Thirty years after BusinessWeek famously envisioned the “paperless office,” the college classroom is only just beginning to break away from its much-loved pen and paper.
E-book readers, or digital reading devices with large screens and weeks-long battery lives, have lately become popular with travelers and pleasure readers — even more so than traditional books in some cases. However, eBook readers are still struggling to find their place on Penn’s campus and college campuses nationwide.
Rob Nelson, associate director of education at the Office of the Provost, said Penn has “no University-wide initiatives” planned to introduce any eBook readers on campus.
“We’re still in the talking stage,” said Dennis DeTurck, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “The technology hasn’t quite settled down.”
Students currently in possession of an eBook reader have a wide variety of fiction and nonfiction options available from online booksellers. However, digital versions of Penn’s textbooks are few and far between.
In the 2007-08 school year, only 31 titles were available and only eight were sold, while last year 56 were available and 13 were sold.
“There is a significant difference in the way a student consumes educational material and in the way a lay reader consumes a novel,” Barbara Lea-Kruger, spokeswoman for Business Services, wrote in an e-mail. “Students look to highlight, take notes, and interact in other ways which [Amazon] Kindles and other such devices don’t allow.”
For many students, $300-500 prices are a major issue when considering an eBook reader purchase, while other students simply prefer physical books.
“My dad was considering [buying a Kindle],” said College junior Sam Barrett, “but I shot it down. Having a book is really integral to reading … you can’t get a sense of where you are in a book; [textbook] pages are bigger and you can’t do workbook problems.”
This fall, seven U.S. colleges have begun pilot programs researching the usage and viability of eBook readers on campus.
According to Princeton University alumnus and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Princeton students in three selected courses received Kindles loaded with digital versions of their class’ textbooks.
The program, entitled “Toward Print-Less and Paper-Less Courses,” was launched to determine the effectiveness of teaching with electronic readers.
According to the program’s website, its goals are to increase convenience for students and professors, reduce desire to print and photocopy, and facilitate studying with digital search and bookmarking tools.
Princeton has not released any information about the program’s progress thus far, but will publish results this spring.
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