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Read the rest of this articleCollege students disappointed with Amazon Kindle DX as a textbook replacement
College curriculums and printed textbooks have gone hand-in-hand for a long time, and it looks like that will be the case for a while longer. Feedback was recently published from college students who participated in an experiment that replaced traditional textbooks with an Amazon Kindle DX. That would provide an obvious benefit of fewer things to carry around, and the potential of reducing how much paper is pushed through the education ecosystem.
To sum it up, the Kindle DX didn’t work well as a textbook replacement, primarily because of a loss in productivity and ease of use. Reading textbooks is a much different exercise than reading for leisure because it usually requires note taking. The Kindle DX allows for that through annotations in the margins but students complained that the keypad made for slow text entry.
They were also unhappy that only one book could display at a time. Navigating between multiple texts required opening each one on the device as needed which is a form of multitasking that many mobile devices accommodate now. Palm’s WebOS and Google’s Android are two good examples where multitasking takes place regularly. Amazon will need to match the pace of mobile phones in that arena, particularly if it expects to compete with Apple’s iPad.
Students were also unhappy that they couldn’t annotate PDF documents at all, and that barrier likely has to do with the licensing deal in place (or missing) between Amazon and Adobe.
A minority of students reacted to the Kindle DX experiment differently, which the researchers categorized as power users. They adopted the text entry method more easily and had more patience for opening a single book at a time. Overall though, “whereas 75% of Darden students said they would not recommend the Kindle for other aspiring MBAs, about 90% said they would recommend it to family and friends for casual reading.”
Amazon is quick to acknowledge that their target audience was consumers looking for recreational content, and this study confirms they hit their target. Still, the next evolution of the Kindle DX may play out differently if Amazon pays attention to feedback like this and strives to deliver better features.
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Comments
This article is spot on. Main target audience for Kindle right now are really consumers looking for recreational content. But you know, Amazon is always improving and paying attention to feedback like this. Hopefully they will keep on striving to deliver better features.
This experiment to replace textbooks with Kindles is fascinating. But which colleges participated and who conducted the study? Where were the results formally published?
In addition how long was the study, cause if 1 semester I would say that people sometimes take a bit of time getting used to doing thinsg a different way. I mean my wife can type on a small keyboard but she is much slower than me but blows me away on a regular keyboard just because she is used to typing where I use 2 fingers.
I have a hard time believing that I am the only scientist that want to use this device. I dont see many people talking about how this will help with research. The Kindle DX really got me excited about the possibility to reduce the 200 or so PDF scientific articles that I read each month I wont have to print out. What we need, however, is better PDF support (with a zoom for figures) the ability to annotate as well.
iPad should change the students minds. It will provide more of a text book feel due to the color screen and better formatting of the actual textbook. It didn't surprise me at all that most students hated the DX, I wouldn't want to learn from it either. I own a Kindle 2 and I love it but putting a text book on the DX is a bit much. If anyone is unsure about which eBook they should by I found a good article which describes all the major ones the website is ereadervine.com and it was a big help for me along with Amazon's reviewing system.
I think these 10% or less was heavy book readers like me. The rest are just posers... I'm wondering to buy eColler, pretty good one i suppose. Great article
I just wanted to add my review to confirm that PDF support works great. One thing I love about the PDF on the Kindle DX is that it shows page numbers rather than the units of measure the regular ebooks use that I still don't understand.
Did your student review of the Kindle DX include the Kindle 3? The only reason i ask is that many of the issues with pdf's where dealt with in the latest generation kindle. I still think that - the dx will still not be a text book replacement as it is now - as its way too fragile. Imagine throwing one around class? The school budget would have to be a lot bigger to take into account of breakages. I think when the ebook readers become "unbreakable" and ebook prices drop significantly it would make economic sense to replace textbooks with text-e-books.
I'm sorry for them. I just got my teaching certificate, so I'm done with college but I really understand them because I used to have some issues too when I was in college. It's not very pleasant to have to go by someone's rules and not being able to do nothing but accept it. Well, that's how things work right now, so I guess we will have to wait for the moment when we will have the power to decide!