextbooks are cheaper and hence cost-effective. Digital Textbook creation tools are relatively simple to use, manage and also the cost of creating books decreases significantly.

Students can afford eTextbooks at more affordable/decreasing rates with renting/subscription options.

14) Enables Offline Reading:

With eTextbooks, content is stored on secured cloud-based servers, and hence can be accessed 24X7 for references and also can be downloaded for later usage so that Students can access the digital textbooks even during the absence of internet.

Conclusion:

Digital Textbooks are beneficial to both students and teachers in multiple ways. While Students can understand and learn better, Teachers can monitor students’ performance via defining personalized learning paths as per the learning style of each student and their core key skills and learning patterns, for better learning outcomes.

Online Learning facilitates a perfect blend of engagement and learning to keep and remain learners/students interested in learning, by evolving their learning experiences and enhancing their scope of learning, as per their own learning styles.

Talk to the team of mPowerO experts to leverage on the prospects for developing eTextbooks and the role of Digital Textbooks for Publishers, as Product Offering.

Write to us at info@mpowero.com to get your queries duly answered and enable/switch to the revenue generation model of the Publishers’ Segment.

Happy to Help!